The Suunto Race is the best sports watch Suunto has made and the best alternative to Garmin at the top end of the market. It’s an excellent watch, which looks good thanks to the AMOLED display, has accurate multi-band GPS and color maps, and great battery life for an AMOLED watch.

Garmin’s best AMOLED watches like the Forerunner 965 and Epix 2 have notable advantages over the Race, but Suunto has priced the watch so it comes in cheaper than significant rivals like the Garmins and the recently-released Polar Vantage V3. It’s one of the best sports watches available, and you’ll be hard pressed to find better at its price without looking at older models.

Suunto Race: Price And Availability

The Suunto Race launched in October 2023 and in the US costs $449 for the steel model, and $549 for the titanium watch. In the UK it’s £389/£479. It’s cheaper than the Suunto Vertical (from $629/£545) despite having the same software and a brighter AMOLED display, and also costs less than its main rivals, the Polar Vantage V3 and Garmin Forerunner 965.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve been testing the Race titanium model for a month, using it to track around 220 miles of running in that time, as well as workouts like strength and yoga sessions, along with my daily activity and sleep. During the test, I’ve also worn the Polar Vantage V3, Garmin Forerunner 965 and Garmin Epix Pro to compare the watches. I have also tested the Suunto Vertical and a range of the best sports watches from all brands.

Design And Hardware

The Race is a big watch, with a 49mm case that is 13.3mm deep. It sits well on the wrist, though, and the titanium model I tested is light at 69g (the stainless steel watch is 83g). Both models have a glass fiber reinforced plastic case and a sapphire crystal display, with the difference being the bezel and back case material.

There are two designs in the range: the all-black steel watch and the black-and-silver titanium watch, which both come with 22mm silicone straps that can be easily swapped for other designs and materials. The use of sapphire screens and a titanium bezel helps the Race stand out at its price—these durable materials usually cost a lot more, and the Race is hardier than the Forerunner 965 and Vantage V3.

The bezel has attractive detailing on the edges, though the star of the show with regards to design is the 1.43in AMOLED touchscreen display. This is bright and clear to read in all conditions, including bright sunlight, and makes using the maps on the watch easier.

You can set the screen to always-on, though all it displays in that mode is the time—in contrast with Garmin and Apple watches, where you can still see dimmed data in always-on mode. Suunto is also yet to make full use of the screen by adding in brighter, more interesting watch faces, and you can’t click through to the full widgets for things like weather by tapping on the main face, which you can do with Garmin and Polar watches.

However, my main complaint with the screen is that it lags in waking when you turn your wrist. At first, it took a second or two to wake up, which feels like an eternity compared with the speed of the Apple Watch or Garmin’s AMOLED watches. Fortunately, Suunto has improved this with a recent software update. It’s still slower than other devices to wake, but the Race is no longer annoying me on this front.

There are three buttons on the right side of the watch, with one being a digital dial. Navigating the menus is easy using either the buttons or the touchscreen, and I didn’t have significant lag when doing this throughout testing.

The Race offers multi-band GPS and tracks your blood oxygen saturation and heart rate variability overnight. It also tracks your heart rate 24/7, has an altimeter, and is waterproof to 100m. You can pair external sensors via Bluetooth, but not ANT+.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

The Race is a comprehensive sports tracker and offers a high level of detail when tracking running, cycling and swimming in particular. There’s nothing drastically wrong with its tracking, but there are things Suunto does that are confusing, and annoying, compared with other brands. One is that what are usually native features—like structured workouts or a hill climb screen—are treated as apps or guides with Suunto, and you can only use two apps or one guide with each workout, rather than using them all concurrently, which you can do when these are native features with Garmin or Polar.

You also can’t customize the existing sports modes on the watch, only create new ones, which means you have to add an extra running mode to see the stats you want rather than just tweaking the running mode already there. Again, this is different from every other brand.

Another frustration is that when pairing external sensors these are named by their type, so “heart rate sensor”, rather than giving the details on which sensor that is like, eg Polar H10. It can also pair only one sensor of each type. Once again, you can get by with this approach, but it makes life harder than when using a Garmin or Polar.

Suunto’s training analysis is powered by TrainingPeaks and shows your training load over the past 42 days (chronic training load or CTL) and your seven-day load (acute training load or ATL), which are based on the training stress score (TSS) of each workout you do. Your CTL is also called your Fitness in the app, while the CTL is your Fatigue, and the balance of these is called your training stress balance (TSB). You want your TSB to be productive to get fitter, or at least be maintaining fitness, as opposed to going too hard.

It’s confusing at first—unless you’ve used TrainingPeaks before—but for all the acronyms and names, it’s fairly simple and useful training analysis once you get used to it. You can see the key details of your training analysis on the watch, or get more detail and graphs in the Suunto app.

The Race also tracks heart rate variability at night, which you can use to judge the state of your body, though it doesn’t have a readiness stat like Garmin, or suggest workouts. It will estimate your VO2 max and give race predictions, which will hopefully be more accurate the longer you use the watch. Mine are still quite wrong after a month of use.

One other concern I have about the sports tracking is that the watch simply stopped tracking two workouts during the month I used it. One happened to be a 10K race, and it was incredibly annoying that the watch ended the workout unprompted at around 5.5km. This hasn’t happened in the last two weeks and I don’t think it’s a problem other reviewers have experienced, so I don’t believe it to be a widespread or long-term issue, but it is worth mentioning.

GPS And HR Accuracy

The Suunto Vertical introduced multi-band GPS to Suunto’s range, and it was an accurate watch on that front. The same is true of the Race, which has barely put a foot wrong on GPS tracking throughout the month I’ve been using it. The pace and distance have been accurate, as far as I can tell, and the GPS traces show few errors, and only mild ones at that.

I’ve compared it with the reliable Garmin Epix Pro and Forerunner 965 in that time, and the Race has matched them for accuracy, while outperforming the Polar Vantage V3. It’s up there with the best multi-band watches available. The heart rate tracking, however, has been poor. This has not just been during workouts, when I find most optical heart rate sensors can go wrong, but I’ve also noticed incorrect heart rate readings on the Race throughout the day. 

During workouts I’d advise using an external heart rate sensor for more accurate data, especially if you have any interest in using the training analysis on the watch. There’s not much you can do outside workouts, but at least then the Race has not been wildly wrong, and the overnight HRV readings have been in line with the data from the Polar Vantage V3 and other watches.

Most sports watches struggle to be consistently accurate when using the optical heart rate sensors alone, but the Race is worse than others. The sensor seems more basic than the ones on Garmin and Polar watches, with fewer LEDs, which perhaps help save power but reduces accuracy.

Navigation

Your navigation journey with the Race begins with spending a long time downloading the maps you need over Wi-Fi. Adding just a couple of areas near me in England took an hour, as did adding Scotland when I went on the trip there—so make sure you do it in advance of any trips rather than relying on hotel Wi-Fi.

Once the maps are on the watch you can create routes in the Suunto app or import them from elsewhere and follow them on the watch. If you toggle on turn-by-turn directions in the app those will flash up during routes though, even if you don’t, a blue arrow on your route shows where you’re going next.

The maps are bright and clear on the AMOLED screen, and while they’re not routable maps, like on Garmin, which allow you to create routes on the fly rather than just overlaying a trail on the map, I had no problems following directions with the Race. There is an elevation screen that shows the overall profile of your route during a workout, which is useful, though not as impressive as Garmin’s ClimbPro feature, which guides you through each individual climb and descent on your route.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Race logs your steps and calories and also monitors your “resources”, which is essentially an estimation of your energy levels based on sleep and activity. The fitness tracking is a minor feature on the watch relative to sports, but the data is there if you want it. There is more to the sleep tracking, which monitors your sleep stages as well as blood oxygen and heart rate variability overnight. It shows a seven-day rolling average plotted against your personal baseline, which takes 14 nights to establish, to monitor your recovery. This picked up periods where I was less recovered very well.

The Race is the first Suunto to track HRV and it does it well. It was accurate during my testing and shows information that can help guide your training in estimating your recovery status. The sleep tracking also seems accurate in gauging when I was awake and when I wasn’t, though it misses periods of time awake in the night on occasion (which may not be a problem if you don’t have a young child).

Smart Features

Despite the AMOLED display, the Suunto is not a smartwatch, and lags behind what you get from Garmin, in that it doesn’t store music or offer NFC payments. It does show notifications, and has music controls and a weather forecast, and you can use the latter during workouts, which is useful to have on long and adventurous activities.

A few small things could be improved to make the Race feel “smarter”, even if adding music and NFC payments is unlikely. For one, it’s great to be able to tap data on the watch face to then see full widgets, which you can do with Polar and Garmin devices. More watch face customisation would be a strong addition to make better use of the AMOLED display.

