ONE WATCH TO RULE THEM ALL

GARMIN’S INSTINCT SOLAR TACTICAL EDITION IS SUITED FOR MANY MISSIONS.

- Sean Curtis

We’ve come a long way since the pocket watch.

While society might not be flitting here and there in flying cars (yet), we do have wristwatches that can communicate with multiple satellites and give us our exact location. When GPS made it to the public (á la “Dick Tracy”), the battery life of a watch wasn’t sufficient for such a device to really be considered a viable survival tool.

The folks at Garmin have been cramming valuable features into their watches for a while now. But, with the latest version—the Instinct Solar Tactical Edition—they’ve practically eliminated the ability to get lost for long.

Being a watch enthusiast, I can “get lost” in the faces of some dreamy timepieces. The word, “horophile,” wasn’t recognized when I typed it into this article, but rest assured: To people who love and collect watches, there’s no better term to describe their passion. It’s derived from “horology,” which refers to the science of measuring time or even the art of creating time-measuring devices. I love watches, but I’ve often had to recognize the limitations of those I’ve used over the years.

Standard multiple-sensor watches relied on informing the user of altitude, barometric pressure, and even direction for years, but they required the user to have a decent knowledge of the terrain to maximize the value of that intel.

GPS was a critical upgrade, and it eventually materialized. However, the thought of having to plug in a watch every night or certainly every few days left them out of consideration for many scenarios.