Garmin Fenix 5X Plus

l £599 l www.garmin.com

Multi-sport smartwatches are becoming increasingly popular as many people wish to track their daily lives, sleep and exercise. the Garmin Fēnix 5X plus is a smartwatch that, like the Casio, does many things you’d expect from a smartwatch, but with the added bonus of features including a heart- rate monitor.

the watch is aimed more towards fitness and lifestyle tracking, but with impressive battery life when using Gps and the built-in full- colour topoActive Europe map, it’s an alternative to watches running Wear os by Google.

the watch is set up and connects to your smartphone with the Garmin Connect app. there are a large number of apps available including one that allows you to navigate using Google Maps and import GpX files, so there’s plenty of room to expand the capabilities of the watch. other maps are available for purchase from the Garmin website.

When navigating using the built-in mapping, inputting coordinates is the easiest way to locate your final destination. You can use the map to find your destination, but employing the buttons to zoom in and out of the map and to move horizontally and vertically is clunky and really quite difficult. With coordinates, you will need the longitude and latitude of the location so it’s not perfect. this is where a touchscreen interface would make a huge difference and make this a much easier task.

When it comes to fitness wearables and navigation devices, Garmin is one of the major players in the market and the Fēnix 5X plus certainly lives up to what you’d expect from a high- end multi-sport wearable with Gps and navigation. At £599 it’s the most expensive device in the round- up, but it also provides the widest range of features including a battery life that’s considerably better than that of the Casio WsD- F30. When it’s used in Gps/mapping mode the battery can last for up to 32 hours, and up to 20 days just as a smartwatch.