Garmin tactix Delta, Premium GPS Smartwatch with Specialized Tactical Features, Designed to Meet Military Standards

Product Information

And don't forget the Garmin Forerunner 945 if fitness is your focus. It's easily our favourite running wearable, with an insane number of useful features and an excellent battery life. I’ve been really impressed by this feature – it consistently creates interesting routes that are clearly ‘good running routes’ not simply ‘a loop of random streets that roughly meets the distance set’. It’s become one of those things that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought I wanted, but which I’d now really miss if I didn’t have it and, whenever I’m somewhere new, I trust to the Garmin to create me a running route rather than staring at Google Maps trying to work out what will be a nice route and what will accidentally take me through a swamp. Garmin PacePro In the pool, it works differently – you enter the length of the pool and then the watch counts laps by detecting you pushing off the wall, determining distance (and therefore speed and so forth) from that. It can also detect your stroke count and even what stroke style you were doing, with reasonable accuracy. If you are following a course, you’ll get a lot of useful information such as how far is left and your estimated time to complete, so if you do have the opportunity to set courses up in advance it’s well worth it. Jumpster mode allows you to measure the altitude of a sky dive and navigate to a point of interest once you're in the air. This makes it perfect for anyone with an interest in airborne action sports, or even those who fancy trying sky diving and are interested in the nitty gritty stats.

So, for example, on a day that I went for a long, steady run, I can see that I was ‘improving’ my aerobic fitness but only ‘maintaining’ my anaerobic fitness, which makes sense and is in fact really useful information. It’s brutal but helpful to be coldly informed of those runs which are basically just pointless trots, having no real training benefit, or of those runs where I pushed too hard and was overreaching. When you are in GPS mode, on the other hand, it can last up to 60 hours which means even all but the very longest ultra-marathons ought to be within reach. Both of these figures are substantially better than any other Garmin device I’ve owned before. Fitness Equipment/Gym: Available gym activity profiles include Strength, Cardio and Elliptical Training, Stair Stepping, Floor Climbing, Indoor Rowing, Pilates and Yoga, Cardio Workouts, Strength Workouts, Automatic rep counting The construction is largely polymer, but with a brushed-steel plate around the top, with small visible screws that give it a ‘rugged’ and slightly industrial look. It’s this steel top that is the most notable difference with the Fenix: while the Fenix has a beveled edge around the display that slopes down to meet the sides, the Tactix has a flat edge with a pronounced lip or ledge. The differences are essentially purely aesthetic; the Tactix has a slightly more military appearance while the Fenix is more in-keeping with lifestyle watches like the Vivoactive.

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One of the biggest selling-points of the Garmin Tactix, much like the Fenix, is its absolutely stellar battery life. Garmin claim up to 21 days in smartwatch mode and, while I haven’t fully validated that because I simply never go three weeks without doing an activity, it’s clear that the battery life when not using GPS features is long. Even running almost every day it regularly lasts a week. PacePro is another big selling point for runners. Simplistically, it tells you what pace you need to hit to get a particular time for a particular distance, but adds a degree of smart adaptation to that figure in three main areas: Build and appearance Garmin Fenix 6 Garmin Tactix Delta The Garmin Fenix 6 and Garmin Tactix, showing the small differences in styling between the two. Cycling Features: Alerts (trigger alarm when you reach goals included time, distance, heart rate or calories), Courses, Garmin Cycle map, Available cycling profiles include Biking, Indoor Biking, Mountain Biking and Triathlon, Bike lap and lap maximum power, Race an Activity, Functional Threshold Power, Compatible with Vector, Power meter compatible, Compatible with Varia Vision, Compatible with Varia Radar, Compatible with Varia Lights, Speed and Cadence sensor support

Unlike most smartwatches, the Garmin Tactix Delta is unique in that it is actually meant to cater to military use rather than daily utility. As such, this watch is exceptionally reliable, with a set of adaptable functions meant to help it survive the extreme conditions during a mission. This sort of data is likely to make me far more inclined to plan my runs, think about how I mix in sprints and intervals, look at my HR while I’m running, and then look at the training effect at the end and consider whether I achieved what I wanted. SummaryAs mentioned in the intro, the only real difference between the Garmin Fenix Pro Sapphire and the Garmin Tactix Delta, aside from the styling, are three tactical features that only the Tactix has, plus one that the Fenix also has. All of these very much fall into the category of being very useful for military users and almost completely irrelevant for everyone else, so I won’t dwell on them too much: Stealth Mode

While it's certainly not cheap, you get great value for money, it's sure to last you a long time and it's cool as hell. As is standard in most of Garmin's premium watches, you'll get everything you need to monitor your training progress no matter your sport or fitness level. All in all, the Garmin Tactix Delta is fitted with a litany of features that greatly improve the wearer’s user experience, whether they are enjoying the wilderness or engaging in strenuous sports activities. Watch Strap It’s worth bearing in mind that all three of these features rely on the watch being linked to your phone, and your phone having signal. So, if you’re enjoying the freedom of running without a phone now that the watch has integral music, that isn’t going to work for you. And if you’re off somewhere truly remote and want a device to summon help in an emergency, you probably need something from the Garmin inReach range, which communicates via satellite to ensure it can summon help from almost anywhere on earth.

The list in the USA is, unsurprisingly, much bigger and so it’ll probably be a more mainstream feature there. Garmin Tactix Delta health and fitness metrics But when it comes to those looking for a genuine tactical timepiece, the Delta can't be beaten. Whether you're in the military, law enforcement or something a little more secret, this watch needs to be part of your everyday kit. Garmin Tactix Delta review: Also consider So, I’ll go over all of the major use-cases and features and cover off pros and cons as I go, and then sum up with some thoughts on who the watch is for and who it is probably not for. What I am mainly thinking about as I test each activity is: The night vision capability means you can switch the view on the watch, allowing it to be read by night vision googles. Probably one for the military, but it could also come in handy for those very serious paintballers out there.

This journalist is sold on the Tactix Delta. There's little more you could ask for in a watch; whether it's style, durability or functionality, the Delta has it all.

Maps for New Regions

That brief overview, however, doesn’t really do justice to the fact that the Garmin Tactix is a superb hiking watch. With detailed, full-colour maps; the ability to show latitude and longitude alongside any one of a number of different grid reference systems; route following; altimeter and barometer; three-axis compass; and half a dozen different navigation options, it’s probably the best hiking wearable out there, with functionality that you’d usually need a handheld device to get. In common with the Fenix, the Garmin Tactix Delta has multisport/triathlon capability. This means not simply that you can do swim, bike and run activities on the watch (which is possible on almost any Garmin watch now) but that you can switch instantly between pre-defined sports and keep certain activity details, such as distance and elapsed time, running from one to another – which is essential when doing a multi-sport race. You’re a runner or cyclist taking your training seriously and want the pacing, training and health/performance features. As we've mentioned throughout this review, the Garmin Fenix 6X Sapphire is almost the same watch as the Delta aside from its appearance – and price, of course. It's hard to find fault with the colour display, as Garmin really is leading the market when it comes to usability.