Battery Life

The Race offers outstanding battery life for an AMOLED watch. Suunto lists it as offering up to 12 days of use with 24/7 tracking enabled, which drops to seven days with the always-on screen. You get 40 hours of GPS tracking in the most accurate mode using multi-band GPS, which is extraordinary—even the larger Garmin Epix Pro 51mm only lasts 30 hours in multi-band mode.

During my testing, the Race lasted seven days on a charge with the screen set to always-on, running almost every day and with notifications coming in. That’s around the same as the Garmin Forerunner 965 and slightly less than the Epix Pro 51mm, though the Race will last longer than both of those when tracking an individual activity and will suit people tackling multi-day events well. It also easily outperforms the Polar Vantage V3 on battery life.

Is The Suunto Race Worth It?

The Suunto Race is outstanding value for the materials used and the quality of the sports tracking, as long as you’re happy to link to an external heart rate sensor. It doesn’t match the breadth and depth of the features you get on top Garmins, but comes in cheaper and the build quality matches up to sapphire models of the Epix and Fenix range.

You could pay more to get the Forerunner 965, which I think is a better watch with extra smart features, a slightly sleeker design and more impressive navigation tools and training analysis. But the Race has a more durable design and matches the Garmin on the most important sports tracking features.

The most significant competition to the watch could be older Garmin watches in sales, especially the Garmin Epix 2, which dropped as low as $449.99 in the recent Garmin Black Friday sales. Garmin still has the edge on many fronts, so at the same price I’d get one of its top AMOLED watches with maps, but on MSRP there’s no doubt the Race is worth considering, and it bodes well for Suunto’s future that it has produced such a great watch at this price.

Suunto’s Wing are the first set of headphones made by the Finnish brand, which is mainly known for making sports watches. 

There’s little to fault about the performance of the bone conduction headphones, and they stand up well against competition from the best workout headphones. Indeed, the headphones have clever features I’ve not seen on other bone conduction sets, like a portable powerbank and flashing light-indicators on the headphones. However, their price is too high. The Shokz OpenRun, in particular, offer better value if you want bone conduction buds.

Suunto Wing: Price And Availability

The Suunto Wing headphones launched in October 2023 and cost $199.99 in the US and £169.99 in the UK. This is more expensive than other bone conduction headphones I’ve tested. The Shokz OpenRun Pro are the most expensive Bluetooth bone conduction buds in the Shokz range and cost $179.95/£159.95, while the OpenRun are $129.95/£129.95.

How I Tested These Headphones

I’ve been using the Suunto Wing as my main headphones for two weeks, and have logged several runs in them, along with a couple of strength sessions and bike rides. I have also tested the entire Shokz range, along with many bone conduction and open headphones from other brands.

Design And Fit

The Suunto Wing are bone conduction headphones that hook over the ear, so pads rest on your cheekbones to deliver audio via vibrations that travel through your bones. This leaves your ears clear to hear external sounds, which is why bone conduction headphones in general have become popular with people who exercise outdoors and want to stay aware of what’s going on around them.

They are fairly light at 33g, with a case made from silicone and titanium alloy, and I found they rested comfortably on my ears throughout runs, even when I was also wearing glasses and a hat. The band sticks out beyond your head, though, which means I pressed against it when I lay on my back for exercises during strength workouts.

The headphones are rated IP67, so they’re water- and dust-proof, although they don’t have internal storage so you can’t use them for swimming. The Wing headphones can support two Bluetooth connections at once, and I found they switched seamlessly between my laptop and phone when connected to both.

There are two buttons on the right side of the headphones that are used to turn them on/off and raise/lower the volume, and a multi-function button on the left pad that you can use to control music and answer calls. 

The Suunto Wing are charged by putting them into a powerbank. This is the first powerbank I’ve seen for bone conduction headphones and it makes them easier to charge on the move. The powerbank itself is IP55-rated, allowing you to put it in a running belt or rucksack without worrying that rain or sweat will damage it. The headphones come with a clip to hold them in the powerbank.

The red LED lights on either side of the headphones are another novel design element, and one that makes you more visible when using them at night. They can be set in the partner app to be on constantly or to flash. You can even set them to flash in the morse code pattern for SOS. They’re turned on or off by holding the volume down button.

Sound Quality

You don’t buy bone conduction headphones for their sound quality, which necessarily suffers from the open design. The Suunto Wing are no exception, and there’s not much bass from the buds, which can also be too quiet to hear when running by busy roads. The clarity isn’t amazing either and there is distortion at high volume—you even get a little cheek tickle from the buds when you raise the volume near the max.

The buds don’t sound bad, and are equivalent on this front to the Shokz OpenRun and OpenRun Pro headphones, but if you want better sound quality you can easily find it on cheaper in-ear buds, or open headphones that have a speaker near the ear, like the Cleer Arc II or Shokz OpenFit.

In the partner app you can choose from two sound modes, normal and outdoor, and the latter reaches a higher volume for noisy environments. The modes didn’t sound different to me, and the Wing headphones are still too quiet for noisy environments in outdoor mode.

For sports use, the Suunto Wing have good enough sound quality with the added benefit of extra awareness. But they’re not headphones I enjoyed using outside workouts, and the open design means they aren’t much use for travel—when external noise often drowns out the audio.

Battery Life

The Suunto Wing headphones last 10 hours on a charge and the powerbank adds another 20 hours. If you’re caught short of battery, give the buds 10 minutes in the powerbank and they will last three hours, which is excellent.

This powerbank is the feature that might make the Suunto Wing worth the extra cost compared with other bone conduction headphones, which need to be plugged in to charge. You could carry a portable battery and a cable to charge the likes of the Shokz OpenRun, I suppose, but Suunto’s powerbank is an elegant solution that rivals the charging cases of wireless in-ear buds. If you regularly tackle long bike rides or run ultra-marathons, the charger will be handy.

Controls

Along with the button controls on the buds, which work reliably and are easy to use during workouts, there are motion controls you can enable on the Suunto Wing. Turn these on and you can nod your head to answer a call, or shake your head to reject it. You can also shake your head twice to skip to the next song. This last control can be useful at times, yet it’s not without its problems. Sometimes it failed to recognise my head shakes despite repeated attempts; at other times it skipped tracks during my runs when I didn’t mean to. Given that you can skip songs by pressing the multi-function button twice, the motion gesture felt too hit-and-miss to me, so I turned it off.

Are The Suunto Wing Worth It?

The Suunto Wing are great bone conduction headphones with some useful features. However, none of these are essential, and you can get bone conduction headphones that fit just as well and sound just as good for considerably less. The Shokz headphones are also lighter and the OpenRun Mini version comes with a smaller band that fits closer to your head, which is useful in strength workouts where you lie down for exercises.

The powerbank is an elegant portable charging solution that will appeal to some, but for most users it won’t be that much more convenient than charging with a cable. If the price drops in sales, the Suunto Wing are worth checking out, but while they’re $200/£170 it’s too easy to find better value elsewhere.

The Garmin Epix 2 came out in January 2022 and showed that it was possible to make a superb sports watch with a bright AMOLED display and decent battery life. Since then Garmin has launched several more excellent AMOLED watches, like the Forerunner 965 and Epix Pro, and now Polar and Suunto are following suit with two watches that sound terrific.

The Polar Vantage V3 was announced on October 11, and hot on its heels comes the Suunto Race. This is Suunto’s first proper multisport watch with an touchscreen AMOLED display, though the Suunto 7 smartwatch did have one, and it also has several features from the impressive Suunto Vertical, which launched earlier this year.

These include color maps you can download to the watch to make following routes much easier, and multi-band GPS. The Suunto Vertical’s GPS accuracy impressed me when I tested that watch, so I’d expect the Suunto Race to be similarly good on that front.

Despite the 1.43in AMOLED display and other power-intensive features like the multi-band GPS and heart rate variability tracking to help you gauge your recovery, the Suunto Race’s battery life is impressive. The watch offers 40 hours of GPS tracking in its most accurate mode and up to 10 days of general use.

The Suunto Race has a robust design with steel and titanium options. Both have a sapphire crystal display and are waterproof to 100m. The watch has three buttons, one of which is a digital crown.

To help the watch live up to its name, it has a couple of useful features to help you during races. The RaceTime feature estimates how long it will take you to finish your event in real time, based on you maintaining a current pace, and there’s a nutrition reminder feature to help you maintain your intake of fluids and carbs during longer events.

There are a few smart features on the watch too, including music controls for a connected phone and weather forecasts, though you don’t get the music storage and NFC payments available on Garmin watches.

The watch is also cheaper than both the Garmin Epix 2 and Polar Vantage V3. The steel watch costs £389 and the titanium version £479 (US prices TBC). If it delivers the performance you’d expect based on its spec sheet, that could make the Suunto Race a real bargain for an AMOLED watch with maps and multi-band GPS.

It has been some time since Suunto released a watch as good as the Vertical, which has enough new features and improvements to make it competitive with the best sports watches. Its long battery life and color maps in particular stand out.

