UKH

Hi All,

I am looking for a gps watch for alpine and Uk climbing with the following key features

Barometric altimeter
Easily displayed grid reference in a variety of formats and easy to input GR on the fly
Long battery life
Alerts for time and altitude

The front runners at the moment are :

Garmin fenix 3
Suunto traverse
Suunto ambit 3 peak

It would be particularly useful to hear opinions on the reduced sampling features such as ultratrac etc and wether this can be changed during tracking. The traverse seems ideal but looks like it could have a problem inputting UK grid references.
All advise is welcome especially from anyone with first hand experience of the above.
Thx for reading

In reply to alfmeister:

I have a Fenix 3 and think it's great. I use it for running, cycling and mountaineering and would say it meets all your criteria apart from being easy to input GR. You can do it, but I don't think any watches are going to make this easy.
I chose the Fenix after spending a lot of time with a friend who had an Ambit 3. I could see it was potentially great but he took ages to learn to use it (in contrast, I've found the Fenix very intuitive) and many of the best features were buried by complex menus.
Having said all that, I don't think any of your options are bad choices.

In reply to Y Gribin:
Thx for your reply, it looks like the fenix 3 is a good choice.
Do you know if you can change to ultratrac during recording if it looks like you're going to be out longer than anticipated ?

In reply to alfmeister:



I don't think you can, not that I can see anyway. But then I've never used it successful either. Every time I've used it (in mountainous terrain) I've ended up with a very inaccurate plot of where I've been.

In reply to hokkyokusei:

Interesting, does this mostly occur due to running where you can go quite a way in between readings and the small errors accumulate ? Presumably you still get an accurate fix on any one location particularly if stationery for a bit.
Are you happy with data in normal mode ?
Thanks for your input

In reply to alfmeister:

I've only tried Ultratac a couple of times and didn't find it that accurate (or, at least, not sufficiently accurate to make it worthwhile). If I need extended battery life, I find these changes adequate - http://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/forerunner630/EN-US/GUID-FA52690B-3D...
I think if I was going to be out even longer, I would look at rigging up some sort of portable power.

In reply to Y Gribin:

What set up/activity do you use mountaineering? If you're activity tracking, how do you navigate?

In reply to alfmeister:


In this instance I was hiking rather than running. I think the issue was that in ultratrac mode it effectively lost lock between sample points. This probably wasn't helped by being in high sided valleys!

Here's an ultratrac route:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1245296739

And normal mode:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1245295898


Yes, I am. I mainly use the watch for running and cycling, but the battery life is good enough for hiking too. I was in Peru for a month recently, and a combination of a small external battery (would fully charge the Garmin about three times) and a solar cell for the battery (would charge the battery in a sunny afternoon) kept me topped up for the whole trip.

In reply to galpinos:


I actually had my garmin on one writs, and a suunto core on the other, but with the Garmin fenix, I think that you ought to be able to set it up to be able to use the compass and altimeter in an activity, but I haven't had time to play with it much.

In reply to hokkyokusei

Yep I see what you mean about the ultratrac.

Thx for all the replies, I managed to get a good deal on the fenix so we'll see how we get on.

In reply to hokkyokusei:

Yes you can check the compass, altimeter and barometer whilst in an activity.
The main fields I have set up for mountaineering are, grid reference (for quick spot checking), sunset and sunrise, distance, ascent, altitude, time, duration, and the little 'map' screen.
Obviously I have entirely different set ups for running and cycling.

In reply to alfmeister:

Of course, you could look at the new Suunto Spartan, although it's still early days: http://www.climbingtips.com/gear/suunto-spartan-ultra-review/

(Just spotted you've gone Garmin already, enjoy anyway!)