While GPS watches are predominantly targeted at runners and athletes, many people are seeking a GPS watch with the purpose of finding their way through the uncharted territory of an outdoor adventure in an area they've never vited before or for the simple security of back-tracking to their original locations in the unlikely event of getting lost.
The beauty of GPS is that it tracks your geographic position on earth and so is ideally suited in the role of navigation. Here's a brief glimpse at the range of features offered in GPS navigation watch systems:
Map View: Unlike larger hand-held consumer GPS devices, it is extremely awkward to supply a mapping view mode in a wrist watch, however Garmin and GlobalSat have tried and succeeded.
The Garmin Forerunner 305 and their more recently released 310XT are two GPS watches that offer quite adequate GPS navigation system and due to their larger screen sizes can accomodate a top-down 2D map view of your current position.
The GlobalSat GH 625 watches also pack the screen real estate to offer a map. Ironically the outdoors Suunto X10, which is designed primarily with GPS navigation in mind, doesn't have a map view as it's screen area is too small.
Other basic GPS navigation features include the ability to store your current location in memory (known as a waypoint) and then navigate to it later. Almost all navigation GPS's allow you to return to a configurable starting point in your journey. Most also feature a compass, although the ability to travel to waypoints makes the compass feature redundant.
A more advanced feature of GPS navigation watches is the ability to store routes. A route is essentially a path of waypoints that can be followed by a traveller. Watches like the Sunnto X10 GPS watch present you with your distance, direction and eta to the next waypoint along your route and allows you to create your routes in a computer package which can then be uploaded into the watch. The option of manually creating routes is provided too, allowing you to create a route of your course, rather than follow it.
Both Garmin GPS watches with navigation, the Suunto X10 and GlobalSat GH-625 let you export your data into computer software packages for viewing and analysis.
GPS Watches with navigation are useful for outdoor activities like hiking, bushwalking and mountain climbing. They can also be useful for sports like orienteering (as a training tool, obviously not for competitive use). They can be useful to runners who wish to know how far to the next location on their course, and of course for finding their way home again when they get lost!
The following watches feature some form of GPS navigation ability:
