Reviewer Details

I started bushwalking at 14 and took up rock climbing at University with the girl who became my wife and my permanent walking partner. Ski touring and canyoning followed. Winter and summer, we prefer long hard trips by ourselves: about a week in Australia, up to two months in Europe/UK. We prefer fast and light in unfrequented trackless country. We would be out walking and skiing for at least three months a year. We have now moved to lightweight gear, much to our backs' relief. I designed and made much of our lightweight gear myself.

I am also the maintainer of the Australian aus.bushwalking FAQ web site www.bushwalking.org.au/FAQ/.

Product Description

This is basically a large 'sports' watch, although it has many more features than just telling the time - as shown in the Product Claims above. It has an integrated perforated wrist band which can't be removed. There are four large rectangular control buttons arranged around the rim, with fairly conventional functions and layout. There is also a smaller push button for the back-illumination. This gives a gentle greenish background glow which lasts for several seconds. The numbers are quite legible in the dark when the back-illumination is activated.

Being a large digital watch it has many functions of course, and these are accessed through 'menus' on the screen. There are two different menu lists: one for time/date functions and one for the 'other' functions. The latter is called the 'Trail' menu. Navigation within the Trail menu seems fairly straightforward: the captions 'alti' and 'baro' are fairly self-explanatory for instance. Within the time/date menu however there seem to be five very similar sub-menus. I am reminded of the 'maze of twisty little passages' for those who remember the early computer game Adventure. I have yet to learn how to use all these sub-menus.

Access to the battery is through a round port on the back panel: this can be undone with a coin. The port is clearly labeled in the photo to the right. Removal of the battery does mean you lose all the settings you may have done. This is a pity as the inclusion of a simple capacitor (or 'super-cap') would prevent this. Chapter 10 of the manual gives complete instructions (page 32) for replacing the 'user-serviceable' CR2032 battery (a fairly common battery). This is good. But the warranty section of the manual (Chapter 12, page 37) cautions that replacing the battery yourself 'may void this warranty' - which seems a bit harsh considering the simple instructions given on page 32. The battery cover is sealed with a thin O-ring which stays nicely in place. The back panel itself seems to be held in place with seven small screws. These also secure the integrated wrist-strap. I have not tried to remove these screws (yet).

The watch is somewhat vaguely described in Chapter 12 as 'water-resistant', but surprisingly for an outdoors watch it is not waterproof. The warranty does state 'Damage resulting from excessive exposure to water, heat or cold is not covered under this warranty.' This is strange as many far cheaper digital watches sold at service stations and supermarkets come with a 30 metre (100') pressure rating. Perhaps the inclusion of a pressure sensor has something to do with this, although I know there are ways around this problem.

Initial Impressions

The web site may list the features, but what is not obvious from the web site is that this thing is huge! It is much bigger than I expected. In fact, as you can see in the photo to the right, it almost dwarfs my wrist. I tried to slip one of my office shirts over the watch while it was on my wrist and had to undo the button on the cuff to do so. Fortunately some other office shirts I have provide two cuff buttons, for thin and thick wrists, and the thick-wrist button position did let the watch just slip through the done-up cuff. Even so the process was difficult for me, and I can see that normally the watch would either protrude all the time or be concealed all the time. Neither is good in an office environment, and I cannot really imagine using this as a daily 'office' watch in business clothes. Whether it will be too big for wearing conveniently on my wrist in rough country, scrambling through thick scrub - that I will have to see.

That said, I have to say the integrated wrist strap is remarkably comfortable. On some older watches the wrist strap was made of fairly hard plastic, but this one is soft and wraps very easily around my wrist. I could not find out from the specifications what the material used is, but I suspect it may be some sort of silicone rubber. In addition, unlike many wrist straps which completely cover my skin and make it sweaty, this wrist strap is perforated like a Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid and it allows air through.

