Best GPS Hiking Watch Guide: 8 Gear Tester Standouts of 2024

One of the fantastic things about hiking is its simplicity. You don’t really need a whole lot of gear to get out and explore a trail. Good gear is a bonus, of course, and it can be especially important to have gear that does its job correctly when your safety depends on it. The hiking watch is a great example of one of those nice-to-have pieces of gear. The right GPS watch can help you keep accurate track of your pace, body indicators like heart rate, the terrain around you, and other environmental factors like weather to help you have the safest, most enjoyable hiking experience.

Picking the best GPS watch can feel overwhelming, though. It's often a big investment and the number of features on these things can feel infinite. For these very reasons, and more, I'm here to help.

I have been using a GPS watch for hiking, running, biking, and living for over a decade now and have tested dozens of them in my decades-long career as an outdoor journalist and gear tester. For this specific test, I researched eight watches that I thought could be the best hiking watch—based on my past experience—and my team and I tested them for the past four months to create this gear review that will hopefully help you pick the best one for you.

How We Tested to Find the Best Hiking Watch

Over the course of the past four months my wife, myself, and a couple outdoor enthusiast friends took each watch on hikes that got us far enough away from paved roads (minimum of five miles and as many as 15 miles) that it really felt like we were testing in the wilderness.

I truly believe that the best outdoor hiking watch is the one you will use the most, and truth is, not many of us are out hiking every day (that is, unless you are a retired avid hiker in my hometown of Ashland, OR living your best life or an ultralight thru hiker on the Appalachian Trail—shout out if you are!). With this in mind, we also tested these watches for a week each as our everyday driver, experiencing everything from mountain biking and trail running to sleeping in them (an epic comfort test) and even using them like a regular watch to make sure we picked up our kids from school on time. All to gauge their overall life-usefulness.

I also compared each hiking watch with watches I have tested in the past, like the Garmin Fenix, Garmin Forerunner, Garmin Instinct 2 Solar, Coros Vertix, and the Coros Vertix 2.

Read on for the results.

The Best 8 GPS Hiking Watches

Best Hiking Watch Overall: Garmin Enduro 2

Watch Dimensions: 51 x 51 x 15.6 (mm)
Weight: 70 Grams
Display Material: Power Sapphire
Battery Life (with and without GPS): Up to 34 days, 45 with solar, GPS: Up to 110 hours / 150 hours with solar
Price: $1,000

Pros: Did all we asked with ease and precision, well designed band made it easy to wear through the hardest hikes in spite of its large size, incredibly long battery life even in GPS mode, absolutely bonkers number of smart features
Cons: Large watch face can become uncomfortable during extended wear (24+ hours), size wasn’t ideal for sleeping, extremely high number of features means potential to get lost in the smart watch weeds

We are in a golden age of high performing, long living, GPS watches, personified by the remarkably powerful and easy to use Garmin Enduro 2. Traditionally, a watch with over 30 features, step-by-step real time hike mapping, gps navigation, and an accelerometer that will set off an alarm if you fall, would have like three to five hours of battery life with its myriad doohickies engaged. Not the case here. When the sun was out, this solar charging sports watch absolutely lived up to the company’s 150 hours of use in GPS mode: “crazy battery life, just crazy” read my notes. The soft velcro “Quick Fit” watch band was also a tester favorite with its ease of use and comfort.

The watch was one of the largest in the test, which made it pretty uncomfortable to sleep in, but the band did do it a lot of favors in the comfort department during all-day use. On the trails around Ashland, OR, we appreciated the real time grade adjusted pace (which gives credit for the steepness of trails and helps to realistically set pace on steep trails). The heat and altitude acclimation fitness tracking feature was spot on with our testers, too, which would be a fantastic add to a hiking trip. The GPS accuracy was spot on and the maps were really easy to use in real time during any outdoor activity—with testers figuring out how to use them on the fly during their first attempt—which was something shared among every Garmin watch in this test.

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Best Hiking Watch Under $700: Suunto Vertical Solar

Watch Dimensions: 49 x 49 x 13.6 mm
Weight: 87 grams
Display Material: Sapphire Crystal
Battery Life (with and without GPS): Up to 30 days (60 days with solar), up to 65 hours with GPS (90 hours with Solar)
Price: $629 ($839 for titanium version)

Pros: Impressive hiking features and battery life for size and price, cool looking band, very intuitive maps
Cons: Wasn’t quite as feature rich as the Enduro 2 above, but at $300 cheaper, it still packs considerable functionality

The Suunto Vertical Solar was absolutely neck and neck with the Garmin Enduro 2 above for the number one spot, and it was really tiny things like a wink of battery life and the standard band that put the Garmin ahead. At $300 less than the Garmin Enduro 2, the Suunto Vertical Solar is a great option for a full featured GPS watch for outdoor recreation and fitness tracking, especially if the Garmin's thousand dollar price gives you extreme sticker shock.

