The Marathon Navigator Tritium is quite simply, one of the best field watches you can buy, at almost any price point. Let that sink in for a minute. You could easily spend more money, much more and have nothing as rugged, dependable or field ready. Marathon now produces Navigators that are much better spec’ed, you can get Navigators featuring sapphire crystals and steel cases but I’m not writing about those Navigators. I’m writing about a watch that is near and dear to my heart; a watch that has been everywhere with me for nearly a decade. What is it about the Marathon Navigator that makes it so great? It’s not the individual components, but rather the sum of the parts.

The case is made of plastic, or more correctly high-impact fibershell. It’s lightweight, has an attractive matte finish and a straightforward utilitarian design to it. On top it’s sporting a hesalite or acrylic crystal, giving it a great vintage look. As a field watch, the acrylic will definitely scratch but a few minutes with some polywatch and those scratches will buff right out.

The bezel is a bi-directional 12 hr bezel, allowing a second time zone to easily be tracked, it is functional, easy to grip and adds a great design feature to the face of the watch.

The hands, dial and pip on the bezel feature tritium tubes. Tritium tubes are tiny sealed glass tubes with a phosphor layer and tritium gas inside that were developed in the 1950s. When compared to SuperLumiNova, tritium will not wow, it simply doesn’t glow as brightly, but it will not fade. Look again in 10 hours and the tritium is as bright as ever and that’s the beauty of it.

The dial and handset are simple, practical and handsome. It features tritium tubes on the hour indices, a simple date window at the 4:30 and a syringe handset with a red tipped second hand.

The ETA F04 movement is a high-torque, swiss made quartz movement. It won’t give you a smooth sweep of the second hand, instead it delivers one hell of an accurate workhorse.  Accurate to well under a second a day, it has an end of life display and can truly take a beating.

My Marathon Navigator Tritium has been in the field from the Middle East, to the Canadian prairies, from Winter to Summer. It has flourished from -55 to +52 degrees, it has survived knocks against armoured vehicles and smacks against trees. It has even been through a washer and dryer, with only some scuffs and a cracked crown stem to show for it. Although it only claims 3 ATMs of water resistance, and it is definitely not a dive watch, it has never had any trouble dealing with swamps, torrential rain or a trip to the pool.

The only negative things you could say about the Navigator are that it doesn’t have an Altimeter or a GPS function, if that’s something you want or need then you’ll have to look somewhere else.

But if you want a watch that will easily do its job, in all conditions, for years to come and look great doing it, then look no further than the Marathon Navigator.