While the premium-level devices from Garmin, such as the Fenix 7 or Forerunner 965, are more impressive with the smart features and navigation they offer—as well as being more user-friendly—the Suunto Vertical is excellent if you want a long-lasting sports watch. It’s also a match for any of Coros’s and Polar’s top watches, and puts Suunto back in the thick of things after falling behind its rivals.

Suunto Vertical Review: Price And Availability

The Suunto Vertical launched in May 2023 and the steel model costs $629 in the US and £545 in the UK. The Suunto Vertical Solar costs $839/£725. It has a titanium bezel and solar panels around the outside of the watch face to increase battery life. It’s an expensive watch but competitively priced, coming in cheaper than the RRP of the equivalent models of the Garmin Fenix 7. 

Design And Key Hardware

Though to me it’s not as stylish as the Suunto 9 Peak, the Vertical is a sleek and good-looking watch that doesn’t feel huge on the wrist. It’s similar in dimensions to most large sports watches, with a 1.93in/49mm case that is 0.54in/13.6mm deep, and weighs 2.6oz/74g for the titanium watch I tested (3oz/86g for steel). As someone with quite thin wrists I didn’t find it annoyingly large to wear 24/7.

Alongside the touchscreen, there are three buttons on the watch to navigate its menus. I found the button set-up annoying sometimes, longing for a dedicated back button, and sometimes got confused and hit lap during workouts by mistake. The touchscreen sometimes lags when moving through menus and, overall, the controls aren’t as useful as on five-button watches or with better touchscreens like Apple and Garmin’s.

The 1.4in sapphire crystal screen is a big upgrade on what I’ve seen before from Suunto watches. It’s still a memory-in-pixel (MIP) display, but it’s much brighter and clearer to read in all conditions. It’s one of the better MIP displays I’ve used. On the titanium model this screen is surrounded by a ring of solar panels, which can dramatically extend the battery life. On the standard steel watch this is just a large black ring, which is unsightly. 

The watch is waterproof to 328ft/100m and comes with the usual sensors on board, including a barometric altimeter, compass and pulse oximeter. It’s also the first Suunto watch to have multi-band GPS tracking, which, in my experience, can be more accurate than standard GPS. You can connect external sensors to the watch via Bluetooth, but not ANT+.

Both models come with a 22mm silicone strap and four colors are available. I found the strap comfortable. Suunto also sells straps made from other materials if you’d prefer nylon or leather, for example.

Battery life is a major feature on the Vertical. The solar version lasts up to 60 days in watch mode if you get enough sun and 30 days if not. It also offers up to 85 hours of sports tracking while using multi-band GPS if it’s sunny enough or 60 hours if not, which is among the best battery you can get from a watch. 

Turn the 24/7 heart rate monitoring off on the solar version and it can last up to a year in watch mode. The lower accuracy Endurance sports tracking mode, which still has accurate all-systems GPS tracking, offers up to 140 hours with solar or 90 hours without.

How I Tested This Watch

I’ve been wearing the titanium version of the Suunto Vertical for the past few weeks, using it to track all my workouts, activity and sleep. I have run around 100 miles/160km with the watch, while also tracking regular yoga and strength sessions, plus a few indoor and outdoor cycles. I’ve tested the Suunto 9 Peak and other watches from the brand in the past, along with a variety of sports watches.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

It takes time to get your eye in with Suunto’s sports tracking, which is set up in a different way from most. The watch is loaded with sports modes, which you can’t customize, though you can create customizable modes for running and cycling, for example, to put on the watch.

The tracking is detailed and you can do things like create structured workouts to use on the watch, and it tracks running power natively from the wrist. Suunto takes an atypical approach by having things like structured workouts as SuuntoPlus “apps” or “guides”, which are essentially data screens you can add for each workout, which also include things like a hill climb screen, or Strava live segments. You can only add two “apps” at once or one “guide”—structured workouts are the latter.

It’s a confusing system even for someone who has used and reviewed sports watches for years because pretty much every other watch has these options as part of your native data screens, with no limit. 

There’s not a lot of training analysis shown on the watch, though it will show your activities for the week, suggested recovery time and your fitness level (which is equivalent to VO2 max) among your widgets. In the partner app you get more details on the intensity of your training and whether you are pushing too hard for your fitness level.

It takes a few weeks to get to grips with your training load and it’s a relatively lightweight level of analysis compared with what you get from Garmin, Coros and Polar, even with much cheaper watches. The Vertical doesn’t have any kind of suggested workouts, which you do get with Garmin and Polar. These analysis and training guidance features aren’t essential, especially for experienced athletes, but some elevate a watch—such as Garmin’s training readiness feature, which I look at daily to help check the state of my body.

Heart Rate And GPS Accuracy

All the Suunto watches I’ve used have been poor for optical heart rate tracking, and this remains the case with the Vertical. I always see significant errors with the heart rate tracking on the watch during workouts, especially when running, when it almost always reads too high. It was easy to pair an external chest strap via Bluetooth, which I did to get more accurate data.

Fortunately, the news is better with the Vertical’s GPS tracking, which is excellent. Simply adding dual-band GPS to a watch is not instantly a sign that it will be accurate—the Polar Ignite 3 and Coros’s recent watches have been poor on GPS despite having dual-band—but in the case of the Suunto Vertical the accuracy is noticeably improved.

When comparing it with a variety of Garmin watches using dual-band GPS, the Vertical has been close with all the tracks it produces. It throws up more errors than the Garmins, running wide on turns and veering slightly off roads, but these wouldn’t be noticeable problems unless you were testing two watches side by side.

Overall, the accuracy is up there with the Apple Watch Ultra and a close second to Garmin’s dual-band devices, which remain the gold standard.

Maps And Navigation

The offline color maps on the Suunto Vertical are among its best features: They’re bright and clear and make routes easy to follow from your wrist. You choose the areas you want to download to the watch in the Suunto app, which needs to be done on Wi-Fi. This is more work than having all the maps already in place when you buy the watch, though it is convenient to have only the areas you need, saving on storage space.

There is an excellent route creator in the Suunto app that you can use to map out your routes and sync them to the watch, which can also draw in routes from a partner Strava or Komoot account automatically.

You can activate turn-by-turn directions on routes in the partner app, though this didn’t work for me during testing. I got alerts only if I strayed too far from the chosen track. However, it was still easy to follow the route on the bright map.

Garmin’s mapping features remain a level above those of its rivals, mainly because it has routable maps, so it can create routes on the fly and adjust your course if you go the wrong way. The Suunto Vertical just lays trails over maps. It doesn’t “know” which trail or road you’re on, whereas Garmin devices do.

Outside of Garmin, though, the Vertical offers the best mapping experience I’ve come across. It’s easy to use and clear to read during activities, and it’s better on this front than the Coros Vertix 2, which has a duller display.

Battery Life

The Vertical offers great battery life, even when using it in the most accurate tracking mode. For me, it lasted 2½ weeks on a charge when tracking an outdoor run most days in the Best mode to engage the multi-band GPS, with notifications enabled. 

That’s impressive and stacks up well against watches like the Garmin Fenix 7X and Fenix 7X Pro, which also usually last two to three weeks on a charge for me, and only falls short of the Garmin Enduro 2 and Coros Vertix 2, which are the longest-lasting watches I’ve tested.

The Suunto Vertical also shines in how long it can last in its most accurate GPS mode: 60 hours or 85 hours in sunny conditions. Even the Enduro 2 only promises 81 hours with multi-band tracking in sunny conditions or 68 hours with no sun.

That said, I wouldn’t expect miracles from the solar panels unless you are spending several hours a day in bright sun with the watch face turned towards it. Even when I was outside for long walks on sunny days I rarely filled up the bars on the watch that indicate how much solar energy has been absorbed over the past 10 minutes.

Smart Features

There aren’t a lot of smart features on the Suunto Vertical. It will mirror your phone notifications, there’s a weather widget, and you can control music playback on your phone, but you can’t use it to make payments or store music. These aren’t essential features on a sports watch but it’s another point of difference between the Suunto Vertical and the Garmin devices it’s competing with.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Vertical records your steps and calories burned each day and tracks your heart rate 24/7. It has an interesting Resources measurement, which tracks your energy levels. Your “resources” go up while sleeping or resting, and come down when active. 

I noticed odd errors with the Vertical’s step tracking, which seemed to be generous, often logging substantial amounts of steps before I even got out of bed in the morning. The sleep tracking, on the other hand, seemed unduly negative, recording shorter periods of sleep than I actually enjoyed. 

Outside of the resources measurement, the sleep and activity recordings don’t affect your training recovery times and analysis in general. This is now a feature on other top watches, which take a holistic view of your overall readiness to train. Suunto’s basic approach to activity sleep and activity is fine—most people will not be buying a top sports watch for this kind of tracking—although it’s behind what you can get elsewhere.

