Smartwatches are everywhere. People put on them to the gym, to the office, on a hike, withinside the water. Everywhere. So wouldn’t it be good if you had a smartwatch that was long-lasting enough to get you through anything?
Wearable tech has come to an extended manner on account that smartwatches first made their debut. Now there is no need to deal with your smartwatch like a fragile accessory. From heavy responsibility battery existence to supreme waterproofing to all factors protection. We’ve rounded up a number of the maximum long-lasting smartwatches on the market.
Smartwatches have become smarter and smarter since they were first put on the market in the 2010s, but most modern smartphones have a big problem-they are very fragile. Many smartwatches with glass displays and slender polished metal cases look too fashionable to survive in difficult situations. Whether it is a manual operation in a tactical environment or the use of fragile materials, more durable products are required.
Fortunately, there are a series of reliable smartwatches. Rugged smartwatches have a well-protected display, a very durable bracelet, and a shell with the required functions, and can be provided in a variety of styles and shapes. All you have to do is decide which robust options and which features the best suit your daily needs.
In 2020, smartwatches don’t need any real introduction, and you don’t have to explain to anyone what they are for. Although a large number of devices are available, the focus of this article is on the most rugged smartwatches that can withstand the harsh environment and punishment associated with sports and outdoor activities. So without further delay, let’s have a look at the best waterproof smartwatches that are available on the market right now.
Table of Contents
Our Top Picks
Following are my top picks of best-rugged smartwatches. These devices will never fall short of your standards and will always be the perfect match for your requirements. I have given a detailed review of each of them with pros and cons, which will help you to choose the right option for you that will suit your needs.
| Image | Product | Features | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Amazfit T-Rex Smartwatch |
| Buy On Amazon |
 | Casio Men’s G-Shock Move, GPS + Heart Rate Running Watch |
| Buy On Amazon |
 | SUUNTO 7 GPS Sports Smart Watch |
| Buy On Amazon |
 | Fitbit Ionic Watch |
| Buy On Amazon |
 | SAMSUNG Galaxy Watch |
| Buy On Amazon |
 | Garmin fenix 6, Premium Multisport GPS Watch |
| Buy On Amazon |
1. Amazfit T-Rex Smartwatch
Amazfit T-Rex Pro is claimed by Huami to be compatible with harsh elements. It is said to be best suited to those who are in love with adventures and for residents of harsh environments like frequent snow or rain.
If you are looking for a good-value, rugged smartwatch that can take you through any terrain, then the T-Rex may be the perfect solution. It offers a pretty good battery life and has many different tracking features that will show you how well you have performed during the day.
Most fitness trackers are built to handle some sweat, but they aren’t necessarily designed to withstand a real beating. The $139.99 Amazfit T-Rex, on the other hand, has military-grade certifications, ensuring you can use it in some pretty extreme conditions. Amazfit calls it a smartwatch, but while it offers smartphone app notifications and basic music controls, it lacks features like mobile payments and downloadable apps. Equipped with GPS and an optical heart rate sensor, it can track your distance and route, and offers continuous and manual heart rate measurements, making it more of a fitness tracker in our book, and from that angle, it’s a solid option for the price.
The design is robust, and the screen is clear to read so that you can see what is happening without having to stop. However, the watch itself is a bit on the chunky side, making it cumbersome when you want to wear it with long sleeves or have a smaller wrist. Despite this, we still think that the T-Rex is a great, value choice for anyone who needs a rugged smartwatch.
Features
- Display: This gadget comes with a 360 x 360 resolution, 1.3-inch HD AMOLED display.
- Sweat-absorbing silicone strap: It is comfortable to wear as its sweat-absorbing silicone strap doesn’t let the moisture accumulate, thus preventing itching.
- 4 GPS Functions: For a better experience of navigation, this gadget has four GPS functions combined. It also provides water resistance to 100 meters (a 10ATM rating).