The Vertical Solar’s offline maps were easy to download and use on trails which we appreciated greatly when playing with it to find our way around the backcountry of the Siskiyou mountain range. The battery life is incredible thanks to its solar charging capabilities (once I lost the charger for two weeks and didn’t have to find it in spite of testing and daily use). Suunto’s navigation was on point thanks to the fact that it communicates with all five major satellite systems via Dual Frequency, and the LED display was gorgeous and also helped when reading downloaded trail maps under a bright sky.

The altitude and weather sensors proved very accurate, which added a layer of trust in this watch when planning our hikes. And as an added bonus, the number of available aesthetic watch faces on the Suunto race watch, making dressing up the LED display easy when not hiking.

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Best Hiking Watch Under $300: Garmin Instinct 2 Standard Edition

Watch Dimensions: 45 x 45 x 14.5 mm
Weight: 52 grams
Display Material: Chemically strengthened glass
Battery Life (with and without GPS): Up to 28 days , GPS: Up to 30 hours
Price: $299.99

Pros: Easy to use, straightforward functionality, great battery life, very accurate heart rate monitoring, inexpensive for all of those pros, durable
Cons: Won’t hold your hand through a training process like the more feature rich watches, significantly fewer features that the more expensive watches in this category

Garmin calls the Instinct 2 smartwatch “Standard," but with its 28 days of battery life in smartwatch mode, built in training tips, and super accurate GPS, I was totally blown away (in a good way). From set up to tracking hikes, every single feature of this outdoor watch had a simple and straightforward process. Testers especially appreciated the easy to use waypoints and route navigation. The heart rate tracker proved super accurate when I tested it against me manually taking my HR, and the maps were very accurate in the hills of Southern Oregon. This is all very impressive considering the (just!) shy of $300 price tag.

Plus, the Garmin Instinct 2 is burly, built to military standards (MIL-STD-810), which makes it resistant to shocks, thermal extremes, and water—it’s rated up to 100 meters.

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Best Hiking Watch for Purists: Casio Pro Trek 340SC-2

Watch Dimensions: 54.7 × 51.7 × 15.1 mm
Weight: 60 g
Display Material: Mineral Glass
Battery Life: 27 months
Price: $280

Pros: Incredible battery life (measured in months, not hours), solid delivery of basic information, altimeter watch, incredibly sturdy build, mineral glass was great at reflecting light
Cons: No GPS tracking, large bevel wasn’t super comfortable for overnight wear

Purists will tell you that an altimeter, barometer, and compass are all you really need in a hiking watch. The Casio Pro Trek has all of these features in a super durable case with a mineral glass face that delivered simple metrics in a sharp display. Even though it didn’t give testers step by step directions to get to a trail in the backcountry like most of the other watches on this list, it delivered the info it could offer from its barometric altimeter clearly, even in the flat light right before dark, as well as bright midday sunlight.

The temperature gauge was accurate, which testers did appreciate when adjusting pace on hikes for hot and cold starts. Solar charging worked well, and the lighter feature set gave the the Casio Pro Trek the longest battery life by far, meaning we never had to think about recharging it during our testing period. Overall, a very fine watch, if barebones is what you're after.

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Best Value Hiking Watch: Coros Apex 2 Pro

Watch Dimensions: 46.1 x 46.5 x 14mm
Weight: 53 grams
Display Material: Sapphire
Battery Life (with and without GPS): 21 days of regular use/ 66 hours of full GPS
Price: $449

Pros: Bananas number of features for the price, testers really liked the comfortable nylon band, killer amount of battery life with GPS tracking in smartwatch mode
Cons: HRM delivered patchy results, dials offered a slightly clunky user interface

Chinese company Coros first came on my radar by recommendation of ultra-runner friends who were jazzed on finally finding an inexpensive GPS running watch that could tracking even the longest runs without dying. This is where the Coros Apex 2 Pro shines. It impressed with super long battery life (66 hours) even in traditionally battery-sucking GPS mode, and delivered accurate elevation data, weather changes, and killer topographic map functionality to help us stay on track while hiking trails around Ashland, OR. We did find the feature interface UX—driven by a turning dial—to be a little challenging to get used to, but was difficult to complain about too much, considering the excellent price point for the number of features and impressive battery life.

