Features

In the same way that mountain people want a watch that can go long periods of time without a recharge, they also want a watch that can deal with wet and miserable weather. There’s no worries with the Vertix Icebreaker, on that front, as it has an impressive 150-meter waterproof rating.

In the materials section above, we’ve already touched upon the durability of this watch. What might surprise you about this though, especially when you consider how tough it is, is just how lightweight it is. Weighing just 76g, this watch certainly doesn’t feel as cumbersome as some of the GPS options out there.

One of the things we like most about this is the 24/7 blood oxygen monitoring with altitude acclimatisation assistance. That’s all worked out via a wrist-based pulse oximeter and heart rate monitor. It’s an excellent feature, unique to this watch, that mountaineers will really benefit from.

There’s a sense that this watch knows its place in the world, and fundamentally ‘gets’ where the user is going to use it. This idea is underlined, and then underlined multiple times thereafter, by the built-in barometer, altimeter, compass and GPS / GLONASS satellite connection feature. It’s easy to go wrong in our planet’s high places so the fact that COROS have gone to great lengths to make sure you never go too far astray should, again, comfort the mountaineers in our audience.

To follow a route you’ll need to download it as a GPX file onto your smartphone off another app like Strava or komoot. You then need to open it with the Coros app on your phone and you can then view it on the watch once you’ve paired your two devices together. On the watch, that route will be presented as a basic breadcrumb trail which you can zoom in and out using the buttons or swing side to side using the touchscreen. Your tracks are presented in white and the route you’re following is in red.

“This brings a lot to the party for committed outdoor enthusiasts.”

You can view your completed routes and workouts in the Coros app afterwards. There’s also the potential to pair the Coros app to another route sharing platform, such as Strava so you can upload your results there.

There are 18 different activity modes across this, ranging from hiking, cycling, running and swimming to strength training and a bunch of other fitness focussed stuff. All of these have pre-set workouts but you can also create your own ones and follow ones that other people have created as well.

Conclusion

With its RRP of £599.99, the Coros Vertix Icebreaker isn’t the cheapest watch in the world. But then, as we’ve already explored in detail above, this brings a lot to the party for committed outdoor enthusiasts, especially in regards to its battery life. If you’re serious about the mountains, and getting into serious situations, you need something serious on your wrist, this, we’d say, would be one of the better options out there for you.