The watch is great in most respects. If you are into endurance events, the battery life is fantastic and unmatched, navigation is very accurate, and the Bluetooth connections I've tried have all worked. I believe it's the best available GPS watch on the market. However, it does have a couple of significant drawbacks:
1) The wrist-based heart rate monitor is truly useless unless you are holding perfectly still; it does not work *at all* for running. The user manual also says that flexing your muscles at all will cause it to be inaccurate. I've tried wearing it high on my arm, wearing it under a band to keep out ambient light, and so on. Nothing works, honestly. The reviewers who say it "kind of works" probably haven't compared it to a chest strap monitor, which actually does work.
2) Suunto's chest strap HR monitor is a bit glitchy. When it works, it's wonderful. I find I can mostly rely on it and it has plenty of battery life even for 100-mile races and longer, but it will occasionally lose connection with the watch, or more commonly it will develop a bad connection either with my skin or perhaps between the monitor unit and the strap, and it will register ridiculously high measurements until I notice it and give it a nudge. Strangely, that happens even when I am sweating and the connection should be excellent. And yes I wash the strap regularly--I've run over 1000 miles with it so I know all of the tricks. That means that many of my runs include short segments where the HR is nonsense. It's just not a perfect system, as is obvious from the multitude of complaints online by owners.
3) Who owns your data? Suunto has introduced a new phone-only app called Suunto App, and have announced that they will phase out the older Movescount App (which runs on both phones and computers). With Movescount, you can download your data, but with the new app you can't. Some of the larger manufacturers such as Nike and Apple don't let users export their own fitness data. Is Suunto following their lead? If you care about having access to your own data in the future, it's a question you should ask the company before buying a watch.
Add a debit or credit card to save time when you check out
Convenient and secure with 2 clicks. Add your card
Customers also viewed these products
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Videos
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
Videos for this product
2:11
Click to play video
SUUNTO Unisex's 9 Baro Titanium
Merchant Video
Videos for this product
0:21
Click to play video
suunto 9 Video
Merchant Video
Top reviews from other countries
KlaB
Très belle montre malgré que le bracelet fait un peu jouet !
Reviewed in France on September 12, 2021
KlaB
Reviewed in France on September 12, 2021
La batterie «intelligente » est loin d’être aussi performante que la Spartan Ultra.
Images in this review
Ipsemet
Pas de véritable entraînement à uploader !
Reviewed in France on January 20, 2020