The display figures are large and clear. The control buttons on the sides are also quite large and have a dimpled surface - a non-slip design I think. The button travel is not large compared to some other watches I have owned, and I found I had to get used to the short travel. This was not difficult as the display does change fairly smartly when a button is pressed. The button layout for this class of watch seems to follow some sort of industry convention: top left is for major mode-swap, bottom left scrolls through the menu inside a mode, top right increases settings and does some start/stop functions, bottom right decreases settings and handles reset and lap functions. Most of these are fairly standard functions.

The instruction manual which comes with the watch is a bit large and intimidating. I really don't think I will ever manage to remember all the instructions for all the operations listed above. However, for the most part the manual is fairly clear. It is not completely error-free: for instance the instructions on page 36 for correcting the sea-level pressure reading refer to section 9.2 (which is on compass use) rather than the correct section 8.2.

I was a bit shocked by the massive amount of packaging which came with the watch. As listed above, the watch weighs a largish 52 grams, but the packaging is over four times that in weight. Included in the packaging is a rigid plastic container resembling a small lunch box! I would love to see companies using less packaging.

The Watch Functions

I won't comment here on the basic time/date function or the chronometer features apart from noting that the time-keeping seems quite stable and accurate so far. We expect that these days with digital circuits, but I will monitor it and also test the alarm functions at night when I am deep inside a sleeping bag. Previous wrist-watch alarms have been relatively useless at waking me up, even in the quiet of the bush.

The internal pressure sensor runs both the barometer and the altimeter. The picture of the back of the watch shows a small dimple with four holes: I believe this is the inlet for the pressure sensor. The pressure can be calibrated in imperial and metric values and also in 'bar'. One bar is the pressure at sea level on a fine day: it is quite intuitive and useful.

I have been rather skeptical in the past about whether something as small as a digital watch can predict the weather just from the pressure readings. The Weather Bureau seems to have plenty of problems doing that even with all their facilities. However, there is no denying that a short-term forecast (say up to 12 hours) should be possible. This facility is claimed, and I shall be interested to see how well it works. Mind you, if it does predict a storm this isn't going to help me avoid it, but that's life when out walking.

The altimeter uses the well-known relationship between pressure and altitude to determine altitude. I have found this very useful sometimes, especially in the mountains when altitude is a good position locator on a map. I am immensely pleased to find that this watch does not attempt to 'correct' the altitude setting for what might be slow drifts in atmospheric pressure - or possibly slow altitude changes. Another watch I have tested did attempt to make that correction and always got it wrong. That drove me mad. This simplicity means I should be able to trust this altimeter (and the barometer) far more - although all this has yet to be tested.

There are several other altimeter/barometer functions: a profile graph, an accumulator for ascents and descents, and so on. I will be testing these to see how useful they are in practice.

This watch includes a magnetic compass function, with declination correction. I have had some very unhappy experiences with the compass function in digital watches in the past. They consumed lots of power and have been very susceptible to any tilt - without warning. The manual claims that this watch will warn if the magnetic field is 'distorted' so maybe it will warn when there is too much tilt. I will be examining the performance of the compass section in this watch with some care.

There is also an accelerometer in this watch. The manufacturer claims this can be used to estimate distances, speed of travel and even calories consumed. I have to say I have some doubts about the value of this on rough terrain, although I have never used a pedometer of any sort. Yes, it may be quite good when I am walking along a flat smooth track, but many times I am doing anything but that. Well, it will be rather interesting to see how it goes in the field.

The watch includes a small temperature sensor, but the manual acknowledges that this will be upset by the heat from my wrist. However I sometimes hang my watch on a string around my neck, and I usually leave it in a pocket on the tent wall at night. It will be interesting to see what the 'minimum temperature' feature says about some of the nights in winter.

Finally, I should comment on the huge range of 'other' functions available. I am sure a few people will find some of them useful, but the sheer complexity of accessing them all - and the difficulty of remembering how to do so, makes me wonder whether there can be 'too many features'. We have this problem with many PC software packages of course. Marketing loves them, but users often spurn them. It will be interesting to see whether any of these extra features turn out to be useful in practice.