I’m pretty tired of all the supposed ’spy’ gear on the market because to be perfectly honest, if it wasn’t developed by the CIA or MI6, it ends up being pretty crappy. But I’m cautiously optimistic that this video-capable covert watch might actually not suck that much. The design is surprisingly something that most people would wear, so it doesn’t look like there’s a video camera stashed inside, and instead of capturing sub-webcam quality 640×480 clips, it’s actually able to record pseudo-HD quality 1280×960 VGA videos at 30 fps.

The watch is only water and dust resistant so you won’t be capturing any spectacular underwater footage, but a little rain shouldn’t put it out of commission either. A subtle light indicator lets you know when the recording function has been activated, but it only remains on briefly so others don’t realize why you’re awkwardly pointing your watch face at them, and all videos are stamped with the date and time for later analysis. Somewhere on the watch you’ll find a miniUSB connection for charging the watch and transferring videos to your PC, and the ~$450 price tag from Spycatcher makes me think this might actually be more than just an expensive novelty.

[ Watch with HD Camera CCTV/Stills + sound ]

It’s sad when a gadget won’t embrace it’s techy side, like the Hercules Golf-Master watch from Reconvilier which uses an overly-complicated ‘Rotar’ mechanism to flip the classic analog watch face over, revealing a digital range finder display underneath. In addition to a digital time display, so you don’t have to keep flipping the watch face over, the LCD also shows you the exact distance to the green or the flag. A base station called the ‘Caddie’ attached to your golf bag is used to obtain data about the course you’re playing before you start your round, as well as your location via GPS, and during play the distance information is automatically sent to the watch as you move about.

[ Reconvilier Hercules Golf-Master ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

If an overly complicated pilot’s watch isn’t your thing, you might be interested in the Palindrome Too designed by Philippe Starck for Fossil, which is pretty much the exact opposite. Sure, including a single analog watch face would have made the design even simpler, but then you wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on the clock in two different time zones now would you? It’s also got a stainless steel case and a black polyurethane strap, and can be found at Watchismo for $145.

[ Fossil Palindrom Too By Starck ] VIA [ Acquire ]

So When Suunto sent me the t6c I was pretty excited. The watches I tried so far have had a fatal flaw – maybe the footpad was too big or the connection was poor or the heart rate monitoring was flakey at best. During my runs I’d constantly go back to the Garmin Forerunner 405, one of my favorite watches, simply because it had GPS built-in along with HR monitoring, making it considerably more useful than anything else I’ve used.

So how does this watch compare? Well, the Suunto is much lighter and with an optional foot pod you can assess distances run with a high degree of accuracy.

The Suunto watch also as a special feature called Training Effect. The watch gives you a 1-4 rating of your current effectiveness. There’s a little book included that tells you all the tips and tricks. I won’t go into those here.

It also has an altitude monitor to watch your ascents and descents in real time and customizable screens that allow you to add different settings to the watch face.

The heart rate monitor includes min and max heart rate alerts along with training tools like a countdown timer, stopwatch, split times, and, with the foot pod, vertical speed. It is water resistant to 330 feet.

Now – the big differences. Well, first there’s the price. The watch without foot pod costs $429 although I’ve seen it for about $325. The 405 is $299.99 and the 405CZ, the next-gen watch, is $369.99. All of these prices will fall by an order of magnitude in real settings, but off the bat I’m leaning towards the Forerunner. The Triathlon pack with foot pod, bike pod, and cadence pod, costs $629.95 at Amazon.

However, there is build quality. I’ve seen the Suunto factory in Finland and I came away impressed: for a mass-market, commodity device there is a lot of care put into the manufacture of these pieces. The t6c is much lighter and more compact than the 405 and when you’re running ever gram counts. The user interface is also slightly more streamlined than Garmin’s cascade of menus.

Sadly there is no OS X support for Suunto products, another ding against this watch.

Bottom Line
Of all the heart rate monitoring watches I’ve tried in the past few months, this model is the most powerful and easiest to use. It still hasn’t replaced the 405 on my wrist but it comes in at a close second.