The new Suunto Kailash is the first of a new series of wearables from the Finnish company called the World Series. Suunto has a history of producing quality wearables – mostly watches for outdoor sports, such as running, diving and climbing.

Suunto are getting in sync with the new age of connected lifestyle wearables without neglecting their outdoor adventurer roots. The Kailash, named after an unconquerable Tibetan mountain, will sync to your iPhone via Bluetooth and deliver text messages and incoming call notifications to your wrist. Integrating smartphone notifications into outdoor watches is something that Suunto’s biggest rivals Garmin are also doing with their latest products, bringing the likes of the Fenix 3 and Kailash into the smartwatch category.

The Suunto Kailash is essentially a traveller/adventurer smartwatch. Its Adventure Timeline makes it easy for you to keep track of your movements with stats for: km/miles travelled, number of cities visited, number of countries visited, days spent travelling, furthest distance from home and number of steps taken. Also, The clock will automatically update when you travel between time zones.

To keep track of outdoor adventures the Suunto Kailash uses a built-in GPS with a 10 minute recording rate (GLONASS support on the way with a future update), Suunto’s FusedAlti™ technology which combines barometric altitude with GPS and a digital compass. Navigation is made quick and easy; by pushing the 7R button, the Kailash shows the distance and direction to your home or selected starting point.

Basically, when you’re wearing the Kailash it would be pretty hard to get lost! It would also be pretty hard to get wet as the watch offers a Weather Trend Indicator and Storm Alarm. You probably won’t get caught out by the dark either as the watch tells the exact sunrise and sunset times wherever you are. Other features include a stopwatch, countdown timer and alarm clock in the form of vibration alerts.

The Suunto Kailash is made from some of the most robust materials known; with a glass fiber composite case, Space-grade Titanium bezel, and Sapphire Crystal 128 x 128 Matrix display with adjustable brightness with a flashlight backlight option.

The Watch comes with a choice of three colors: Copper, Slate or Carbon… It’s hard not to love the Copper…. It is water-resistant up to 100 meters. It has a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that lasts up to 10 days with GPS active and 30 days with GPS switched off – at least that’s what it says on Suunto’s website but I reckon 10 days of juice with GPS switched on is optimistic for any wearable.

The Suunto 7R App is compatible with iOS.