Garmin’s new quatix 8 Pro is one of those niche wearables that, on paper, sounds overkill – until you imagine being 40 miles offshore with no phone signal and suddenly it makes perfect sense. This is a marine-first smartwatch that tries to be your chartplotter remote, safety lifeline, fitness tracker and everyday “normal” watch, all rolled into a rugged titanium package.

At its core, quatix 8 Pro is built around connectivity in places where connectivity usually dies. Garmin has essentially taken its inReach satellite tech – something sailors, hikers and adventurers already know well – and baked it straight into the watch. That means you can send and receive text messages, share your live location and pull in weather forecasts via satellite, up to around 50 miles from shore, without touching your phone. When you’re back within range, LTE kicks in for regular voice calls and voice messages right from your wrist, plus LiveTrack sharing so family can follow your journey in real time. All of this, of course, needs an active inReach subscription, and coverage still depends on where you’re actually sailing, but it’s a big step beyond the usual “Bluetooth to your phone” smart notifications.​

Garmin is clearly aiming the quatix 8 Pro at people who genuinely live on or around the water, not just weekend paddleboarders. The watch can tie into a compatible boat’s systems and bring key controls straight to your wrist: think autopilot tweaks, Force trolling motor control, entertainment and lighting adjustments, and boat data glances without leaning over a helm display. The new “boat mode” is a simple idea but very on-brand: when you’re on the water, the watch foregrounds all the marine apps and data, so your core navigation and boat controls are a tap away; once you’re back on land, those sink into the background and everyday smartwatch features come back to the front. It’s essentially a context-aware UI for people who swap between the deck, dock and office multiple times a week.

Hardware-wise, quatix 8 Pro feels like the marine cousin of Garmin’s high-end multisport watches, rather than a stripped-back “boat accessory.” You get a 47mm case with a bright 1.4‑inch AMOLED display, a titanium bezel and a sapphire lens, so it’s built to take salt spray, bumps and constant sunlight better than a fashion-first smartwatch. Water resistance is rated to 10 ATM, which is par for serious marine wearables and enough for swimming, snorkelling and most watersports. Under the hood, there’s 32GB of storage for maps and music, a built-in speaker and mic, plus antennas for LTE, satellite, Bluetooth, ANT+ and Wi-Fi – all the radios you’d expect in a modern Garmin flagship. Battery life is quoted at up to 15 days in smartwatch mode, which won’t touch the more extreme expedition modes on some outdoor-focused models, but is still generous given the AMOLED panel and connectivity options.

If you strip away the marine branding for a second, the quatix 8 Pro is also just a very capable high-end smartwatch. It supports over 100 activity profiles, spanning everything from wakesurfing and water skiing to running, strength training and cycling, so it’s as comfortable tracking a gym session as a downwind run. There’s 24/7 health and wellness tracking, including heart rate, sleep, stress and general body metrics, plus Garmin’s usual navigation tools for when you head inland – topo maps, GNSS-based positioning and route guidance. You still get Garmin Pay for contactless payments, smart notifications, music playback and app compatibility with Android and iOS, so it can function as a daily driver smartwatch as long as you’re okay with the sizeable case.

Where the quatix 8 Pro really distances itself from previous quatix generations is the safety story. With inReach on the wrist, you can trigger an SOS that connects to Garmin’s 24/7 emergency coordination center, a team that has already handled over a thousand inReach incidents on the water alone. For anyone who spends serious time offshore or in remote coastal areas, that kind of integrated safety net is hard to ignore. It also means your emergency contact device is literally strapped to you, not stashed in a dry bag or glove box that you might not reach during a bad fall or sudden weather turn.

Of course, all of this comes at a premium. The quatix 8 Pro launches at around $1,299.99, with availability starting January 16 through Garmin’s own site and selected retailers. That price places it firmly in the “serious tool” category rather than a casual lifestyle wearable, especially once you factor in ongoing inReach subscription costs for satellite and LTE services. Garmin has also listed multiple case sizes depending on the market – commonly 47mm, with a larger 51mm variant seen in some regions – but the overall proposition remains the same: this is a specialist watch first, a general smartwatch second.

For existing Garmin marine users, quatix 8 Pro is an interesting upgrade path from earlier quatix models like the quatix 7. The newer watch leans into faster performance, an AMOLED screen and voice-centric features such as chartplotter voice commands, LTE calling and spoken SOS interactions, while expanding boat integration and polishing UI logic with the new boat mode. If you’re already embedded in Garmin’s marine ecosystem with compatible chartplotters, trolling motors and Fusion audio, the watch essentially becomes a wearable remote that’s also your backup line of communication. If you’re not, the value proposition depends far more on how much you care about satellite messaging and offshore safety features versus, say, a more generalist multisport watch.

Zooming out, quatix 8 Pro is another sign of where the smartwatch category is heading in 2026: away from chasing generic step counts and toward very specific, high‑stakes use cases. Garmin has been carving out that space for years with aviation, outdoor and marine lines, but integrating inReach into a purpose-built nautical watch pushes that niche to a new level. For professional mariners, liveaboard cruisers, offshore anglers and anyone who treats blue water as a second home, this could be the rare smartwatch launch that feels less like a gadget and more like a new piece of safety gear. For everyone else, it’s a glimpse of what happens when smartwatch design stops trying to please everyone and doubles down on a very specific kind of user instead.