Garmin has introduced a new wristwatch for the military-minded, adding to its Instinct series of timepieces with a rugged iteration that might be of interest to folks operating after dark. The Instinct Tactical Edition features all the hallmarks of a modern-day smartwatch, but with a stealth mode for concealing a user's location and a special mode for wearers of night vision goggles.
Garmin's line of Instinct smartwatches are rated to military standards for thermal, shock and water resistance, enabling them to operate at depths of up to 100 m (330 ft). They'll display notifications from a smartphone and track heart rate, steps taken, calories burned, come with GPS, GLONASS and Galileo location tracking built in and are pre-loaded with activities to monitor cycling, swimming, running and other forms of movement.
The Tactical Edition builds on this with extra adventure-oriented modes of operation, including Jumpmaster for different types of skydiving, while dual-positioning mode allows for two sets of coordinates to be shown on the scratch-resistant display at the same time.
Entering stealth mode disables all wireless communications and means that the device won't store and share the user's GPS position, though it will still be visible to the user on the display. Activating night vision mode, meanwhile, changes the backlighting so the display can be read while the user is wearing night vision goggles.
The display is encased in a fiber-polymer case and wraps around the wrist with a vented silicone band. Battery is rated for up to 14 days of use in smartwatch mode and 40 days in Garmin's UltraTrac battery-saving mode.
The Instinct Tactical Edition is available now for a price of US$350.
Source: Garmin