Somewhere out there is a person willing to pay $2,500 for a smartwatch. Surprisingly, that individual has several high-end options from which to choose. And while the Garmin name doesn’t exactly scream luxury, the company does know how to build a solid smartwatch — and these look pretty decent, to boot.
Maybe not $2,500 decent, but decent nonetheless.
The Marq GPS line puts the company in relatively rare air, with devices starting at $1,500. Asking people to spend luxury watch prices on a smartwatch is a pretty heavy lift, of course. At well over three times the cost of an Apple Watch, you’re going to want the thing to last for…well, a long time.
To make things even nichier, each watch is targeted at a very specific audience, including athletes, hikers, boating enthusiasts, pilots and race car drivers (that last one is the $2,500, mind). They all offer a specific design and feature set tailored to those categories, including faces that show off wind speed and a built-in altimeter.
Here’s Garmin on why the things are so damn expensive:
Each watch is built with titanium, which is lightweight, yet incredibly strong for high performance in all activities, and are constructed with sapphire crystal formed under extreme heat and pressure to create an extremely durable lens that’s over twice as hard as glass.
Of course, Garmin’s always been a bit of an underdog in the smartwatch wars, courtesy of devices targeted specifically at outdoors folks and athletes, so a targeted audience has always been the company’s M.O. Though even for them, $1,500 and up is almost certainly pushing it. The watches will be available later in Q2.