The name of the game here is balance, comfort, and stability. The NPS technology is designed to keep the heel of your foot in a nuetral position as your making your stride. This in turn will help prevent you from rolling or twisting your ankle, which as we all know is a major hazard on any trail. To test the shoes technology and comfort I took them out for some trail running and walking. I subjected myself to some situations that I wouldn’t normal attempt while running on the trail such as purposely running on uneven surfaces and firmly planting my feet on rocks that looked like they could do some potential bruising to my foot. Don’t worry, I came away from the experience with out a scratch and was impressed by the shock aborbsion and stability the shoe has to offer. The heel of the shoe has a lot of padding and you can feel the shoe keep your heel level when you end up with less than ideal footing. The shoe also includes a shock dispersal plate to protect the forefoot from rocks. I must admit I didn’t think the plate was going make much of a difference in my test, but not a single rock managed to cause me any pain.

The few things I noticed right away when I first tried the Firetrail is the height of padding in the heel and how tight they were on the top and ball of my wide feet. The heel made me feel as if I was leaning forward a little bit more than I would personally like. That as well as with the tightness of the shoe went away as I wore them casually for a week or so. I would recommend if you have wide feet to try these on first and see if they are going to work for you.

The Ahnu Firetrail XTR retail for $120.00

The first thing you’re going to notice is the size of the watch, but don’t be alarmed. The digital wide screen is the hallmark of the design and creates a watch that looks like it might be too large. However, I found that the size wholly contributed to this cool gadget’s functionality. I have to admit I was a little worried about carrying it on my wrist for days, but it was surprisingly light and comfortable, thanks to its stretchy nylon wrist strap. The size and weight of the watch became a non-issue within minutes of wearing it on the trail.

The WS4’s wide screen is the main feature and has a unique design that sets this watch apart from other watches similar to it. On one screen, you’re able to get information about Time (both digital and analog), Forecast, Temperature, and Date, all in one glance. The displayed text is large and easy to read even at an arms length away. You also have the choice of seeing your altitude or barometric pressure in place of the date. Forecast is an interesting feature that gives a four-to-six-hour prediction of the weather based on the last twelve hours of the barometer’s reading, and displays little user-friendly icons of a sun, cloud, or rain. The one thing that is not on the main screen of the watch is the digital compass. You must select “Compass Mode” in order to use the compass. I would have liked to see the compass on the main screen in some form, which would have been a little more convenient on the trail.

On top of getting most of your functions on the main screen, the WS4 breaks down all of your functions into modes in case you want to get even more information from the Altimeter, Barometer, Compass and Thermometer sensors (such as peak altitude, accumulated altitude, highest barometric pressure, low pressure, and even graphs). The Altimeter and Barometer modes include graphs that chart the changes in altitude/barometric pressure continuously over a 36-hour period. I thought these wouldn’t be particularly useful in terms of data, but I did find myself looking at them quite often just to see how the recorded information changed throughout the day. I found the watch to be extremely accurate and sensitive, sometimes maybe too sensitive. The thermometer seemed to be picking up the body heat from my wrist and added about ten degrees to the temperature reading. More likely than not you wouldn’t normally be wearing this watch directly on your arm in a high altitude environment and I would recommend wearing it on the outside of your jacket, shirt or attaching it to your bag. You can easily just take the watch off if you’re in need of an accurate temperature reading in a warmer environment. I also found that when comparing the Altimeter to a GPS Altimeter reading, they were very close in their readings to each other. The digital compass was also surprising easy to calibrate before my hike.

And yet, after all of these feature, there are even more modes to this watch! Chrono, Review, Timer, Alarm, and Calibration modes are also included. Granted, I’m not going to go into full detail on all of them, but I wanted to highlight a few that are unique, which I have never seen included in a watch before. The Chrono mode and Timer modes function exactly how you would expect and I’m sure some people will find them useful either for training or making sure you are making good time on your trek. The Alarm mode has a nice feature that works with the Altimeter: an alarm that goes off to notify you, should you surpass the set altitude you specifically programmed. The Timer mode can also be set up to track how much time you’ve spent above that altitude as well. The Calibration mode is your one stop place to easily calibrate your watch. You can even set it up to four altitude reference points before your trip and at each point, re-calibrate the watch with one button press if you so desire to have the most accurate data throughout the day. However, this was the only feature on the watch that I couldn’t figure out how to use correctly. I never found the one-button calibration that the instructions were referring to.

The one mode that stood out to me apart from the rest that I think has the most potential to be something really special in the future versions of the WS4 is the Review Mode. This mode works with the Chronograph to track and store data. It’s very simple to use and all you have to do is go to the Chrono mode and press Start at the beginning of your day. The Review function of the watch from that point on will collect data automatically until you decide to stop the Chrono from running. When you go into the Review Mode, you’re going to get fourteen different categories of information collected from the Altimeter, Barometer, and Temperature sensors. Highs, lows, graphs, etc. I really liked being able to see that information at the end of the day and enjoyed telling everyone in my hiking group all of the data I’d collected from our grueling progress. It could be the tech geek in me, but even though this mode isn’t really needed in the watch for functionality, I am glad they added this bonus feature. To improve it, I would have loved to be able to download all of this information onto some software program and get even more details from the graphs. I think it would be a great way to get more use out of the graphs not just to review my hiking progress, but for more statistics to keep at the end of a trip.

There are a lot of functions here and it does sound like a complicated watch. However, I found the WS4 to be simple to use and easy to understand. I think having all of these features is something that truly makes the watch shine and contributes to how well it’s designed. All I had to do is calibrate the watch once in the morning and forget about adjusting it the rest of the day. There was no need to constantly skip through modes to get information because most of it was there on the main screen for me to view. I really got the sense that Timex thought about the design, functionality and what would work best for someone “going out of bounds”, as they put it. Because honestly, when you’re busy climbing a glacier, do you really want to be fussing with your watch?