- Amazing Features: The Amazfit T-Rex Pro is loaded with a 3-axis acceleration sensor, barometric altimeter, optical heart rate sensor, gyroscope sensor, and ambient light sensor. Like others, it also has a 24-hour heart rate and sleeps quality monitoring.
- 100 Sports Mood: The Amazfit T-Rex Pro has over 100 sports modes. Its ExterSense workout recognition algorithm has eight sports modes and can keep a track record of the concerned workout.
- Battery: As per the company’s own claim, its battery can last up to 18 days on a single charge due to its 390mAh battery size.
- Connectivity: As for connectivity, it is compatible with Android and iPhone. The constraint for compatibility for Android is 5.0 or above while for iOS, it should be 10.0 or above.
2. Casio Men’s G-Shock Move, GPS + Heart Rate Running Watch
Massive and distinctive, the Casio G-Shock GBD-H1000 has all the hardware potential to be a winner. Incredible solar-boosted battery life, built-in GPS, and reliable heart-rate tracking should tick all the boxes for runners. But a confounding interface and some strange software quirks seriously limit the appeal of what would otherwise be a capable fitness watch.
Casio is no stranger to chunky sports watches, but the Casio G-Shock GBD-H1000 is a unique beast. Where the Japanese brand’s Pro Trek devices awkwardly shoehorned Android Wear into rugged packaging, the GBD-H1000 has been designed from scratch to combine sturdy G-Shock style with fitness smarts.
On paper, there are several stand-out features. It’s the first G-Shock watch with a heart-rate monitor and, together with built-in GPS and a suite of sensors, it promises to measure all manner of running metrics. It also offers the unusual option of solar-assisted charging, which can harness natural and artificial light to boost battery life.
Features
- GPS and Heart Rate Monitor: The new GBH1000 G-SHOCK Move watch is equipped with a heart rate monitor and GPS.
- Workout Function: It includes many useful workout functions include an optical sensor for heart rate, along with bearing, altitude/barometric pressure, and temperature sensors, and an accelerometer for step counting.
- GPS Feature: The GPS feature allows you to access location information when needed. When used in combination with the stopwatch it makes it possible for you to keep track of run information like distance, speed, pace, and more.
- Heart Rate: Your heart rate and speed is used to calculate a VO2max, an indicator of your cardio-pulmonary capacity. This is useful when trying to increase stamina for physical activities.
- G-Shock Move Phone App: The new G-SHOCK Move phone app is now available to help you configure watch settings easily and manage workouts.
- Training Plan: It monitors your current fitness level, training progress, and even automatically creates a training plan based on targets specified by you.
- 15 Activity: This watch comes with 15 activity including surfing, swimming, biking, or snowboarding; and 24 indoor workout functions with the battery life rated at one-and-a-half-day in smartwatch mode.
3. SUUNTO 7 GPS Sports Smart Watch
The sport watch company Suunto has long been a player in the wearables industry, offering a wide variety of fitness trackers, dive watches, and compasses. Though many of its products offer basic activity tracking and wristwatch functionality, no product in Suunto’s catalog wore the official title of smartwatch until the Suunto 7 launched.
A smartwatch in the truest sense, the Suunto 7 is a feature-rich, multi-sport wearable not unlike the Fenix series from Garmin. It tells time, of course, but also offers Wear OS functionality including access to Google Play, Google Fit, Google Play, and Google Assistant. Outfitted with the power and capacity of Google’s smartwatch interface, as well as email, text, and phone notifications, the 7 wears its new smart title well.
After wrapping the watch around the wrist, what caught the attention was the huge screen. The Suunto 7 offers more than just a large screen, too: the downloadable maps are available offline, it has over 70 sport modes, music control, and all the smart functions you’d expect from a Wear OS-powered watch. All the tech is sandwiched between a glass fiber reinforced polyamide case and a Gorilla Glass screen at the top.
Features
- SUUNTO 7: This versatile, smartwatch combines SUUNTO’s sports expertise with smartwatch technology; It track exercise accurately with access to more than 70 sports modes, GPS, and wrist heart rate sensor.
