Nearly three years after COROS came out with the last iteration of its flagship outdoors watch, the company released a follow-up, the Vertix 2S. This watch is marketed toward climbers, ultrarunners, mountaineers and other adventure-seekers in rugged and extreme conditions.

Yet it’ll be interesting to see whether the Vertix 2S — while not a true step-change to the flagship watch line (the 2021 model was the Vertix 2) — is enough to push the brand forward with current and prospective users.

This new watch boasts 118 hours under continuous single-band GPS use and 48 days under daily wear on a single charge — which is less than previous models have delivered. With dual-band GNSS (also commonly referred to as multiband GPS), the watch gets 43 hours, according to the official specs. And that’s going to disappoint many folks.

Battery life was once the most talked-about feature when it came to COROS — you couldn’t go to a forum or Facebook page during the pandemic without someone marveling about its “insane” battery life. Yet in the past couple of years, COROS has been overtaken by devices from both Garmin and Suunto, raising questions as to where the brand fits into the evolving market and what it had left to make it stand out.

And it’s likely those questions will still linger.

The device (available for $699 USD) has a 50 mm case similar to its Vertix 2 predecessor and sits 16 mm off the wrist, which is a slight increase. It also has a 1.4-inch MIP display — which, in itself, is an interesting footnote as every other major brand has ushered in AMOLED displays recently (I’m actually partial to MIP). In the build, what has improved slightly is the weight, dropping 2 grams off the Vertix 2.

So, for a quick buying hack, if you’re used to Garmin and thinking the “S” stands for small, you’d be in for a surprise in this case. It wasn’t clear what that “S” actually meant with COROS, and none of the brand’s media materials addressed it.

What definitely is cool are the three adventure-inspired colors of the Vertix 2S, which conjure up Space, Moon and Earth. They “celebrate mankind’s never-ending spirit of adventure in the most challenging environments,” COROS said. Each watch comes with sapphire glass and a titanium bezel.

But visual stylings aside, there’s something under the hood that’s important to note. In his review of the Vertix 2S, DC Rainmaker highlighted the best tweak made to this watch: the placement of the antenna. COROS’ original devices — like the first Apex — had stellar GPS, but the brand famously lost some ground in that category, despite being a pioneer of incorporating dual-band GNSS.

“The GPS antenna changes are quite notable,” DCR said in his review. “As I and many other reviewers saw with the original Vertix 2, the GPS performance was ‘meh’ at best. Now, it’s where I’d expect it to be for a flagship GPS watch.”

COROS has also zeroed in on climbers by saying it optimized its GPS algorithm for Outdoor Climb mode, hoping to correct the errors that many devices in this market show for this sport.

The brand has also updated its heart-rate sensor, vital because almost all performance and recovery metrics require accurate heart-rate readings. The Vertix 2S has COROS’ latest 5-LED and 4-photodetector optical heart rate sensor, both of which are necessary yet also likely contribute to that somewhat diminished battery life.

“Heart rate and GPS are the two most important data inputs that can help athletes gain insights into how they are training, recovering and increasing fitness,” COROS said in a news release.

The Vertix 2S includes all the health metrics and adventure features that are standard in newer COROS watches, such as HRV tracking, offline maps, recovery monitoring, sleep tracking, step counters. The accompanying app allows users to monitor training progress, build workouts and training plans, and create routes.

So, is this enough to deliver a “wow” factor worthy of an upgrade? You be the judge.