Well, Garmin finally made a decent GPS watch.
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=107272By decent I mean one that you can wear as a watch full-time, and one that has the navigational features I want (waypoints, track log, routes, etc.). Not only that, but the battery has enough charge to last a full day on GPS (16 hours for 1 sec intervals) and it has a barometer, altimeter, and compass as well. Plus it does temperature, and you can wirelessly connect it to Garmin's $29 Tempe temperature sensor (
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=107335) so you don't just get the temperature of your arm! As if that wasn't enough, it can wirelessly send and receive waypoint, route, and track data with other Garmins, so if your buddy has a route you want to follow you don't have to try to rebuild the route in the watch (a painful process on a watch with only 5 buttons). And the high-sensitivity chipset is a must nowadays for any GPS unit.
Price at GPS Central is $399, or $50 more with the heart rate monitor and interchangeable orange band. It's a lot of money, but this one could be worth it. Previous GPS watches (I've owned several) suffered from low battery life, difficult data entry, poor signal reception, and difficult user interface. This one looks like it has solved all of these issues. It even comes with Garmin's Base Map (yes, it has mapping!). The one thing though that GPS watches won't get around is the screen size, and this one is still pretty small. Looks like it's about as good as it can be though.