- Make Life Easier: It is compatible with Android and iOS phones, the SUUNTO 7 is powered by a Wear OS by Google so you can see incoming calls and messages, check you’re to-do list, and make payments with your watch.
- Battery Life: SUUNTO 7’s battery will give you a full day of smartwatch use and still have enough juice left for your daily workout. Selecting ‘Good’ location accuracy extends battery life.
- Get Connected: You can easily connect to your favorite sports apps and services from the SUUNTO app to get more from your watch. Share with your sports communities and access specific training analysis and guidance
- Authentic Heritage: Founded in 1936, SUUNTO brings over 80 years of high-quality heritage, craftsmanship, relentless accuracy, and pioneering innovation to our watches, compasses, and dive products.
4. Fitbit Ionic Watch
The first-ever smartwatch from Fitbit is a fitness watch at its heart. If you’re looking for some wristwear to use while exercising the Fitbit Ionic may suit you, just don’t expect a similar experience to other smartwatches out there.
While it’s quite expensive for a fitness tracker, the Fitbit Ionic does pack in a lot of high-end features that will appeal to a wide range of people, from hardcore fitness fanatics to the more casual gym-goers. While the range of non-fitness apps is not wide at launch what it offers is still beneficial to people looking for a more healthy lifestyle. With a built-in GPS and music player, contactless payments, and on-screen notifications (Caller ID, texts, WhatsApp, etc) it means you can leave your phone and wallet at home when out exercising.
The Ionic is lightweight and comfortable and looks good too – even in the pool. The range of straps means you can swap out bands for different occasions – either at the gym, the office, or out on the town.
Fitbit has long been a leader in the activity tracker market and takes on the smartwatch market with its Fitbit Ionic and the newer Versa 2. With a definite health and fitness focus, the Fitbit Ionic sticks to what Fitbit does best but takes things to a new level with onboard music, built-in GPS, contactless payments, and more – hence the Smartwatch status. Indeed, Fitbit calls the Ionic “a smartwatch with a purpose”.
Features
- Price: The Fitbit Ionic is the most expensive Fitbit yet (although the price was reduced recently by £50 in the UK and $30 in the US), priced at £249 / $269 / €299. The Adidas Edition costs a little more at £279 / $299 / €329.
- Design: The Fitbit Ionic definitely looks and feels sporty, designed to be lightweight (important for sports) and comfortable, although there are additional bands available if you’d like to wear them on an evening out
- Colors: It’s available in three colors: Silver Grey body with Classic Blue Grey band; Smoke Grey body with Classic Charcoal band; and Burnt Orange body with Classic Slate Blue band.
- Nano-moulding Technology: Fitbit has used nano-molding technology to pack sensors and antennae into the body of the watch without causing it to become too bulky.
- Curved Design: Its curved design helped keep the watch flush to the wrist for comfort and practicality – plus more accurate heart monitoring.
- Gorilla Glass Screen: The gorilla glass screen is a 1.42 LCD touchscreen that we found to be bright, crisp, and brilliantly colorful, and is designed to work even in bright sunlight.
5. SAMSUNG Galaxy Watch
The Samsung and Apple rivalry has transcended the smartphone market and entered the smartwatch realm where each manufacturer tried to create the perfect smartwatch suitable for a broader audience, but, while the Apple Watch has seemingly effortlessly managed to capture the attention of the public, the other smartwatches (mainly from the Android environment) have had a harder time becoming more relevant in the wearable market. This has also been the case for the Gear series for a while, with Samsung constantly trying to reinvent itself and give its smartwatch line a proper direction.
As expected, the Galaxy Watch is equipped with all the important sensors: an Ambient Light sensor (to properly adjust the display brightness and contrast), A-GPS/Glonass, a Heart Rate sensor (positioned on the rear side of the smartwatch, where the device touches your wrist), an Accelerometer, an Altimeter / Barometer and a Gyroscope (Samsung still decided to not add a Magnetometer, so no Compass and there’s no Thermometer). At first, the heart rate monitor did not really seem that accurate while jogging, but, I noticed that after I tightened the strap on my wrist, it has greatly improved the accuracy of the readings.
