Going overlanding is one of the best experiences a person can have. It’s not easy, but it has the potential to be life-changing. You get to see how big the world really is. Overlanding takes you away from your comfort zone, and you learn a lot about yourself and what you’re capable of when you’re pushed to your limits.
There are so many apps on the market that claim to make overlanding easier or more fun. It’s hard to know which ones are actually going to make your trip better, and which ones are just going to waste space on your phone.
That’s why we created this list of the best apps for overlanding. This list was made by people who love overlanding and have done it many times before; we know what makes an app great for overlanding, and we don’t include anything else in this list.
Best Apps For Overlanding
As much as we love letting the open road lead the way, we’ll also admit that we would get nowhere without a bit of help from our beloved GPS and some of the best Overlanding apps. Yes, there is an art to getting lost, but no one enjoys staying lost. And that’s why we often need a few tools to help us out when we venture off into the wilderness.
With so much advanced technology and as dependent on it as we’ve become these days, we can hardly resist mixing ‘roughing it’ and modern amenities into one adventure. Read below as we list the best overland apps you’ll want to be using in your Land Rover Defender this year.
The Top 6 Overlanding Apps in 2021
- onX offroad Maps
This app highlights your trails into two categories: general trails and featured trails.
General Trails: These trails provide all the necessary information you need, like; what type of vehicle you need to drive on the trail, what the fee/permit requirements are, and the open and close dates.
Featured Trails: These trails provide more detailed information like; estimated travel times, route difficulty, detailed descriptions of hazards, and directions.
This data comes from an elite group of trusted guides, making the app extremely useful for an overlander looking for a detailed digital map.
- Memory Maps
Also referred to as ‘MM,’ Memory-Maps allows a user to purchase large-scale maps. Once you buy a map, you obtain a license key for the MM software program, and your future map purchases are related to this license.
The price you pay will also depend on what scale map you need and how much of the software program you will be using. This app is an excellent investment for off-roaders traveling across borders.
- Avenza Maps
This app is available as a free download on both Android and iOS devices. Avenza Maps serves as a portal to the Avenza Map store, filled with hundreds of preloaded maps available at a certain fee.
The maps were created by professional cartographers, surveyors, and groups like the U.S. Forest Service and National Geographic. Many of the maps can be even be used within recreational regions across the world, national parks, and hiking trails.
The app uses your location and device’s GPS competencies to provide maps that are relevant to where you currently are.
- Hema Explorer App
With the Hema Explorer app, you can create a route before your trip and track the path you end up driving. Its pro-membership subscription gives you advanced zoom detail as well as access to more maps created by Hema.
You can also plan your route on your computer and simply sync it to your phone when you head off. You can track your journey, geotag photos and share your trip with friends and family on your way back home. This is all done through the Hema Explorer Cloud. Please note that it’s only available in North America and Australia.
- GAIA Maps
Known as a popular go-to for most off-roaders, it allows you to search for off-road trails within your area, set waypoints, create routes and save routes for offline use. It features a compass, your elevation, and can track the distance you have travelled.
The best thing about the app is that it can be used both online and offline. It provides weather reports, hunting restrictions, and you can import all this data from one device to another. This makes accessing the information more convenient for traveling.
- Maps 3D Pro:
Topographical maps aren’t always the easiest to read or interpret. However, Maps 3D Pro brings every feature on your route to life, so you always know where you’re headed. The app shows you the terrain by rising and lowering off things like mountains, hills, and valleys, creating visuals that are easier to understand.
It will also indicate where you are on the map, allowing you to know your exact elevation and how far you’ve traveled. This app is perfect for the beginner off-roader as it will help you keep track of where you are and where you’re going.
Get Lost, But Always Know Where You’re Going
There’s no better feeling than hopping into your Defender, starting the engine, and letting the road be your guide. As fellow off-roaders, we live for the unknown and for discovering new locations. However, we also know that ‘getting lost’ is a more stress-free experience when you have a slight idea of where you are.
There are so many navigational tools out there to help guide, while you still let the beaten track lead the way. Don’t be afraid to use them —you’re still an off-roader through and through!
Contact us today, and we’ll build you a Defender that makes you feel like you always know where you’re headed.
best overlanding watch
In our guide to field watches, we pondered what exactly constitutes a field watch, and the answer we arrived at is a solid one: a field watch should be simple, durable and legible. “Dials should have big, contrasting markers and little else adorning them. Cases should protect movements from hard knocks. There should be lume aplenty,” we wrote.
All this is true of a watch that can perform in the great outdoors. But the category of Outdoors Watch is so large that its very definition is somewhat hazy. We spend time outdoors for thousands of different reasons. Almost no watch can cover every pursuit; even powerful smartwatches with “ABC” (altitude, barometer, compass) functionality, GPS and heart rate tracking might not rate for SCUBA diving or be too bulky for, say, bouldering.
So we have to ask ourselves: What do we decide fits the bill? Is a $10,000 Rolex that can keep perfect time despite being knocked on a rock but that any sane person would not risk knocking on a rock to begin with an outdoors timepiece? Is a $50 Timex made to be roughed up but that could easily break any more of an outdoors watch?
man being ejected from aircraft
A Bremont MBII watch withstands live ejection and MFOS crashworthy testing, extreme temperature endurance, vibration, altitude testing and aircraft carrier deck testing.
