The Best Adventure Watches of 2024
For a tick of a secondhand a few years back, it seemed like smartphones might make sports watches obsolete. Quickly, however, athletes and outdoorsmen realized that the best adventure-focused watches meant less fiddling with your phone and more of what you headed outside to do in the first place.
Our favorites are long-lasting, stylish, and pack in easy-to-use features that enhance your time outdoors instead of forcing you to focus on tech when you’re heading outside to unplug. For those reasons, the Garmin Fenix 7X Pro, Sapphire Solar Edition is our top overall pick. Most adventure watches retail under $1,000 and we highlight watches at a range of price points and share options from fully analog to the most connected, digital options available.
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Best Overall Adventure Watch: Garmin Fenix 7X Pro, Sapphire Solar Edition
This is the GPS watch for the outdoor athletes that want it all. Garmin has a bewildering array of full-featured tracking watches for racers and adventurers, but the Fenix 7x Pro Sapphire Solar edition brings together fitness tracking and navigation features as well as any watch to-date. To get the most out of the significant investment here, you’ll need to value the robust fitness tracking features from sleep monitoring to ECG heart rhythm monitoring to stress and endurance scores to help you dial in your training. For outdoor adventurers, it’s the maps and navigation tools that seal the deal. The GPS uses multi-band tech for maximum accuracy and you get altitude and compass readings like any good outdoor watch. But the mapping stands out with premium features such as golf course maps, ski area maps, suggested routes back to your start, and even turn-by-turn directions for at-a-glance wayfinding when you’re moving fast.
Garmin regularly adds features via software updates and in December added some interesting features on the Fenix 7 series including improved downhill skiing activity monitoring just in time for ski season. They also added a nap detection feature that automatically recognizes when you’ve taken a nap and incorporates the information into your training readiness and body battery metrics.
CASE: Titanium/polymer
FEATURES: Touchscreen, Bluetooth, GPS, LED light, solar charging
SIZE: 51mm
STRAP: Silicone
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Best Rugged Adventure Watch: Casio G-Shock Mudmaster GGB100
Casio’s G-Shock line has defined military-grade rugged dependability in the adventure watch category for decades. The display is digital but the Mudmaster has an analog feel with no email notifications in sight but all the essentials such as date, time, temperature, altitude, compass, and solar charging for near-infinite operation away from power sources. Buttons are large, protected, and easy-to-use in any conditions and though the watch looks chunky, it’s fairly slim and streamlined as far as outdoor watches go. And while this isn’t a full-featured fitness tracker watch, it does add in a Bluetooth connection option to record routes, step counts, and elevations.
CASE: Carbon fiber/resin
FEATURES: Bluetooth, shock/mud resistant, LED backlight
SIZE: 55.4mm
STRAP: Resin
Best Adventure Smartwatch: Suunto Vertical Titanium Solar
Suunto’s new Vertical packs their best fitness and navigation features into their latest flagship outdoor watch. One big improvement over earlier watches from Suunto is the addition of solar charging to minimize the annoyance of needing a charge when you most need your watch. (That said, the Vertical and similar watches take a charge quickly if you just need enough juice to track your next ride or run.) The other major feature rollout is free downloadable maps—that don’t rely on your phone or cell signal—that are easily readable on the 49mm face.
CASE: Titanium/polymer
FEATURES: GPS, solar charging, free maps
SIZE: 49mm
STRAP: Silicone
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Best Hiking Adventure Watch: Coros Apex 2 Pro
Coros owns a smaller share of the GPS smartwatch category, but their Apex 2 Pro stands out for delivering most of the great tracking features from Garmin and Suunto but in a slim, understated watch that doesn’t get in the way. The price tag is also about half of what you’d pay for many of the other watches, yet it still includes built-in free and interactive mapping. The battery life is excellent but the GPS tech isn’t as robust as other brands’, so tracking and navigation don’t have quite the same pinpoint accuracy.
