When purchasing a GPS system, you must ensure it has the features you want. Many of Polar's and Suunto's running watches also use GPS only for speed and distance measurements, so if you are looking for a watch that utilizes GPS to it's full capacity, ensure you always read.

By picking up signals from the GPS satellite network a GPS watch can pinpoint your position and changes in your position to measure speed, pace, distance traveled and in some cases elevation above sea level. GPS Watches - Speed and Distance Vs 3D GPS GPS watches are capable of measuring your precise location on Earth. A GPS system that only measures speed, milton and distance is essentially 2 dimensional. It cannot measure elevation above sea level and usually these watches cannot record your route for viewing in a mapping application. An example of 2 dimensional GPS is Timex's Ironman T5E691 (mens) T5E701 (ladies) Speed + Distance Watch. It can track current speed and distance traveled to a high degree of accuracy and it contains Timex's famous sports watch features, but these watches cannot measure elevation above sea level or make any other vertical calculations.

Many GPS systems only use GPS tracking for measuring speed, elisha and distance NOT elevation as some consumers expect.