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Best GPS Smartwatch for Everyday Wear: Coros Pace 3

Watch Dimensions: 41.9 x 41.9 x 11.7 mm
Weight: 39g
Display Material: Mineral Glass
Battery Life (with and without GPS): 17 Days, daily and sleep tracking, 38 Hours connected to GPS
Price: $229

Pros: Low profile makes it comfortable sleep in and for extended wear, lightweight, very good battery life, great price
Cons: HRM was patchy at times, less features than some of the more expensive watches on this list

The Coros Pace 3 was another winner in the battery life for the price department with 38-hours of life while still delivering all of the hike-helping GPS features. On top of being efficient in terms of GPS hours per dollar, the slim 11.7 mm case, low profile face, and light 39 gram weight made the Pace 3 the most comfortable smartwatch for sleeping, backpacking, and everyday wear. It really seemed to disappear, in a good way.

The Pace 3 had a very accurate altitude sensor and I loved the “deviate detection” feature which tells hikers when they are moving off course. For the price, this watch is packed with impressive features, but my one dig is that the heart rate monitor was patchy at times. During one test I noted my HR was recorded at 81 while I was climbing an incredibly steep hill, while a manual check of my HR showed it was more like 120. To be fair to the Pace 3, this honestly isn’t an expectation that I hold watches too closely tp, since so many factors can muck this up, like the amount of sweat on your wrist, tightness of the gps watch, and the amount of battery. So in all, we defiantly still rank this watch highly.

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Most Aesthetic Hiking Watch: Garmin ePix Pro Sapphire Edition 42mm

Watch Dimensions: 42 x 42 x 14.2 mm
Weight: 58 g
Display Material: Sapphire crystal
Battery Life (with and without GPS): Up to 10 days (4 days always-on), GPS Only: Up to 28 hours (20 hours always-on)
Price: $999.99

Pros: Stunningly beautiful display, accurate GPS, accurate heart rate, very feature rich, aesthetic
Cons: Might be too much watch for hiking alone, its fancy looks intimidated testers when in expedition mode

Before I launch into reviewing this Garmin watch, I would like to caveat it with the fact that no one should take my advice on fashion. But even a flannel wearing outdoorist like me can see how objectively beautiful the amoled display is. The epix Pro Sapphire Edition was the closest thing to a fashion watch that we tested in this batch, thanks to the aforementioned beautiful display screen. But it isn’t all looks, thanks to topographic maps, route planning, and gps tracking TracBack functionality, allowing for efficient navigation and safe return to your starting point. It also featured a surprisingly strong flashlight that testers used to get out of a bind when they forgot a headlamp during a late summer camping trip on Mt. Ashland. All in, the Garmin ePix Pro Sapphire a perfect smartwatch for the consumer that wants a high functioning watch—with top tier GPS tracking—for both backcountry wear and everyday use in the city.

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Best Smartwatch for an Optimized Life: Apple Watch Ultra 2

Watch Dimensions: 49 x 44 x 14.4 mm
Weight: 61 g
Display Material: flat sapphire crystal
Battery Life: Up to 36 hours normal use
Price: $799

Pros: Insanely versatile (for iOS users), added connectivity built great peace of mind for day hikes, seemingly unlimited number of features
Cons: Only works for iOS users, battery life wasn’t long enough for multi-day trips for testers wanting to use GPS

For testers who use iOS to organize their lives, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 proved to be an incredibly smart watch that did absolutely everything—it could sub in as a running watch, a dive watch, and had killer apps for tracking any kind of outdoor recreation.

Hiking specific, it was able to track heart rate impeccably, had myriad GPS mapping options to be used while hiking, and delivered real time weather conditions. Apple Health tracking allowed our tester to keep track of where her fitness was with remarkable accuracy, which helped her choose the difficulty of route choices based on her fitness. Our tester added it to her phone plan and could take calls on it and text, too, which was a huge bonus while hiking in-service (being able to leave her phone at home while still knowing she could get an emergency call or text if needed was really a huge benefit).

The battery life was 36 hours when using GPS sensors, which is not up to par with the solar ultra watches above but holy smokes did it give us access to hundreds of features within those hours. Also, that 36 hour lifes was still impressive though, especially since we thought of this member of the Apple Watch Series as more of a tiny Macbook than just a GPS hiking watch.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a hiking watch for?

For many outdoor enthusiasts, a modern GPS-enabled hiking watch is essential not only for tracking trail progress, navigating trails, and tracking weather changes in real time, but also for monitoring your health and fitness. With features like heart rate tracking, sleep monitoring, and activity metrics, models from brands like Garmin, Suunto, and Apple help you optimize your performance and stay safe while enjoying the outdoors.