Using the Apple Watch for Hiking By HikingGuy.com

Is, the Apple Watch good for hiking. It's a question. I get asked a lot and of course the answer is maybe I think for a lot of people. It will be fine, but for other people it will not uh cut the mustard, as my old gym teacher used to say it won't be up to snuff. So in this video. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to talk about what some limitations are and who this is good for I'll talk about what it's like to hike with it and kind of, hopefully give you an idea of whether you should use this for hiking or not, or whether you should buy something like a dedicated smartwatch like a phoenix or Garmin instinct for hiking, instead of using the Apple Watch now before I get into this.

Let me just preface this all with. If you are not an iPhone user, if you're not in the apple universe, don't get an Apple Watch for hiking. It's not going to be the thing for hiking. So if you have android- or you know- you don't have an Apple Watch yet, but you want to get something hard for hardcore for hiking Apple Watch is probably not going to be the move, but it might be for some folks it might be okay, so let's dive into it and talk about what the limitations are and who this is good for so the first thing to be aware of is the battery life. Now, if you just have the watch on the battery life last pretty much all day, and you should be okay, but when you're recording a hike or an activity which means tracking your GPS and recording your heart rate, the battery life on the Apple Watch, six is about seven hours.

So if you plan on hiking more than seven hours, the Apple Watch is not going to be a great fit. Now, there's a hack to get a little more time out of that I'll talk about that in a different video, and I'll link to that under this video um, but for people who hike over seven hours in a day, it's not gonna, be the move. I would say the majority of folks probably hike under seven hours, which is probably around 14 miles, 15 miles from most folks, so it should be okay. In that sense, the other thing that's a bit of a pain is charging it. It comes with, what's called like a magnetic charger, so it's not a plug-in charger.

Now, if you're on the trail, you can charge it while still recording an activity, and it will charge back up, but you just can't wear it. You can't track your heart rate, while it's charging, which could be a problem if you want to go longer. I've also noticed that when I'm done with it- and I get my car and I plug my USB into the car- and then I put this on the magnetic charger and I drive around- it- has a tendency to come off of the charger because it's not plugged in because it's just magnetic not a dealbreaker easy problem to solve, but just something to be aware of, but if you're hiking more than seven hours, you're, probably going to find the battery life limiting the other thing to consider is the touchscreen. Now it needs to be dry, and you can't really have big gloves on to use the touchscreen and for most hikers that's going to be okay, most hikers go out to hike when it's nice out right, you're, not going out in extreme conditions and heavy rain, and when that's the case, the touchscreen is fine, but if it rains out, the screen will go crazy unless you put it into what's called pool mode where essentially lock the screen. There are buttons on the unit, but they're, not um they're.

Not all you need essentially to navigate a hike or to go through all the screens you're going to need to touch the touchscreen in order to use you know, maybe 80 or 90 of the functionality on the app that you're using at least uh. So if you do go out in adverse conditions, I'd recommend getting a purpose-built outdoors watch like a Garmin, phoenix or a garment instinct. They have buttons on the side. Everything is done through the buttons and the more you use it. The more you get use the buttons it sort of becomes a no-brainer.

You can just hit the buttons without thinking about it, start stop whatever it might be, whereas on the Apple Watch, you almost always have to look at the screen to see what you're doing before you touch it, because there are a lot of variations, a lot of different types of screens or types of buttons. You do kind of get used to it after a while, but I find myself always looking at the screen before I tap as opposed to um just feeling for a button and pressing it or not pressing it. So something to consider, so the Apple Watch is okay to wear outside it's waterproof, you can get it wet. You can get it dirty and clean it off. It's not a huge deal, but it is not a rugged outdoor instrument, like a say, Garmin phoenix with sapphire glasses.

So if you're really hard on equipment- and you know- you might step on it, you might scratch it on some granite if you're scrambling. This is probably not going to last long now. That being said, I've used this every day for three months out on the trails I haven't stepped on it or sat on it or thrown it against granite, but it's held up remarkably well, no scratches no damage, but if you are, you know going to be in extreme conditions, or you know: you're tough, on gear, you're, probably going to want to go with the smartwatch. So the first thing that's great about this is the screen. It is a bright colorful, OLED screen and the touch screen is really easy to use it's bright, and it's easy to see and almost any condition, and you can compare that with the screen on a device like the Garmin Felix, which is transfection and performs better when it has sunlight, hitting the watch to kind of bring out the contrast and the color.

