Garmin adds Marq Commander to its luxury watch collection
Garmin has unveiled the latest addition to its Marq line of luxury smartwatches, the Marq Commander.
The Marq range had already featured the Captain, Driver, Aviator, Athlete and Expedition watches, and now adds the stealthy, matte black Commander to the collection.
While the first Marq watches were aimed at flyers, hikers and seafarers, the Commander looks to be more tactically-minded.
Read next: Best Garmin smartwatch to buy right nowIn fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a watch made with secret agent shenanigans in mind, so complete is the feature-set. You’ve got an always-on display that’s built to work with night vision goggles, as well as a kill switch function that can wipe the watch’s user memory on command.
There’s also a built-in stealth mode that can stop the watch from storing or sharing GPS position, and disables wireless connectivity. The Commander also comes preloaded with topographic mapping and has the best of Garmin’s navigation tech on board too. That’s in addition to a barometric altimeter, compass and a UTC bezel to make sure you can keep track of your location.
The Marq Commander is built from lightweight titanium, with a sapphire crystal lens to give it that extra layer of protection. It looks like it’ll have the same display as the other Marq watches (the same as the one on the Fenix), which was one of the most disappointing aspects of the range for us in testing.
Away from its unique tactical features, you can expect all of the same sports tracking and smartwatch skills as other Marqs here it seems. So you’ll get built-in music storage, Garmin Pay and notification alerts. There’s plenty of sports and activity tracking modes along with a heart rate monitor and pulse oximeter sensors also in tow.
In terms of battery life, the Commander will run for up to 12 days in smartwatch mode and it should last 28 hours in GPS mode. Putting it into UltraTrac mode will get you 48 hours of playtime. If you’re using GPS and music at the same time, you can expect to get up to 9 hours of use.
The Marq Commander is available to order now, priced at $1,950, which is more expensive than the Marq Athlete $1,500 we tested.
Will Garmin fans be willing to shell out even more for a Marq? We’re really intrigued to see how well the Commander does.
