Yes, they’re very nice and tough as nails. I’ve got several friends and acquaintances that wear them whilst kicking doors, jumping out of helicopters and the like.
I finally pulled the trigger on one from this batch to celebrate some life goals getting knocked down - some expense I can live with.
I’ve never heard of Sangin watches but they look sweeeeet! 
I love analogue, especially those easy to read all black models that look so tacticool. 
I’m still lovin’ my coyote tan Garmin Instinct though … I’ve had it for a few months but I find something new about it every day! Like, I went running for the first time in years the other day and as soon as you hit that activity start button, it tracks EVERYTHING! It b*tches at me when I reach my heart rate threshold and check out how accurate the GPSing is! …
I took a little detour onto a high school track … so accurate! I didn’t even know it was tracking my location!
Yeah, I swore that I would never get a smart watch a couple of years ago after reading this:
Even if you don’t make the data ‘public’ who knows who has access to it (most EULA’s state that they share data with third parties)?
Heck, even my mobile/cell phone (and anything with a RFID chip) is in a shielded ‘bag’ (mini faraday cage) when not in use. I’m not a prepper/tinfoil hat wearing type, but that doesn’t mean I have to make it easy for the bastards… And if you knew where I have worked, you wouldn’t either!
I threw some hotel points at an Apple Watch Ultra just before Christmas. I have to say I really like it, although I doubt I would have dropped $800 of ‘real’ money on it. I have had an Apple Watch generation 1 and generation 5 and really liked them but there was one major flaw, that being the battery life. You can have the best smart-watch on the planet, but if you forget to charge it, it’s nothing but a dead weight on your wrist. With the Apple Watch Ultra I can get 3 days out of a charge which is at least double what I was getting from my generation 5. It’s a bit bigger and clunkier but I’m getting used to it. Besides, being a pilot gives me a free pass on a large watch and sunglasses right? 
And that is why I have always been a fan of a HB pencil
Once I had to take a group of soldiers through nav revision, specifically determining your location by using a physical map and compass & calculating back-bearings from three known features, etc.
I had a young, gobby, PTE pull a GPS out of his pack and say “why do we need to know this old school shite for sarge, I’ve got a GPS?”
“Let me have a look at that digger” and when he handed it over, I removed the batteries, handed it back, and said “what are you going to do now smartarse?”
There is a lot to be said for knowing how to do things old school, even if it is just to gain some understanding of how the world around us works. Celestial navigation is still a subject that fascinates me. Just the fact that they figured out how to do it hundreds of years ago is amazing to me. I still like my electronic gizmos though .
Same same… but there is still no substitute for a stubby pencil when the batteries go flat 
Besides, I often find that doing things the easy way isn’t as satisfying… Which is what I tell myself to rationalise that I only discovered there was an easy way after the fact 
Oooh… Been circling one of those at the apple store.
I had a gen 1 that died from a fall at the airport security. That showed me how much I missed it, so I got a gen 4, which I’m still using.
That is impressive! Did you shut down any features? How about always on screen?
At least for Garmin, you can use the watches without uploading data into the cloud and hardly lose any functionality.
I wear an Apple Watch during the day for the work week, but swap off to analog as part of “ending the day”. The connectivity offered by the Apple Watch is excellent (I manage a team of 20 remote employees), but when I’m done for the day, I want to be dis-connected.
That, and I’m a sucker for analog watches.
I really like the one-stretchy-loop design of wristbands Apple made popular. It’s very comfortable and less of a hassle. Not sure if it would work with heavier, analog watches. Will try it at some point.
It does have the always on screen capability but I don’t have that enabled. I also have the brightness turned down (it’s more than bright enough at the lowest setting).
lol, did I mentioned already my ‘10 year battery’ watch !?
Not that I recall…?
But I remember them old LCD watches would run forever on a battery
here it is
I was given up a Suunto Core “outdoor watch” a couple of years ago now, and it has been solid. It’s got the usual clock and timer features, along with a barometer, thermometer and a compass with a heading reference you can set that will give you a “Turn Left/Right” caption above the heading. The night lighting is a faint electroluminescent backlight, which looks very cool even if it isn’t the most useful.
The thing I like most about it is all these features work in the absences of phone signal, GPS satellites and any online service trying to harvest data from me…
I’m in the process of putting my Samsung Galaxy “Smartwatch” up for sale now. I HATE “traditional” smartwatches that look like cellphones.
Since I retired I haven’t worn a watch, heck even a regular clock is superfluous… We have one of these and it is much more useful
But, The past couple of times I have been fighting forest fires has been with someone who also wasn’t wearing a watch and for some bizarre reason the GPS units in the vehicles don’t display the time???
I had a bit of time to kill while I was in town yesterday so was window shopping in a local Mall and found myself at ‘Cash Converters’ - They are basically a franchise Pawn Shop.
Tucked away in a corner was a Casio G-Shock that looked suitably up to the task of my next ‘fireground watch’. I have had a couple of G-Shocks in the past and they have never let me down, even in some pretty hectic situations.
So after the briefest of haggles and being reassured that all that was needed was a new battery, there was a guy at the other end of the Mall that could replace it for about $15.00 and if it was broken I could get my money back; I handed over $90.00 (That’s about USD 60 or 45 Pound Sterling) and proceeded to the ‘battery guy’.
It wasn’t until after I got home and downloaded the user manual that I realised I had not only bought a G-Shock Mudmaster with a built in compass (that works as well as the cheaper of my two Silva compasses) and thermometer/temp guage, but at slightly more than 100 dollaridoos I got a bargain as well 
Mudmaster … that must be the official Mudspike watch now!
Seconded
