Garmin touts the fēnix 5S Sapphire as “An uncompromising sport watch designed for demanding athletes and outdoor adventurers.” With a nearly ridiculous list of features, this more-than-a-watch is the perfect techie gift for your husband if he’s outdoorsy, adventurous, athletic, or simply a tech junkie.
It features a stainless steel EXO antenna with GPS and GLONASS support for fast location fix and accuracy. It has a 1.2-inch sunlight readable color Chroma display with a high-strength domed sapphire lens. When used with a heart rate monitor, it crunches fitness data, including your running speed, beats per minute and heart rate variability to estimate the maximum volume of oxygen you can consume per minute.
Outdoor navigation options include a 3-axis compass, altimeter and barometer. But wait…there’s more. The 5S Sapphire is water-rated to 100 meters and has a battery life of up to 50 hours in UltraTrac mode, 16 hours in GPS mode and up to 3 months in watch mode (all depending on settings). It can also enhance your swim training and skiing too.
Borrowing from the Garmin Swim, it tracks your distance, pace, stroke count and more. You just tell it the size of the pool you’re swimming in and begin your workout. Ski-board mode puts speed, distance, vertical drop and an automatic run counter (with auto pause for the lift line) and more at your fingertips.
It can record a GPS track log, creating a “bread crumb trail” as you move. The 5S also allows you to mark locations, such as a start/finish line, course checkpoint, or a campsite, vehicle or other point of interest. With this smart watch, you can create and follow courses, mark up to 1,000 locations and store up to 10,000 track points and navigate to them.
Smart notifications let you receive emails, texts and alerts right on your watch, even if you’re on the trail. fēnix 3 receives the wireless signal from a compatible smartphone and lets you know you have a message, displaying the text on its own screen whenever you’re ready to read it.
Just in case you’re overwhelmed by all this technology, Garmin also has more sport specific devices you could choose from this Christmas.