Bremont
In order to answer this question, we’ve provided you with a wide range of watches that fit into as many outdoor pursuit categories as we can: The mechanical beauties that befit a summit photo; chunky dive watches whose brawn make them ideal for the deep sea but also help them survive above the treeline; affordable watches powered by quartz movements, less flashy but more suited to shock survival; or the aforementioned ABC smartwatches, a potent tool for the trail runner looking to log his miles and the hunter hoping to find his way to camp. There is no perfect outdoors watch. But somewhere on this list is the perfect watch for your next adventure.
Notable Moments in Outdoor Watch History
Sir Edmund Hillary Summits Everest with a Rolex: In 1953, Edmund Hillary became the first man to summit Mount Everest, and on his wrist was a Rolex. As he described it, this watch “experienced considerable extremes of temperature, from the great heat of India to the cold temperature at over 22,000 feet, and seemed unaffected by the knocks it received on rock climbs.” His “pre-Explorer” can still be seen at the Beyer Watch and Clock Museum in Zurich.
edmund hillary and pointed peak 19,500 feet from col at head of chola khola
Sir Edmon Hilary on Mt. Everest.
Royal Geographical SocietyGetty Images
The Enicar Seapearl Summits Everest Just a Few Years Later: A much different-looking watch made it to the summit of Everest shortly after Hillary. The Enicar Seapearl, a dive watch with a gaudy color scheme and no rotating bezel, was worn by several members of a Swiss team that summited Everest in 1956. Enicar afterward added the “Sherpa Guide” moniker and started a line of tool watches. Sherpa itself became insolvent in the 1980s and was sold to a Hong Kong company, which still distributes its watches.
An Omega Speedmaster Professional Saves the Day: There’s the outdoors, and then there’s the outdoors — in 1970, when an oxygen tank exploded aboard the Apollo 13 service module, the astronauts onboard were dealing with the latter. Without navigational and targeting computers, they had to aim their ship back home using a manual burn. Jack Swigert timed the 4-minute, 24-second burn using his Omega Speedmaster’s chronograph.
Seiko Straps Its Dive Watches to a Submarine: In 2014, Seiko grabbed two of its Marinemaster Professional Dive Watches off the assembly line and strapped them to the hull of the KAIKO 7000II, a deep-sea submersible on its way to one of the deepest parts of the ocean. The quartz version didn’t stop until it reached 3,284 meters, and the mechanical watch kept on ticking until it reached 4,299 meters down. Both watches are rated to only 1,000 meters.
A Rambo Watch for the Blueblood: Sly Stallone famously loves Panerais. But it was Richard Mille he teamed up with in 2014 to create the “Rambo” watch released in 2018. Price tag: $983,000. Its features are a bit above and beyond standard survivalist tools: a tourbillon and a titanium compass-lid bezel that can be equipped with a bayonet mount.
Buying Guide
Since “outdoors” watches are a broad category, we’ve opted to divide this list into several distinct categories, all of which can be utilized for different types of outdoor activity. Some of the picks may overlap into different categories, but this only means that these watches are particularly versatile.
Mechanical Field Watches
Mechanical movements, incredible machines though they may be, are no longer the best movements suited to withstand the rigors of the wild — quartz movements, though perhaps less interesting to behold, do this job better. Fortunately (because we do love mechanical watches), some companies have toughened up their mechanical movements with anti-magnetic soft iron cages, anti-shock mounts, and hardened bezels and crystals.
Seiko Prospex Alpinist SPB121
seikousa.com
$725.00
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It’s maybe the funkiest-looking watch on this list, but don’t let that fool you: the Alpinist is a dark horse favorite in the outdoors. Seiko makes a dependable movement, and though the watch comes on a leather strap that looks ready for cocktail hour, it also has an inner rotating compass ring for navigation and a thick, scratch-resistant sapphire crystal; throw it on a NATO and you have an instant watch for adventuring.
Movement: Seiko 6R35 automatic
Case Diameter: 39.5mm
Water Resistance: 200m
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CWC Navigator
cwcwatch.com
£479.00
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CWC has been making watches for the British military for decades. This one is based off a model from the 1970s, and has all the Ministry of Defence specifications aimed at helping it survive in the field: Luminova on the hands and hour markers, a two-piece stainless steel case and water resistance to 5 atm (164 feet). (For a more affordable option, check out the quartz-run G10 version.)
Movement: ETA 2824-2 automatic
Case Diameter: 38mm
Water Resistance: 50m
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Luminox Atacama Field Automatic 1907.NF
luminox.com
$975.00
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The rest of the Atacama lineup from Luminox has chunkier numerals and quartz movements — consider this one a slightly more refined option. At 44mm, its stainless steel case is a sizable hulk, and its tritium gas tubes illuminate the dial beautifully.
Movement: SW220-1 HH5 automatic
Case Diameter: 44mm
Water Resistance: 200m
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Damasko DK32 Ocean
$1,680.00
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Damasko is a German watchmaker that flies below the radar but makes very tough, simplistically sharp timepieces. The DK32 has a dial that’s not just a pretty blue but packs value with the brand’s own movement, and its beauty in the outdoors is more than skin deep: It’s made to take a beating without showing it, thanks to Damasko’s patented, hardened stainless steel case.
Movement: Damasko A26-2 automatic
Case Diameter: 39mm
Water Resistance: 200m
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Ball Engineer II Skindiver Heritage
ballwatch.ch
$2,199.00
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Ball Watch started making durable watches for rail workers in 1891, and today it’s still known as a compelling watchmaker offering tough timepieces at prices that feel like a steal. The Engineer II Skindiver is a simple three-hander plus day and date, powered by an ETA movement surrounded by the brand’s “Amor
Conclusion
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