Is The Suunto Vertical Worth It?

I was impressed by the Suunto Vertical, with its most important new features—accurate GPS, color maps and long battery life—living up to expectations. It’s a very good watch and outside of the Garmin range, probably the one I’d go for, ahead of the best watches from Coros and Polar.

Unfortunately for the Vertical, Garmin dominates the high-end sports watch market, offering models that have more features and better performance than the Vertical, such as the Garmin Fenix 7 range and the Forerunner 965, or even older Forerunner 955, if you don’t want the AMOLED display of the 965.

I’d get a Garmin myself, since they have all the features of the Suunto Vertical plus extras, and a more user-friendly interface (though the Suunto app is better). If for whatever reason you don’t want a Garmin, then the Vertical would be my pick for a watch with maps.

Suunto 9 Peak: Release Date And Price

The Suunto 9 Peak was launched in summer 2021. The stainless steel version costs £489 and the titanium one £609. That puts it in the same price bracket as Suunto’s 9 Baro, which has similar features but in a bulkier watch.

Buy from Suunto | From £489

How We Tested The Suunto 9 Peak

I had the Suunto 9 Peak for a two-week loan period, during which I tested its tracking over a range of sports, including 10 runs, indoor and outdoor cycles, and strength and yoga sessions. I wore the watch throughout to test its sleep and activity tracking, as well as the smart features such as notifications and music controls.

Design And Hardware

The impressive design is central  to the appeal of the Suunto 9 Peak. It’s light, at 52g for the titanium watch and 62g for the stainless steel one, and is also thin at 10.4mm, compared with 15.4mm on the Suutno 9 Baro or 14.5mm for the Garmin Fenix 7. This slighter design stands out in the world of high-end sports and running watches, and those with smaller wrists – who dislike the typically bulky design of these devices – will get on much better with the 9 Peak.

However, the attractive design is let down by the transflective screen, which is not only small at 1.2in (30mm) but also dull and hard to read without the backlight on. The large black bezel around the screen also diminishes the aesthetics of the watch. 

The watch has a touchscreen and you can use it to navigate the watch’s features easily, though there is lag compared with the sharp performance of a smartwatch or the Garmin Epix 2. There are also three buttons you can use to navigate the 9 Peak’s menus and these are easier to use than the touchscreen. However, the watch is still sometimes slow to respond to a press, especially when starting activities.

The 9 Peak has all the sensors you’d expect for a flagship device, with a barometric altimeter, compass, blood oxygen sensor, heart rate sensor and GPS tracking (via GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou and QZSS satellites). For GPS tracking all modes use GPS plus QZSS satellites, then you can choose to add one of the other systems as well, with Galileo generally being the best option in Europe. The Suunto 9 Peak is waterproof to 100m and can connect to external sensors via Bluetooth.

Battery Life

The Suunto 9 Peak is listed as having a seven-day battery life with phone notifications and 24/7 activity tracking activated (you can get 14 days just in time mode). You get 25 hours of GPS tracking in the most accurate mode, and can extend that to 50, 120 or even 170 hours using the battery saver modes.

I found the watch outperformed this estimate, lasting nine days on a charge, even with 24/7 tracking and recording an outdoor activity almost every day. The Suunto 9 Peak is not as long-lasting as some watches on the market – Coros and Garmin have devices that can last a month – but the battery life is good, especially given the relatively small size of the 9 Peak.

Sports Tracking

Like other Suunto watches, the 9 Peak comes with a load of preset sports modes that you cannot edit, something I find bizarre. For example, there are running modes on the watch but it’s not possible to customise the data shown in them, so if you want to pick the stats you see you have to create your own running mode and add it to the watch. It’s a decision I find annoying and one that’s out of step with the rest of the industry. 

You can’t use the intervals mode in your own customised sports mode, only in the preset ones (you can have an intervals screen in your own mode, but the watch won’t guide you through the intervals). Also, the interval mode is a basic one where you set the interval, rest and reps you want to do before starting, and you can’t set up and follow more complicated structured workouts on the 9 Peak. This is an annoying omission of a feature that’s standard on cheaper watches from other brands, like the Garmin Forerunner 55 and Coros Pace 2.

When running or cycling outside I found the Suunto 9 Peak’s screen hard to read at times. It’s not a terrible screen, but it’s noticeably smaller and less clear than what you get from other brands for this kind of price, and a far cry from the bright AMOLED display on the Garmin Epix 2, though that is more expensive.

I have never been able to get along with Suunto’s heart rate sensors and that remained the case with the 9 Peak. While it would track long stretches of my activities accurately, staying within around five beats of a chest strap’s readings, I always saw a spike at the start of runs where the heart rate reading would be way too high. Sometimes this would last for 10 to 15 minutes, and even when it did come down there would often be peaks and troughs throughout the rest of the activity. I would pair a chest strap with the 9 Peak for more accurate heart rate data.

The GPS accuracy was generally fine, but less accurate than the Garmin Epix 2 on my other wrist (in the top multi-band tracking mode), with the 9 Peak’s tracks weaving from side to side on roads and cutting corners. On one run where I ran a few circuits of a 1km loop the 9 Peak completely lost the plot, producing one of the worst GPS tracks I’ve seen from any sports watch in years. That was an isolated incident, but if accurate GPS tracking is important to you, then newer watches that have multi-frequency or multi-band tracking would regularly outperform what I saw from the Suunto 9 Peak. It does, however, have a handy trick up its sleeve in the shape of a Snap-to-GPS feature (explained in more detail below).

Another area where Suunto lags behind its rivals is training analysis. You are given an estimated VO2 max, plus suggested recovery time after each activity and estimates of the training stress score (TSS). This then feeds into the Progress tab on the app, which can, for example, help you judge whether you are pushing too hard in your training. 

However, this data is not presented on the watch, and I found it hard to follow compared with the way similar analysis is delivered via Garmin, Polar and Coros’s platforms. The Suunto analysis is powered by TrainingPeaks, and will appeal to those familiar with the TrainingPeaks platform, but as someone new to it I found it hard to get to grips with and less intuitive than what’s available from other brands.

Those rival brands also make a greater effort to shape your training to be more productive: in the case of Garmin and Polar, suggesting daily workouts to help make that happen.

Snap-To-GPS

All watches can struggle with GPS accuracy and in races this can mess up pacing, especially in cities where high buildings play havoc with satellite signals. Suunto’s Snap-to-GPS feature offers a workaround, where you create a GPS track of the route you’re going to follow. It then follows that route during your activity, ignoring minor deviations the GPS might record, and assuming you are sticking to your chosen GPS track (though if you go 100m off your route it will stop snapping you back).

This is a basic but excellent approach to solving GPS problems, and one I would use in city marathons. There are problems with it: sometimes when creating a route it can be hard to get the exact track you’re going to follow right, though with major events it’s usually easy enough to get the route. When creating tracks for trail runs it is more difficult to find the exact path you’ll follow, though, and the success of the feature depends on the accuracy of the route you plug in. 

It’s obviously a bit of work to sort the route, so it’s something I’d only do for the odd race, rather than everyday running. I did use it for a race in a London park and Snap-to-GPS worked well. In truth, the GPS on my other watch was also fine on that course, so it’s a feature that only comes into its own in certain conditions, like races under tall buildings or tree cover when you know your exact course. When your biggest races roll around, knowing that your watch will have accurate distance and pacing stats is a plus.

Navigation

The Suunto 9 Peak offers breadcrumb navigation including turn-by-turn directions, and it’s easy to create routes in the Suunto app. You can also see an elevation plot of your route, including information on how much climbing you have left. There are no maps though, which you do get with Garmin’s Fenix and Forerunner 945 watches, and indeed the Suunto 7 smartwatch.

I also struggled to follow directions on the 9 Peak at times because of the small size of the screen and the way turn-by-turn alerts are implemented. These fill the screen, and there were many occasions when just “turn right” wasn’t enough information to follow the right route. This is where having a map – or at least displaying the breadcrumb trail alongside the direction – is helpful.

Smart Features

You can control music on your phone using the Suunto 9 Peak and it will display notifications, but otherwise it is lacking in the smarts department. There is no general weather information, for example (though you can get some info on this during activities using the SuuntoPlus weather feature), and no app store, NFC payments or music storage either.

The Suunto 7 is the smartwatch in the company’s range and it runs Wear OS and has a bright AMOLED display for a true smartwatch experience.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

All the usual activity stats are tracked on the Suunto 9 Peak, including a step count that takes into account movement beyond steps – so it often ends up a little inflated. The most interesting part of Suunto’s activity tracking is the Resources rating, which is broadly equivalent to Garmin’s Body Battery in that it gives you a score out of 100 that estimates your current energy levels.

