HighGear Summit Shadow

Watches have traditionally been timepieces but with the ongoing miniaturisation of technology, there are now whole new categories of wrist-top instruments out there that cram so much more into the wristwatch form factor. If the great outdoors is your general destination, you’ll no doubt be aware of watches that keep track of the temperature, act as a digital compass, track your altitude, track barometric pressure and indeed, even offer a weather forecast – all handy things if you spend time at high altitudes where the weather can change rapidly – now there’s a watch that does it all. It’s the HighGear Altimeter-Barometer-Compass-Thermometer watch.

Watches have traditionally been timepieces but with the ongoing miniaturisation of technology, there are now whole new categories of wrist-top instruments out there that cram so much more into the wristwatch form factor. If the great outdoors is your general destination, you’ll no doubt be aware of watches that keep track of the temperature, act as a digital compass, track your altitude, track barometric pressure and indeed, even offer a weather forecast – all handy things if you spend time at high altitudes where the weather can change rapidly – now there’s a watch that does it all. It’s the HighGear Altimeter-Barometer-Compass-Thermometer watch.

Quite obviously, it enables the wearer to track their current altitude but it can also store the data, enabling your ascent or descent to be charted in at regular intervals.

It also tracks barometric pressure and temperature which in turn enables it to chart weather trends, and hence deliver forecasts on-the-fly for the next six through 24 hours. It’s not quite a weather bureau on your wristwatch because it doesn’t have access to all the satellite imagery or indeed any data pertaining to any other nearby locations but it will display a weather icon illustrating what barometric pressure indicates is happening on the spot such as rainy (barometric pressure is very low of falling so it is raining or likely to rain), cloudy (barometric pressure is low so rain is possible but not likely) etcetera and this can be handy if you regularly put yourself in rugged terrain.

Other features of this technological marvel include a digital compass, dual time zones and dual alarms and a sophisticated stopwatch with tracking of each run, the date of the run, lap splits, average lap time and … but it isn’t the lap functionality you’ll be seeking if you want this watch … it’s the all-altitude, compass and barometer functions.

And the price... US$149.89