Garmin Instinct 2 Solar, Tactical-Edition, Rugged Outdoor Watch with GPS, with Solar Charging Capabilities, Built for All Elements, Multi-GNSS Support, Tracback Routing and More, Black

Why it's worth it

A rugged GPS watch with solar charging, tactical navigation features, and sleep and heart-rate tracking. It's built to MIL-STD-810 for temperature, shock, and water, and it goes weeks or months between charges.

Battery life is the reason this beats an Apple Watch for a firefighter, full stop. Garmin rates the Instinct 2 Solar Tactical Edition at up to 145 days in smartwatch mode with solar assist, and effectively unlimited with three hours of bright sun a day. Owners report going a month between charges in normal wear. Shift workers sleep at odd hours and can't reliably dock a watch every night, so a watch that never needs charging is a different category of useful.

Sleep tracking is the feature that quietly matters most here. Rotating shifts wreck sleep, and the Instinct tracks heart rate, sleep stages, respiration, and Pulse Ox all day without asking anything of the wearer. It's not a medical device and Garmin says so. But it gives someone working 24s a real picture of how badly a rough tour hit them.

From our review of 8 gifts for firefighters

What we like

• +Battery life is the reason this beats an Apple Watch for a firefighter, full stop
• +Sleep tracking is the feature that quietly matters most here
• +The tactical-edition extras — stealth mode, night vision compatibility, dual-position GPS, waypoint projection, jumpmaster —…
• +The look is deliberately plain: monochrome display, no bright colors, nothing that reads as a fashion device

What to know

• –The screen is the trade-off
• –Garmin's solar claims also assume real outdoor exposure — three hours a day at 50,000 lux
• –And it's the most expensive item on this page, which makes it a gift for a spouse or a parent rather than a coworker