So the screen is great. The GPS is also great on here, and it uses a few different positioning systems. The Apple Watch 6 does use GPS glass, Galileo and less, and I found that, for the most part, the GPS accuracy is uh as good as most of the GPS handhelds that I test occasionally there's a drop out and something's kind of wonky. There are some third-party apps. You can get to look at the GPS here, but what you don't have- which I find kind of weird, is that when you start a workout with the Apple Watch, uh app, it doesn't give you a GPS status.

So it doesn't, you don't know if it's actually hooked on to GPS signal or not. It just gets you going and um yeah, but it seems to work when I actually look at the tracks afterwards. They all seem to work well and have me in the right place. The other thing that's great about this is the heart rate monitor and the heart rate monitor. Let me stop.

This heart rates. Monitor is on the back. It's considered to be one of the most advanced wrist-based heart rate, monitors that you can get, and it really does a good job of getting an accurate heart rate. Almost the same as a chest-based heart rate monitor that I use, so that is a good thing, especially if you're hiking, and you are doing it as a workout. You want to know how many calories you burned what your heart rate is.

It will tell you on the screen now. The watch also has a barometric altimeter and magnetic compass right there. You can see that it turns around without me having to move now. If you have a metallic band, it can mess up the compass just as a heads-up. I don't really use this that much.

I'm not doing a lot of kind of point-to-point overland hiking on here, but it's on there. If you need it and then there's also altitude, which is there elevation there, you can see it now, elevation uh, it's about the same as other GPS units that have uh barometric capabilities. Um, it's usually not spot on, like don't go to a mountain peak that you know is fifteen thousand feet and think it's going to be fifteen thousand feet because it's not um it'll be close, and you can view your current elevation, and you can view your accumulated elevation gain in the workout app, which is also handy when you have this. But there's no way to calibrate this and there's also no way to go into the GPS settings and say turn off glass or turn off Galileo to save energy. It's all done sort of behind the scenes by apple, unlike a unit like a Garmin.

So let's talk about the hiking apps for the Apple Watch, and it's a mixed bag. The good thing is that you have a lot of third-party developers creating all of these different apps for hiking for the watch, and it's kind of like an arms race right. They always theoretically at least get better and more features, come out and probably the things that I'm telling you now will be different in you know a couple of weeks: whatever could be a day, so things are always theoretically evolving. Getting better the app that I found to be best was one called work outdoors, yeah, workout tours, and it's kind of the closest you've come, or I've seen to a Garmin, handheld GPS. There's lots of different data fields.

You can send it all to your watch works. Well, it's actively maintained, and you can send open street maps onto your watch, which is really helpful because they have perfect trail coverage, and it's easy. You can zoom in really deep and see where you are on the maps and, most importantly for me is: you can also import GPX files, which are basically hike tracks in a digital format, and you can send them to the watch. So you could see. Are you on the line or are you not on the line? Are you in the hike or are you not on the hike? And that, for me, was a dealbreaker, it's a great feature to have, and it's something that you get like on a Garmin Felix watch where you can see your line on the map and know if you're in the right place.

Another thing to note all these apps like work outdoors and Gaia: GPS will integrate with Apple Health. So if you are tracking your hike as a workout, when you finish it, it will send it into Apple Health, and you can look at all the stats and have it count towards your activity, goals or whatever that might be on your Apple Watch. So that's it. You know a bit of a mixed bag. You know, one thing to remember is the Apple Watch is not built as a hiking watch or a purpose-built outdoors watch.

So it's a good guideline right. If you're going to use the Apple Watch in conjunction with your iPhone and for other functions, then it's acceptable for hiking, if you're not doing anything too extreme. But if you want a purpose built outdoors watch, something you can thrash, you can use for. You know multiple days, then you're, probably better off getting an outdoors watch and there are affordable options. You can get something like a garment, instinct, um and there are some others out there or if you want to go higher, you can get a Garmin Felix.

Furthermore, you know they even have solar power, sapphire glass, they're, really built for the outdoors maximizing battery life and uh withstanding the elements while you're out there hiking. So hopefully this was helpful in making a decision. If you do want to explore some of those other options. I have those on my website. Just go to hikingguy.

com go to the gear page. I have a whole list of GPS units and GPS watches that you can check out and read about there. If you found the video helpful, if you could do me a favor and click little thumbs up, I'd appreciate it and uh. If you want more outdoors reviews, hiking guides and all that fun stuff please subscribe, the goal of this channel is to make everyone excited to get outside and sort of demystify the outdoors and outdoor gear. So if that's something you're interested in, please do subscribe, and I will see you out there.

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Source : HikingGuy.com