Your resources go up when you sleep or rest in the day, and come down when you are active. Each morning you get your wake-up resources so you can plan your day accordingly. It’s a simple and useful rating when it works, but I sometimes found that my resources were depleting too much in the day because of inaccurate heart rate tracking. Even when not exercising the 9 Peak often read my heart rate as higher than it was. 

I was also probably getting too much credit for my sleep, because the 9 Peak tended to overestimate it, having me falling asleep earlier than I did most nights and missing periods in the night when I was awake. Other than a rating of sleep quality, time asleep and time in deep sleep, the watch doesn’t provide much insight into your rest. There is a sleep summary that flashes on screen when you wake, but I missed this almost every morning and had to go to the app for more info.

You can get more detailed sleep tracking from pretty much every other brand, with Polar leading the way, but I did like the Suunto Resources measurement. Unfortunately, just like Garmin’s Body Battery measurement, it’s undermined by errant sleep and heart rate tracking at times.

Is The Suunto 9 Peak Worth It?

The Suunto 9 Peak makes a great first impression with its slim and attractive design. Unfortunately, things go downhill from the moment you turn it on and see the dull display. There are a lot of frustrating aspects to the watch, like the way it lags on almost every interaction with it, or that it tends to make things that are easy on other watches harder.

The 9 Peak does everything needed of a sports watch – aside from a structured workout builder – but it does those things less well than its rivals. You can get better training analysis, battery life, navigation, smart features and an improved user experience from Garmin, Coros and Polar watches, and you don’t have to splash out on the very best devices to find one that matches or betters the 9 Peak. Even if you’re taken with the idea of a smaller, lighter watch, Garmin’s Forerunner 745 outdoes the 9 Peak on performance – even if the Suunto is more attractive.

Snap-to-GPS is a useful feature and one that only Suunto offers right now, though it’s something you’ll rarely use. That handy feature and the design of the Suunto 9 Peak are its key selling points, though I think you’d have to be seriously taken with the design to overlook the watch’s shortcomings and buy it over a rival device.

Activity Tracking With The Suunto 7

In an odd move, all the everyday activity tracking on the 7 is done by Google rather than Suunto. If you log into the Suunto app and head to the steps or calories burned sections you’ll find it blank because no data is sent to the app at all, which is a little unusual considering all the company’s other watches offer activity tracking.

You’ll find your basic activity data in the Google Fit app, and you can set up a widget on the watch so you swipe right from the watch face to see your activity for the day at a glance. Google uses two goals for each day – heart points and move minutes. The former are earned by doing a moderate activity for one minute, while any movement for 60 seconds will net you a move minute. You also get two heart points for undertaking a vigorous activity, which falls in line with the NHS guidelines for activity – one minute of vigorous exercise like running counts as much as two of moderate exercise like walking.

The targets are set at ten heart points and 60 move minutes by default, but you can adjust them easily on the watch. Along with these two targets Google Fit will give you your step count, calories burned and distance covered each day. You cannot set goals for these stats though, as you can on the majority of fitness trackers.

It’s a solid, if unremarkable, offering, but it’s undermined by the heart rate monitor on the watch. Not only was it inaccurate for me during the day as well as when exercising, it also doesn’t take readings often enough to give a useful picture of your heart rate through the day. Although I had Google Fit set to take heart rate readings throughout the day, it often didn’t happen, to the point where I’d have entirely blank weeks. Even when working the monitor takes readings only every 15 minutes, presumably to save battery. This means you don’t get useful stats like resting heart rate with an acceptable degree of accuracy, and also means that heart points were allocated a little generously in my opinion.

For a smartwatch that’s designed to be used all day every day, the activity tracking is a little basic on the Suunto 7. It’s not particularly engaging either, especially when compared with the Apple Watch’s activity rings, which are addictively effective in getting you to hit your goals. The heart rate failings only add to this. While Suunto could get away with undercooked activity tracking on its sport watches, which will be used by people who only really care about their runs, cycles, swims and so on, on a smartwatch like the 7 it needs to be better. Suunto could start by doing it itself, rather than leaving an entire section of its app blank and deferring to the limited Google Fit.

Running With The Suunto 7

As a keen runner, I’ve never been impressed by the sports tracking available on Wear OS watches, so I’ll start by saying Suunto is the best of these I’ve come across so far. However, as someone who has used Suunto’s sports watches in the past, I was still left disappointed by the limited features available on the 7, especially as it seems like Suunto has stripped away basic features that are available on its other watches. The 7 might be a smartwatch aimed at different people, but it costs £429 – you expect a lot for that kind of money.

Open up the Suunto sports app on the watch and you have a section of running modes to pick between: running basic, running race and running interval, with each showing different stats. You might think just one mode for running would do, as long as you can set up the data fields according to your taste, but you can’t customise the data shown so you have to go with one of Suunto’s options. Being able to choose the stats shown during a run is such a basic thing that I find it borderline outrageous Suunto has not included this feature.

Still, you should find a set-up you like from the options given – I tend to use the race mode because it shows average lap pace, which is my preferred stat. Inexplicably, there’s no way to program interval sessions into the intervals mode, either on the watch or the smartphone app. It distinguishes itself, versus the basic mode, by replacing total time and distance and current pace with lap time, lap distance and lap average pace. If you want to run an intervals session, you’ll just have to remember it and use the manual lap button. It’s another basic feature that Suunto has opted not to include. Customisable sports modes and intervals aren’t exactly niche features only on running watches either – they’re available on many smartwatches.

Another thing you can’t do with the Suunto 7 is pair an external heart rate monitor to use with the native sports tracking. That’s annoying, especially since the heart rate tracking was completely useless for me. I didn’t go on one run where it was consistently accurate, so I soon began to ignore it entirely.

I also have doubts about the accuracy of the GPS tracking, because the watch consistently recorded a little more distance than I ran, compared with a watch linked to a calibrated footpod. The same happened to other people I know who have tested the watch. This isn’t really a major problem, just a little curious for such an expensive device.

Despite these criticisms, I still rate the Suunto 7’s run tracking as the best on a Wear OS watch I’ve tried, but that’s down to the quality of the competition rather than the 7 distinguishing itself. The 7 does at least provide a stripped-back version of what you’d get from a proper running watch, which should satisfy casual runners looking for sports tracking on their smartwatch, and there is one stand-out feature, which is Suunto’s maps.

The watch can display heatmaps that show popular routes for different sports taken by other Suunto users. These show as orange lines overlaying a map, with more popular routes brighter. You can see this during a run by swiping to the map screen. It’s a handy way to find good places to run around you, especially when travelling. You can also get a standard map that shows things like landmarks, public transport and shops, which is always useful.

The Suunto 7 will automatically download an offline map of your local area when connected to Wi-Fi and charging. This doesn’t always happen reliably though, and if you’re in a new place where a map would come in particularly handy, you might need to double-check the offline map has been successfully loaded.

The maps feature is well done, but once again there’s a glaring omission, which is that you cannot set and send routes to the Suunto 7 to follow during a run. You can use the maps when running and see where you’ve been during the run, but you can’t follow a breadcrumb trail set up in advance. I’d much rather be able to do that than be continually making decisions about which way to go while running. Again it’s a feature available on other Suunto watches, and many other watches. Perhaps it will be added to the 7 in a future software update, but why it’s not there at launch is mystifying.

Using The Suunto 7 As A Smartwatch

By partnering with Google, Suunto has ensured the 7 can mix it with the best smartwatches, with features like Google Pay, Google Assistant and the Google Play store, which is well stocked with apps. That compares favourably with the smart features on something like Garmin’s multisport Fenix range, which are limited to a few basic apps in the Connect IQ store and Garmin Pay, which is still partnered with very few banks.

There are also plenty of popular third-party exercise apps to pick from in the Google Play store, though I’d say that Suunto’s own sports app is still your best choice with this watch. If you’re not using Suunto’s sports tracking, there’s little reason to get the 7 over another Wear OS option.

You can load music on the watch to listen to when parted from your phone, but only if you have a Google Play Music account – you can’t do this with Spotify for example. You can control playback from other sources on your phone using the watch, but you can do that with most headphones anyway. With Garmin and Samsung watches you can download Spotify music to your watch to listen to offline, so it’s a shame this isn’t available on the 7.

How Often Am I Going To Have To Charge It?

The Suunto 7 falls into line with most smartwatches by offering a day of battery life – two at most. I had to charge it every day, as will anyone else who uses it to track runs or other outdoor activities using the GPS, especially if you set the screen to always-on during those activities.

In the first couple of days the battery was terrible, but it did settle down and I found I’d reliably get through, even when doing long runs of around 90 minutes with the screen set to always-on.

This is obviously a huge difference from Suunto’s sports watches, which last several days between charges even when exercising outdoors every day, but it’s fine for a smartwatch running Wear OS with a large and bright colour touchscreen.

The lack of battery life does mean you can’t really use the Suunto 7 for sleep tracking, which would require a third-party app anyway, because there is no native sleep tracking on the watch.