CASE: Titanium
FEATURES: Digital dial, GPS, Bluetooth
SIZE: 46.5mm
STRAP: Nylon, silicone
Best Luxury Adventure Watch: Norqain Neverest GMT Glacier Grey & Gold
Seeking a wear-everywhere outdoor watch with luxury Swiss styling and rugged dependability? Neverest is Norqain's ode to Everest and the intrepid spirit of sherpas. The GMT watch boasts an anthracite grey dial with gold cracks running across the surface to mimic the crevasses found on Everest. Daytime hours are indicated in white and night-time hours in black. The knurling on the edge of the ceramic bidirectional-rotating bezel makes adjustments easier when fingers are cloaked by gloves. Moreover, the automatic-winding NN20/2 movement is visible through the sapphire glass case back, and you can engrave the plate on the left side of the case. Perhaps the biggest selling point is Norqain's partnership with Butterfly Help Project: 10 percent of all Neverest watches are donated to the charity in Nepal, which aids families of sherpas who've lost their lives while guiding, giving their children access to education.
CASE: Stainless steel
FEATURES: Sapphire crystal, 200m water resistance, 70-hour power reserve
SIZE: 41mm
STRAP: Stainless steel, rubber
Best Adventure Chronograph: Nixon 51-30 Chrono
If you need a statement watch that can still hold its own against the elements, the oversized 51mm Nixon 51-30 Chrono goes big and walks in the room before you do. This is a heavy-duty and heavy watch made almost entirely from stainless steel and oversized numbers on the analog time readout in combination with the oversized face make it easy to check the time at a quick glance. This is pure analog, but placing the pusher knobs on the 9-hour side helps avoid wrist bite—a nice nod to active use. The 51-30 Chrono comes in 13 sharp, metallic designs, but it’s also one of the models available in Nixon’s custom watch builder if you want to create a one-of-a-kind version, engraving optional.
CASE: Stainless steel
FEATURES: 9 o’clock pushers, analog countdown timer, six-hand chronograph with 24-hour and second timer subdials
SIZE: 51mm
STRAP: Stainless steel
More Adventure Watches We Love
What You Should Look for in an Adventure Watch
Adventure watches can be analog, digital, or a hybrid, but the best ones are waterproof, durable, and provide metrics such as altitude, humidity, navigation, and, of course, time. Smart adventure watches go further and bring maps, GPS route tracking, and biomarker monitoring to your wrist. Here are the key features to compare when shopping.
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Mapping
Many watches incorporate built-in maps, which allow you to leave the phone at home or at least reference it less often. The combination of internal compass and readable maps right in the watch turn these timepieces into powerful navigation devices whether you’re out for a run or embarking on a multi-day backpacking trip. Most offer downloadable maps as well, meaning they work without being tethered to a phone or data connection. The mapping features often include powerful route-building tools so you can lay out runs, bikes, and hikes at home and easily follow them out in the field. Most of the map packages are free but Garmin also offer a premium mapping package for a $50 annual charge that, like other subscription mapping services such as OnX and Caltopo, adds property ownership layers and more detailed contour lines.
Solar Charging
Solar recharging of watch batteries has been around since the 1970s, but the tech has drastically improved and is showing up in high-end adventure watches to extend the relatively short battery life of these energy-hogging digital watches. Solar charging easily keeps traditional watches and smartwatches running few features charged indefinitely—given cooperative weather. In high-consumption modes, you’ll likely need to supplement with charging from an external power source. But no matter how you run them, the solar charging capability will extend the battery’s runtime and is worth paying a bit extra if you hate dealing with low battery warnings or spend time away from reliable power on multi-day excursions.
Cellular Connection
The more mainstream smartwatches (most of the Apple and Samsung offerings) can access wireless data networks without tethering to your phone. Most fitness-first watches from brands such as Suunto and Garmin do not, meaning you’ll either need to keep your phone on you for messaging and other connected apps and download maps for offline use. Having a data connection for your phone makes it much more capable but it also drains the battery faster and almost always requires an additional line of data on your wireless plan which usually costs around $10 per month.
Why You Should Trust Me
After refusing to wear a watch for a decade (figured my phone had the time), backpacking and backcountry hunting made me appreciate using my phone less for telling time, navigation, and tracking. Since then, I’ve tested many of the major releases from brands like Garmin, Suunto, Timex, and Casio. The Garmin Fenix 7x is my current go-to but I also cycle in the Suunto 9 Peak and Nixon Regulus for certain outings.
