Garmin GPS smart watches, with more than $ 1,500, compete with the world of luxury watches

Garmin brings its fitness-oriented smart watches in a more upscale direction with its new Marq line. It is a series of luxury watches that will cost between 1,500 and 2,500 US dollars. They are aimed at the high-end watch market, which could normally turn to a high-end mechanical watch such as a Rolex, Breitling or Omega.

To this end, Garmin launches five smart watches in the Marq line, each supposed to fulfill a different role than traditional watches: driving, flying, boating and hiking. Garmin also follows the footsteps of companies like Tag Heuer and Louis Vuitton by offering the quality of workmanship, materials and price of a high-end mechanical watch fused with the internal components and flexibility of a smart watch. So while each Marq watch has unique features, they all share a titanium case, a sapphire crystal, and Garmin's suite of smart watch features, such as notifications, activity tracking, heart rate sensors, and more. and integrated music storage.

Image: Garmin

The five watches are:

• The Marq Driver ($ 2500) is for the race. It contains preloaded data for over 250 tracks and offers unique features for tracking lap times, maximum speed and other race-related features.
• The Marq Aviator ($ 1,950) includes pilot-specific features, including emergency navigation guides to the nearest airport, a map, a course hand, weather reports, and a flight record.
• Captain Marq ($ 1,850) is designed for sailing. It has a special regatta timer, tilt assist functions, autopilot and boat data, as well as a "man overboard" function to mark a person overboard and guide the wearer to his location.
• The Marq expedition ($ 1,750) is designed for hiking. Think of it as a luxury version of Garmin's existing GPS watches. It has topographic maps, a compass and a "shipping application" mode that extends the battery life by several weeks for longer trips (at the expense of other features).
• Marq Athlete ($ 1,500) is Marq's cheapest watch. It's designed for athletes. It puts more emphasis on fitness features, offering performance indicators, running apps and maps to find the best route for cycling or running.

The watches look nice. Each has a design for a particular area (the aviator looks like a pilot watch, for example). But by limiting the unique functions and applications to specific models, one has the impression that Garmin somehow misses the point of making these watches smart watches. The major disadvantage of a mechanical watch is that a pilot watch will never be useful for diving, for example because it lacks physical complications and dials to track this type of data.

A smartwatch does not have these. In theory, there is no reason why all these watches can not run all these applications, creating a monitoring tool that works for each type of function instead of dividing them into five models. At this moment, they feel strangely wedged in the middle. Garmin watches do not have the longevity and style of a mechanical model, but they are unnecessarily blocked by many limitations. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see another smartwatch maker try his luck in the world of luxury watches.