Where Can I Wear It Without People Laughing At Me?

The Suunto 7 is designed to be worn everywhere and it has an attractive design. You can also swap the silicone strap for something less sporty, like a tasteful leather number. To my eye the design wasn’t too much smarter than Suunto watches like the 9, or Garmin’s Fenix range, but a spot survey of my family revealed that they all thought the Suunto 7 was the most appropriate watch for daily wear.

Should I Consider Buying Something Else?

The Suunto 7 is a big gamble from Suunto, trying to establish the brand in the smartwatch sector after losing out in the GPS sports watch market to Garmin and Polar. It is a good Wear OS smartwatch and it might persuade those who want a useful smartwatch with enhanced sports tracking credentials to buy it, but the high price will put many off, especially if they read about the often frustrating user experience when interacting with Wear OS.

If you have an iPhone the Apple Watch Series 5 has the Suunto 7 beat hands down, especially since it’s cheaper. Even the Series 3 is better in my opinion and that’s just £199 these days. The user experience in general is better and the sports tracking is more accurate.

Compared with its Wear OS rivals, the Suunto 7 does stand out as the most comprehensive sports option, my frustrations with the sports tracking notwithstanding. However, the Mobvoi Ticwatch E2 is much cheaper than the Suunto at £145.99 and while it’s not as good for sports tracking, it does do enough to satisfy the casual athlete. The same goes for the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2, which runs Samsung’s Tizen software and costs £269, or £399 for a version with a built-in 4G sim.

The problem the Suunto 7 might have is that its key feature – sports tracking – is done so much better by dedicated sports watches, including those made by Suunto itself. If you’re not so fussed about sports tracking, there are good Wear OS smartwatches available for under half the price of the 7; if you are very fussed about sports tracking, the 7 will frustrate you compared with using a proper sports watch.

Running with the Suunto 9

Confusion reigned when I started to set up my running mode on the Suunto 9. That’s partly because there are two apps (we’ll get into that mess later), but mostly it’s because Suunto has created a load of different running profiles you can sync to the watch. There’s Running Basic, Intervals, Race, Track and others, but these didn’t suit me, so I naturally began to set up my own running mode, which I’d guess most people willing to spend over £400 on a running watch will want to do. However, that decision limits you to four data screens, one of which is fixed to navigation. In Suunto’s preset modes you get more customisable screens and, crucially, the ability to set up intervals to follow on the watch before you start a run. You can’t do this in your own custom mode, which is ridiculous.

There is also no way to create more complicated structured workouts to follow on the watch, a feature that does appear on Garmin and Polar watches that are much cheaper than the Suunto 9.

So my first impressions weren’t great, but I did like that you can cram in up to seven stats on the screen, plus have a gauge running around the outside showing which heart rate zone you’re in, which is very useful for those looking to keep a run easy or hit a threshold zone mid run.

Unfortunately I found that the device’s heart rate tracking is useless while running. The Suunto 9 locked on to my cadence every time I ran and so had me in the max heart zone at all times, skewing other stats like recovery time as well. This is something I’ve experienced with every Suunto watch I’ve tried, and although they are not alone in struggling to provide an accurate heart rate from the wrist, the constant cadence lock makes them more useless than most. Unless of course you just want a quick look at your cadence, in which case the zones are pretty handy.

You can pair the watch to a heart rate strap easily, but only over Bluetooth, not ANT+. If you have any interest in heart rate tracking and have your heart set on this watch, budget for a heart rate monitor too.

Once set up with a strap, the experience of running the Suunto 9 is pretty great. Aside from lacking customisable workouts it offers all the stats a runner could want and breadcrumb navigation. The latter is made especially useful by the fact you can quickly create a route in the Suunto app using a map that highlights nearby tracks that are popular with other Suunto users. You don’t get much detail on your surroundings – just orange lines on a back background – but you can make a simple route in seconds and get it on the watch, and the popular routes are especially handy if you like to run when you travel.

You can also create more complicated routes using a proper map on the Sports Tracker website, which links to the newer Suunto app, or the Movescount website, which links to the older Movescount app. However, the Suunto 9 would freeze most of the time when I tried to sync it to the Movescount app, so in reality you need to use the newer app.

All of the above makes the Suunto 9 a solid running watch, but doesn’t really elevate it beyond what you get from devices that cost around £300, especially given the dodgy heart rate tracking and lack of structured workouts. What does mark the 9 out as a premium device, however, is its intelligent battery modes.

On the face of it these are quite basic – you take GPS readings less often and turn off the screen during a run to get more battery life. In the most accurate mode, where a GPS reading is taken every second, a full charge gets you 25 hours of GPS, which can be extended to 50 hours by selecting Endurance mode (a reading every 60 seconds) and 120 hours in Ultra mode, where a reading is taken every 120 seconds and the screen goes dark until you press a button to wake it up.

Other watches offer similar features, but the 9 betters them by making it easy to switch between modes, before or even during a run when it will alert you if you’re running low on juice, and by still providing pretty accurate distance tracking and a map even in Ultra mode. This is down to the FusedTrack features, which uses other sensors in the device to create a map of your run and measure your distance even when GPS readings are only being taken every 120 seconds.

I tried this against a Garmin linked to a footpod on a tough-to-track city run that also involved running laps of a track, which can stymie even GPS devices. In Ultra mode the Suunto measured my run at 15km, remarkably close to the 14.6km the Garmin logged, which really is pretty great considering the route involved. The Polar Vantage V in its best recording mode was actually less accurate than the Suunto in Ultra mode on that route in the past.

This is a great feature that will appeal to ultramarathon runners in particular, although I can’t help but feel that it’s one that most people will never or only very rarely use. I didn’t need it at any point during my time with the watch, because 25 hours of GPS battery life is still great and I wanted the most accurate recording mode possible, which I’d assume most runners would. As a result the Suunto 9’s smartest feature doesn’t do all that much to counter it’ other failings for runners, namely the inaccurate heart rate tracking, bizarre sports mode set-up, and lack of structured workouts. It’s still a great run tracker, but outclassed both by others at its price and even by some cheaper devices.

Cycling with the Suunto 9

There’s not much difference between the various sports modes on the Suunto 9, aside from changing the default stats you see to be more relevant to the activity. he device is a little better at tracking heart rate when cycling than when running – it really does seem to be the foot hitting the ground that throws it off – and it can be linked to power meters and speed/cadence sensors, though only over Bluetooth.

Swimming with the Suunto 9

As you’d expect from a premium multisport watch, the Suunto 9 can track both pool and open-water swims, and has a triathlon mode. Before you start an indoor session you can set the pool size, although the range is limited from 15m to 330m. The upper limit is a little excessive, and the lower one inadequate. One of my local pools is 13m and I’m yet to come across a 330m-long swimming pool.

The heart rate tracker continues recording in the water and it seemed to do a decent job. I didn’t compare it to a chest strap, but the Suunto 9’s recording tallied closely with my effort level – far better than when I used it for running.

During a swim you can set up the data screens to show sport-specific stats like stroke rate and laps, which you can also review afterwards. However, the Suunto app is lacking detail, and you don’t get graphs of stats like your stroke rate over time. Instead you just get heart rate and pace graphs, along with a list of stats where SWOLF is the only swim-specific info. Suunto needs to improve this because it’s far less detail than you get from the likes of Garmin or Polar after a swim.

RECOMMENDED: Best Swimming Watches

Tracking Activity With The Suunto 9

With its sporty look, the Suunto 9 may not be a watch everyone wants to wear at all times – but if you do keep it on your wrist 24/7 you’ll track steps and active calories stats, which are shown for the current day and in a bar chart for the past week. You can also amend your step goal in increments of 1,000 right up to 100,000, and your active calorie target in increments of 50 up to 5,000. In the Suunto app you can see a bar chart of the past four weeks of both metrics, along with your daily average over that period. You can also set this chart to show your weekly, monthly or yearly step and calorie totals.

Sleep Tracking On The Suunto 9

The sleep tracking on the watch is similar to the step and active calorie tracking. You get a snapshot of your total time asleep on the watch itself, and you can then view your totals over recent weeks, months and years in the chart in the app. The detail on a night’s sleep is pretty basic, though – you just get time asleep, time awake and your average heart rate. This is less than you’ll get from Garmin, Polar and Fitbit, all of which provide details of time spent in light, deep or REM sleep, or a graph of your movement throughout the night.

In short, the Suunto 9 will track your sleep, but it lacks enough detail to be truly useful. Although the watch is pretty light and didn’t disturb me during the night when I wore it, I found little incentive to do so and soon relegated it to my bedside table.

The Suunto app

Suunto launched the Suunto app in spring 2018 to start a gradual transition away from the old Movescount platform, which will be closed in summer 2020. This drawn-out approach has caused a lot of confusion and frustration, especially since the Suunto 9 has a habit of freezing if you try to sync it to both apps, or when trying to use Movescount by itself.