The Galaxy Watch allows you to set the display to be always on and, when you’re not looking at the screen, the display slightly dims and it supports a wider range of customization. This feature had a heavy impact on the battery life of the Gears S3 Frontier but on the Galaxy Watch, it’s a lot less taxing. If the battery life is extremely important to you, you can set the display to turn on only when you raise your wrist (the process is very fast and you won’t notice that the display is off).
Features
- 50 – meter Water Resistance: The Samsung Galaxy Watch features 50-meter water resistance and is designed for fitness with a built-in heart rate monitor, GPS, and a large selection of training and tracking apps available.
- Gorilla Glass: Along with the MIL-STD Gorilla Glass DX+ color touchscreen, a rotating bezel and side buttons make navigating menus easy.
- Home / Power Button: Besides the rotating bezel, the Galaxy Watch also has a Back button located on the right side of the smartwatch and, underneath it, there’s a Home/Power button (press it to open the Apps or Watch screen/press and hold it to turn the device On or Off).
- Stainless Steel: Furthermore, the rest of the body remains made of stainless steel 316L which means that the smartwatch looks and feels like a premium device.
- NFC Capability: The NFC capability enables Samsung Pay cashless transactions. Though it’s not a Wear OS by Google smartwatch-like you might expect, the native Tizen OS has thousands of apps available.
- LTE Version: The Galaxy Watch is available in 42 or 46-millimeter sizes and is also available in an LTE version.
6. Garmin fenix 6, Premium Multisport GPS Watch
The Garmin Fenix 6 is one of, if not the best multi-sport smartwatch money can buy, bringing performance and adventure tracking as well as GPS-based mapping to just about every outdoor activity you can think of. However, there’s a downside. It comes with a big price tag that will put most people off.
The Garmin Fenix 6 sits right at the top of the extensive tree of Garmin watches and represents the best of everything the company has to offer right now.
The Fenix series is a family of fitness trackers that pretty much has it all when it comes to outdoor fitness and adventure tracks. Stepping things up a notch, Garmin released the Fenix 6 range in August 2019, offering users a slight update in design and some welcome new features over the Fenix 5 Plus.
The sixth series comes in what seems like a million different skews depending on what you’re looking for in a multi-sports or running watch.
Features
- LED Backlight: There’s an LED backlight for when you’re in the dark. It doesn’t sound ideal, but it works really well.
- Display: The Fenix 6’s display simply glows in direct sunshine, with all the timings, heart rate information, and elevations illuminating superbly.
- Comfortable To Wear: Garmin has sought to make the Fenix a nicer, more comfortable watch to wear all day and we think it’s certainly achieved that.
- TOPO Mapping: TOPO mapping is a major feature of the Fenix range, and while it’s been given some new themes on the Fenix 6 (high contrast, popularity, marine, dark, and outdoor), it’s still lacking as a proper mapping experience.
- pace: It also includes the PacePro feature. PacePro involves offering you guidance on your pace on your watch during a run in real-time, based on your elevation data and ideal pace strategy.
- Body Battery Feature: The Garmin Fenix 6 Pro now includes a Body Battery feature that monitors your energy level throughout the day. This gives you an idea of how different activities, or even just your daily grind, can affect your overall energy levels.
To Sum Up
Any smartwatch will take all of your smartphone’s capabilities and put them right on your wrist. However, when you buy a rugged smartwatch, you get additional benefits that your basic smartphone can’t match — like increased durability and better protection against wear and tear. A rugged smartwatch truly makes what’s on your wrist tougher and more able to stand up in the face of unpredictable, harsh environments.
There’s so much that a smartwatch can offer. No matter what model you choose, take the time to find the device that can meet your needs in full, and you will soon wonder how you ever coped without it! Whichever you opt for, we wish you the happiest adventures with your new rugged smartwatch.
FAQ’s