Amazing Military Watches With GPS In The Markets
A military watch is already considered tactical because of its many uses for survival or leisure. It is ergonomically designed to withstand knock-ups, harsh environment, water pressure, and more. Now, a new technology has emerged from this century. Enter, military watches with GPS. They have an excellent chronograph feature that tracks time and distance.
No wonder it’s not only a favorite for most survivalists or marines today, but sports or fitness enthusiasts can wear one too. One can track their progress of training and how effective are they going. Also, a tactical GPS watch can be used for data logging or merely checking out where your kids are.
Suunto Traverse

Suunto is a respected brand in the watch industry, and they have incorporated the Russian GLONASS for route tracking and navigation. It has a real-time record of your tracks and location, and can also record your speed; distance traveled, footfalls, and calories among many others. What’s more is that through the heatmaps, it can unlock new vistas to trek upon.
The product can notify you with any weather changes as well any of those pestering calls and texts from your officemates. You can adjust settings from your Movescount desktop and app version for a seamless configuration of buttons. The app itself can be a great way to share your adventures and locations with other friends. The activity feed in your desktop also gives you a clue on your friend’s activities or whereabouts and vice versa.
The Suunto Traverse has a sturdy design and is made to resist water, moisture, or fog up to 100 meter pressure. It’s perfect for deep swimming or snorkeling, but never for diving. Also, the backlight can serve as a flashlight if you enable that mode. It can help users when finding their path in the dark or just checking your belongings when you need them.
All in all, Suunto has an activity tracker day by day, or weekly, monthly, and yearly. It has a noiseless vibration when pushing notifications. Battery life can survive up to three days in GPS mode. It can withstand longer in watch mode only.
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Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

This model from Garmin is slim-wristed and quite light and comfortable to wear. The Foretrex 401 has a sensitive GPS function, which includes the ABC system of like altimeter, barometer, and electronic compass. The details of your log can be shared and transferred easily to a computer with the use of a USB. Since it is lightweight by design, it is ideal for people in motion – whether you’re a tri-athlete, prepper, camper, or hiker.
The watch logs your activity and displays your data like a dotted trail. If you want to retrace your route, Foretrex has a TracBack feature to inform you where you were at the beginning of your hike. Users can save essential locations on the watch with its waypoint and tracking points log.
What’s fantastic about its features is that it has even a a daylight notification and also hunting and fishing statistics. It is equipped with standard GPS watch features like heartbeat monitoring, calories, steps, speed, and distance.
What’s convenient about the watch is that it uses triple A batteries which can extend up to 17 hours of usage. Triple A batteries are easy to find which makes powering of the watch easy and quick.
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What to look for when buying a military watch with GPS
A military watch is considered tactical because of its many uses. Some of these features are simply “icing on the cake,” and that’s why you have to know which among the functions are best for you. Here’s what you need to look for a GPS watch. Ask yourself if you need some watch features in your life.
GPS features
You need a watch that synchronizes your current location pronto. Some GPS watch can take forever to load, but you need one that’s fast and gives reliable results. A great GPS function can also let you retrace your steps, save routes, navigation plans, and save track and waypoints.
Sturdiness
Military watches are known for their durability and ruggedness. They have to be resilient and shockproof to knocks, beats, and abrasions. What kind of glass are they made of? What materials are the cases and band consists of? Also, they have to be waterproof or moisture proof to seal the fogginess or haziness of the watch. Most watches come with a water-resistant feature from 50 to 200 meters.
Tactical Features
The standard military watch must have the ABC functions: compass, altimeter, and barometer. The first two are used for navigation purposes while the gauge gives you an idea about the atmospheric pressure to predict weather patterns. Other military watches consist of daylight time settings, flashlight, tide predictability, camera controls, and more. Night vision watches are also available in the market.
Battery Life
A good watch can operate for more than a year without switching batteries. Most of these watches can run a couple of days without recharging. Some watches can be used for 17, 50, or 72 hours in GPS mode while it might take longer in normal watch mode. GPS watches run on lithium-based batteries, while there are those out there that can operate with triple A batteries only.
Design
Let’s face it. The number one thing when people are looking for military watches is its designs. Military watches in nature should stick to natural colors like black, white, silver, green, brown, or camou. Some have sleek looks while others have that excellent rugged, outdoorsy motif.
Display size and resolution
The choice for an excellent display and resolution is entirely personal. Whatever it is, a person can evidently look at the display and can configure it easily with no hassle.
Traffic alerts
Don’t you know some GPS watches can survey the surroundings and can tell a traffic right then? It can assist the person to reroute their adventures to a road with lesser congestion of traffic with the information they have.
Compatibility with app
Desktop and mobile applications can have a real-time monitoring of your adventures and routes. People who downloaded the same app can see live activity from your feed. It can be a great help when sending out a message that you’re lost. People can alert authorities and send help in your area. Also, you get to share your traveling to friends and family with the app. And in case you want to track your steps, you can always log to your app and see where have you been and which destination you want to go next.
Advantages of having a GPS watch
Tracking your location can have its benefits. Locating your way out of the route or finding your lost child is among the benefits of having a GPS watch. For fitness buffs, monitoring our heartbeat, speed, distance, and calories is necessary for you to know how much you’ve improved.
To sum it up here are the benefits of having GPS in your timepiece:
- Navigation
- Retracing of steps
- Data logging to apps and desktop
- Fitness training
- Route tracking
- Heartbeat monitoring
- Weather and tide predictions
- Locating lost loved ones
- Nutrition reminders
- Map display of the area
Each person has their reason why they need and wants a GPS watch for their daily use. But one thing’s for sure – a military graded watch with GPS features are a sure thing to use.
Conclusion

After reviewing the top three military watches in the market, we’ve found that the Suunto Traverse has got us wanting it. Their GLONASS GPS system is spot on and can easily locate your tracking points and area. The compass and altimeter are reliable and produce results that are accurate. The heatmaps can help you discover new locations to trek on. It’s pretty handy if you find yourself in the military or in an emergency situation where you need a safe escape route.
And if you find yourself wanting to have light in the dark, the watch’s backlight can be turned into a flashlight, so that you can see where you’re going or just rummaging through your knapsack. The Suunto Traverse has a real time update of the weather and daylight hours and will notify you of changes or when a storm is brewing on the horizon.
You can mark your points and monitor your heartbeat and calories, all for the glory of exercising. If you need to swim, the timepiece can actually survive underwater for a whopping 330 ft. Also, with the Suunto Traverse, you can easily share, save, and relive the moments of your adventures. It is also social media friendly.
While the watch can be a bit confusing at first when it comes to mechanism and configuration of settings, it’ll be pretty easy once you got the hang of it. The timepiece is pretty big to some slim-wristed person, but overall, it’s a great watch.