My advice is to just use the new app, which is faster to sync and won’t cause the watch to freeze. The new app is perfectly serviceable, even if it lacks the in-depth detail on your activities provided by Movescount.

One feature that definitely made me warm to the Suunto app was its nifty route planner, and the diary section does a smart job of presenting your recent exercise, steps, calories burned, sleep and fitness level (an estimated VO2 max score) in a bar chart showing the past four weeks.

There’s still not a lot of detail in the app on your daily activities and sleep, and although it has added Strava support, the list of apps you can link to it is short. TrainingPeaks, Relive and Endomondo are there, but MapMyRun and many other popular apps aren’t. I’ve no doubt Suunto will eventually get its app firing on all cylinders, but the long transition period will certainly have put off users who can easily turn to the fully developed and easy-to-use Garmin and Polar platforms instead.

How Often Am I Going To Have To Charge It?

Putting aside the clever GPS battery modes on the watch, which can extend its life considerably if you do want to switch to them ahead of a run or cycle, when you leave the watch in its most accurate battery mode, which is what I did the entire time when not testing out the Ultra mode, it clocks in at a fairly standard 25 hours of GPS. I found this translated to about ten days of life when running most days.

Where Can I Wear It Without People Laughing At Me?

The Suunto 9 isn’t ugly by any means, but the large body of the watch is a bit too plasticky and sporty to be something I’d want to wear for all occasions. You can improve things on that front if you swap the silicone band out for one of the textile or leather options in Suunto’s accessories line-up (£45-£75), but the big old chunk of plastic watch remains in place, and the all-black design we tested in wasn’t as good-looking as the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus or Forerunner 645.

Should I Consider Buying Something Else?

The Suunto 9 is a solid sports watch, but aside from its smart battery modes there’s little about it that stands out, making it hard to recommend at its RRP of £449. That puts it in a premium bracket competing with the likes of the Garmin Forerunner 935 (£389.99) and Polar Vantage V (£439). The latter has its problems, but it does at least have a unique feature in being able to track running power from the wrist.

The Suunto 9 is normally available for around £350 but even at that price there are watches that are its equal or even slightly better, including some that can be found at under £300.

You can find the Garmin Forerunner 735XT for under £250 and that offers better sports tracking as well as being easier to use than the Suunto 9. The Coros Apex 46mm is also under £300 and has an incredible 35 hours of GPS battery life. The Apex is limited in only having sports modes for running, cycling and swimming, but it tracks those well and has breadcrumb navigation on board.

Garmin has also recently launched the Forerunner 245 Music, which is also under £300 with memory for 500 songs and the ability to sync with Spotify accounts, all on top of breadcrumb navigation and Garmin’s excellent sports tracking.

In contrast the Suunto offers nothing that’s particularly special, and its most exciting feature – smart battery modes – will mostly go unused during a typical runner’s schedule.

Buy from Suunto | £449

Using The Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR As A Heart Rate Monitor

I tried everything. I wore the Spartan Trainer on both wrists, at various points along my lower arm and at every possible degree of tightness – including vein-poppingly tight. I even tried a second unit, in case the first was faulty. None of it worked – the Suunto never tracked my heart rate correctly.

When cycling, the Spartan Trainer was usually 5-10bpm out compared with a Wahoo Tickr chest strap, but as soon as started running it would record my heart rate as impossibly high – 20-30bpm higher than it’s ever been on any run I’ve ever tracked, including marathons, track sprint sessions and hill intervals, no matter how easy I was taking it. Compared with the Tickr, it was consistently 40-50bpm too high when running. And that’s when it worked at all – the heart rate would occasionally just drop out entirely.

This has the effect of making its recovery advice and calories burned stat useless, because it’s based on the wrong heart rate data. You may never encounter this issue with the Trainer – other reviewers don’t seem to have had the same problems (or at least not to the same degree) – and maybe I was just unlucky enough to get two duff units, but it simply didn’t work for me, and every other tracker I’ve ever tried has.

You can also opt to turn on 24/7 heart rate tracking on the Trainer, which is displayed as a graph over time on the watch. But only on the watch – the data doesn’t get sent to the Movescount app or website, which makes it a tad pointless. As with cycling, I found this data to be less inaccurate than with running, but still higher than any other tracker I’ve used.

If you want even vaguely accurate data for any sport, you’d need to pair another sensor like a chest strap, which is simple enough, but defeats the point of having optical tracking in the device itself.

RECOMMENDED: Best Heart Rate Monitors

Using The Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR For Running

Before you start tracking your runs, you need to set up the sports profile on the Suunto website (or you can opt to use the basic running profile already set up on the watch). Any keen runner likes to fiddle with their data screens to show exactly what they want, but having to do so on a website and then connect the Spartan Trainer to a computer to sync the activity profile across seems unwieldy. You can set up the data screens for most GPS watches either on the device itself or an app that syncs with the watch wirelessly.

You can put up to seven data fields on each screen, which is great for in-run stat junkies. However, unless you are very sharp-eyed, I found it best to stick with a max of four data fields, as the Suunto screen isn’t large enough to see more than that clearly while you’re running. Four is plenty and you can add more screens to scroll through.

Once it’s all set up you click a button, wait for the GPS to lock on (which was always within 30 to 60 seconds for me, even when I was inside my flat just before a run), and head off. The GPS tracked my runs accurately and the lap screen is particularly well done on the Spartan Trainer, showing a clear breakdown of your splits. Intervals are also neatly displayed, if you set up the specific screen in your running sports mode on the website.

The intervals profile allows you to create basic workouts on the watch before running. This doesn’t extend beyond simple reps of distance or time, with the same recovery period in between. Other watches in this price range, such as the Polar M430, allow far more detailed workouts to be created – based on heart rate or pace, with a mix of interval lengths – and sent to the device, so Suunto is lagging behind here. It might be that it’s reserving that functionality for its higher-end watches, or it could arrive in an update. Hopefully the latter.

However, Suunto outshines the competition with its navigation capabilities. It’s easy to create a route online, or nab a popular one in your area, and send it to the Spartan Trainer to follow during a run. There are even heat maps for running and cycling so you can see the roads and trails people like to use.

If the idea of setting out on the same old route you've run a hundred times kills your motivation to run, you can go online and within a couple of minutes you’ll have another route ready on your watch. It’s very well executed on the Suunto, far better than on more expensive watches from other brands, making it a faff-less feature runners will use regularly.

After a run you can peruse all your details on the watch, app or website. As well as those you’d expect – pace, time, calories, heart rate – you also get your running cadence and an estimation of your recovery time and the training effect of your run, which is based on its intensity.

Unfortunately, if the heart rate is inaccurate, both the recovery time and training effect stats are effectively useless. I spent most of my runs in the maximal heart rate zone no matter how easy I was taking it, which meant I was constantly given huge recovery times.

At the end of each run, and indeed all activities, you can also select how you felt during it. This can be turned off easily enough, but it can be useful to monitor how easy or hard you are finding different types of runs over time. Be honest, though – you’re never going to feel excellent during a track sprints session.

RECOMMENDED: Best Running Watches

Once you’ve set it up, and you can have profiles for all kinds of running – indoor, trails, intervals – the Spartan Trainer is an excellent running watch. Aside from the heart rate failings, that is, which you can solve by pairing a chest strap with the device (but shouldn’t have to).

Through the Movescount app you can also create short Suunto Movies that show the details of your run – or indeed any GPS activity. These are great, especially if you like to share your activities.

Using The Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR For Cycling

As with running, you set up your cycling sports mode on the Movescount website. I should say modes – you can fine-tune several different types, including ride tracking focused on specific data like your cycling power or cadence (if you have the Bluetooth sensors required to measure those stats paired with the Spartan Trainer).

Connectivity with other sensors is vital for serious cyclists because you can’t track metrics like cadence or power from the wrist, so the Spartan Trainer boosts its triathlon and cycling credentials by being easy to pair and use with a variety of sensors.

There are also the same navigation features found in running modes, with a global heatmap of popular routes. However, it’s a little harder to follow a route on a bike even if you put the Spartan Trainer on your handlebars, because the screen is a little too small, which is to be expected on a tracker in this price range.

Using The Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR For Swimming

Both open-water and pool swimming are well supported on the Spartan Trainer, which even attempts to take a heart rate reading in the water. The results of the latter aren't great, but then you’d expect that from any optical wrist tracker.

Your swim stats will be recorded accurately, however. You’ll get distance, duration, laps, stroke rate, SWOLF and a host of other data you can set up on the website, and in the open water you’ll also get breadcrumb navigation to keep you on track. No-one wants to get lost in the water.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Waterproof Fitness Trackers For Swimmers

Using The Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR For Step Counting

The Spartan Trainer will notch up your daily step count and send all the details over to the Movescount app, so you can view your progress towards your daily goal (which is adjustable) on your phone or watch. Your step count is easily accessed on the watch at the click of a button, which takes you down to the daily activity screen. Although this is a watch designed for more athletic pursuits than hitting 10,000 steps daily, if step counting is key for you, it’s done well here.

