Tough digital watches seem to be preferred for outdoor every day use, they are rugged and feature packed domething you do not  get in a standard analogue watch . Law enforcement and emergency services personnel tend to choose them

Digital watches choose functionality and ruggedness over form and the makers manage to cram a host of features into them making them particularly useful outdoors.

Useful feautures to look for when choosing a rugged outdoor watch are;

• Shock proof and water resistant, it must be able to take abuseso it should have materials like urethane in the strap and bezel,look for a watch that is water resistant to about 200m and may even have suspended internals.
• Good battery life, this is critical as the drawback of a good digital watch is poor battery life, look for about seven years of battery life or alternatively a solar powered watch.
• Legibility,pick a decent display with backlighting,digital watches do tend to be more legible that their analogue counterparts though.
• Special features, look out for special features that may come in handy,these include.weather,temperature,altitude ,some watches include GPS alerts and world time as well.
• Good watches to look for are the G Shocks from Casio,Garmins watches as well as the timex expedition series.

About the Author

Glyn Demmer

My first 4x4 was a Nissan Hardbody thereafter I started travelling all over the country. In 1992 we held a big 4x4 day with hundreds of Nissan families, and then the 4x4 bug really bit. A friend Monty Brett and I started running 4x4 courses at the Hennops Off-road Trail just outside of Johannesburg. At first we offered day-and-a-half courses that started on Friday afternoon and finished on Saturday afternoon. Hannes Grobler the Rally Ace regularly assisted, and we reached a nice balance between our two styles and our skills.