Using The Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR For Calorie Counting

It turns out faulty heart rate tracking really can ruin a lot of things on a GPS watch. For example, a 48-minute run burns 689 calories on the Garmin Forerunner 935 (heart rate working correctly) but 1,550 calories according to the Suunto.

If you’re using a heart rate chest strap, or if the heart rate doesn’t measure anything at all, you’ll get more accurate calorie counts on each activity with the Spartan Trainer, which also gives a daily tally. Like other everyday tracking stats on the Trainer, it’s done well enough (when the heart rate is working), but it isn’t the focus of what is primarily a sports watch.

Using The Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR For Sleep Tracking

The Spartan Trainer will give you a basic time spent asleep number in the morning, which you can then view on the watch along with the time for each of the past seven days. That’s it, though – the data doesn’t currently show up on the app or website. That might change with later software updates, but for now the sleep tracking is pretty pointless, especially as the Spartan Trainer isn’t the most comfortable device to wear all night – you’ll certainly be aware of it on your wrist.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Sleep Trackers

The Movescount Website And App

The Movescount app is where you can check out your data from recent activities, create Suunto Movies and check in on your everyday tracking stats (bar 24/7 heart rate, which only resides on the watch). The website allows you to set up your sports modes and create routes. The Suunto syncs activities quickly over the air to the app and with the website when plugged in (though you also need to download the SuuntoLink programme to sync it with the website).

RECOMMENDED: The Best Health And Fitness Apps

You can also use the website to find training programmes and sync them to your calendar and watch. Unfortunately the sessions within those programmes are very basic compared with Garmin or Polar training programmes. You get distance, duration and an intensity (easy, moderate or hard) to follow, rather than proper intervals.

How Often Am I Going To Have To Charge It?

If you have the GPS setting on Best accuracy you’ll get eight to ten hours of life out of the Spartan Trainer. This can be extended to 30 hours if you reduce the accuracy of the GPS. Battery life when not training is a couple of weeks, though less if you have 24/7 heart rate tracking on.

If you run, cycle or swim outdoors five or more times a week, you’ll need to recharge the Trainer at least once to get through seven days, and probably twice if you commute by bike or run to work.

Where Can I Wear It Without People Laughing At Me?

Unless you opt for one of the wilder colour schemes, which include bright blue and a rather sickly green hue called Ocean, the standard Spartan Trainer is a nicely understated tracker. It’s still clearly a sports watch, but you won’t feel the need to stash it away from view it in between activities. If you pay the extra money for one with a metallic bezel, then it’s all the more stylish.

£219

Should I Consider Buying Something Else?

If you are a triathlete on a budget, the Spartan Trainer Wrist HR is a stand-out choice, even with the heart rate tracking issues I experienced (get a chest strap). If the heart rate works for you, then you’re quids in.

For runners, it depends on how much you value structured workouts. For me, they’re absolutely key and I would pick the Polar M430 (£199.50) over the Suunto on that basis alone, even though it’s not as stylish.

Then there's the all-conquering Garmin Forerunner 235 (£220-ish, shop around) and the very affordable TomTom Runner/Spark 3 Cardio (£179.99) to consider. The Spartan Trainer is better than all those three when it comes to its navigation features, but for most runners that’s less important than workouts and training programmes.

Suunto’s previous watches, the Ambit2 and Ambit2 S, were designed more for triathlon runners and hikers respectively, which may have put off more casual runners who wanted something to cover the basics. The Ambit2 R is Suunto’s response. It trims out many of the superfluous extras and cuts the price to compete with other running watches.

Getting started 

The Ambit2 R looks fairly understated, with a chunky plastic bezel surrounding a digital display. The LCD screen is easy to read in bright sunlight and has a backlight for those early-morning or late-night runs.

You can buy the watch with or without a bundled heart rate strap. It’s a Suunto ANT strap, which works only with Suunto devices, but the watch supports ANT+ so you can use any existing ANT+ strap and save yourself some cash by buying the basic Ambit2 R.

The watch comes in black or white, although the white model has a smaller wristband because Suunto says it expects more women to buy it over the black model. The wrist strap is made of rubber, with a single clasp and two small straps to stop the band flapping about. You’d need to have massive wrists to require the entire length of the black model’s strap, though, so most people should be fine with the white model.

Whichever version you choose, the watch sits fairly flush to your wrist and won’t get in the way if you wear a shirt with cuffs.

How does it work? 

Five buttons around the sides of the screen control the Ambit2 R. When you’re preparing for a run, tapping Start opens the main menu and tapping Next opens the exercise list. As well as a standard Running mode, you have the choice of trail, track, indoor, route and POI (or waypoint) runs, as well as a generic Other Sport mode.

Once you’ve selected an exercise the watch searches for a paired heart rate strap and a footpod if you have one. Pairing an ANT+ strap for the first time can take a few attempts, but once paired the watch should detect the strap in just a few seconds in future. The watch then searches for a GPS signal, which doesn’t take long thanks to clever location pre-caching every time you sync the Ambit2 to your PC.

While you’re on the move you can check your distance, pace, time, heart rate and lap progress, with the watch creating a lap when you press the dedicated Lap button. It even measures altitude and elevation using GPS, which is unusual in a watch at this price. Pressing stop once pauses your workout, so you can resume without losing any data, and pressing the back button stops and saves the run.

Syncing for data 

A USB cable is provided for charging the watch and syncing it with a PC or Mac. It locks on to the watch like a bulldog clip and isn’t likely to pop off accidentally. With GPS disabled you should get over two weeks of use on a single charge, but when using the watch as intended, you’ll get around eight hours on the maximum accuracy. Reducing the accuracy to Good, where the watch updates every five seconds, improves this to 12 hours, and dropping it further to OK should provide up to 25 hours on a single charge, although the GPS updates only once every 60 seconds.

Movescount, Suunto’s online portal, is where you’ll go to upload and analyse your workouts. There’s also a Movescount iOS app, but you can’t pair the Ambit2 R with a smartphone - you have to sync it with a PC to transfer your data to the Movescount website. Once you’ve installed the Moveslink 2 client, the watch syncs automatically every time you connect it to your computer. Having uploaded the data, you can delve into the details, with graphs, route maps and charts revealing every aspect of a particular run. Everything is clearly presented and sensibly arranged, making it easy to track progress over a given period or share your workouts with friends.

Movescount is fairly comprehensive, but Suunto also supports third-party apps, including MapMyFitness and Strava. If you’re used to a particular app or service, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to export your data to it.

It’s through Movescount that you can customise the Ambit2 R even further, downloading “watch apps” to add extra features and modes. There’s a huge number to choose from, and they can provide useful information such as the estimated sunset time, or warn you of an impending storm if the air pressure drops suddenly. It’s a pity some of these features aren’t included by default, but the fact that you can add them at all is great.

The MovesCount website also lets you define your own custom sports. With a little effort you can set up the Ambit2 R for cycling or another activity, even though it’s sold purely as a runner’s watch.

Verdict

On the surface, the Ambit2 R is a comprehensive runner’s watch with a few irritations such as a lack of Bluetooth and smartphone app support. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll be surprised at how customisable it can be. With user-created apps, custom activities and extra features that aren’t usually found in a watch at this price, it does just about everything we could want - you just have to explore the Movescount website thoroughly to get the most from it.

Score: 7/10
RRP: £205
Manufacturer: Suuntu

No watch can do your workouts for you, but the Suunto at least takes some of the guesswork out. The T6D's biggest perk is that it'll calculate your 'training effect', mixing your personal fitness profile with a real-time analysis of your levels of exertion to gauge how you are progressing and make on-the-spot adjustments. It'll also give you a readout of your excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which should, in theory, let you know instantly whether your session has been a success.
 
Training brain
Triathlon coach Joe Beer (coachjoebeer.com) brings some science to the sweat.
 
Find your maximum heart rate
'You need to know your maximum heart rate to get the full benefit of a monitor,' says Beer. 'Run for 12 minutes at your fastest constant pace, then check your average heart rate. It'll be 90 to 93 per cent of your maximum, so work out 100 per cent from that.'
 
Take it slow
'Endurance training - where your heart rate is below 80 per cent of its max - is crucial because your body can't go all out every session and it needs some longer and slower sessions to build a better base level of fitness,' says Beer. 'So when your monitor tells you to slow down, listen. Stick to your session plan and push harder next time.'

Download immediately
'Make downloading and evaluating the data a part of your workout,' says Beer. 'It takes five minutes and gives you an instant overview of how well you stuck to your training plan or where you went wrong in a race. This allows you to know what you need to do next time to get better.'

Price: £360