Suunto

Sport swatch worthy of the Suunto brand – I have owned and used a Suunto Ambis S3 for approx. 7 years and it never let me down, after years of use, a couple of wrist straps, a new charging… Read more

cable (the old clamp broke when I accidentally stood on it) when the chest strap for the heartrate monitor stopped working I decided it was time for something new.

Initially I tried an Apple watch (reviews of that is here on product review as well) but quickly came to the realization that's a smart watch, not a sports watch.... and smart watches that tell me when I need to stand up / have lunch / tie my shoe laces are REALLY not my thing. After that I decided to buy another Suunto.

The good Especially after having used an Apple watch this watch feels solid (I didn't like the flimsy crown of the Apple watch nor the screen that feels very scratch resistant), the Suunto feels like it will last me for years and years similar to the Ambit 3 I had earlier. While this is highly personal I think the watch is one of the better looking sports watches , it's perhaps not as flashy as an Apple watch or one of those ridiculously expensive Garmin Marq watches,i like the way it looks especially with the chronometer face.

Apart from the sturdiness and the 9very subjective) looks, I feel this watch has a few significant benefits as a sports watch: 1) The sports modes are very customizable (this is one of the main reasons I bought this watch and it is in a different league than an Apple watch). Suunto lets you modify screens, the number of screens, add sports modes as you see fit and show whatever metric you want in whatever order you want. To give an example: I like running and have always checked my speed in km/h instead of min/km (don't know why, I just do) and with my Suunto if can show either one or show both side by side. While this may sound like something fairly trivial, in my opinion this is the difference between knowing exactly what you want to know in a split second or getting frustrated with having to push buttons and switch between screens while working out.

2) The Suunto App is very easy to use, is free and provides all the statistics you really want and then some, again much more detail than whatever app I used with the Apple watch....... other than Strava (which i think is great too) but Strava requires payment if you want all the tools which the Suunto app doesn't.

3) Battery life is great. Modern smart watches can do all sorts of fancy stuff (track your heart rate, operate your speaker system, pay your bills and respond to whatsapp messages...... just haven't been able to get it to do the laundry) but this will have a (very) detrimental impact on battery life. As with my previous Ambit S3, the battery life on this watch is good. If I don't use GPS (i.e. when I don't use it for runs) it will easily last a couple of days without a charge, with a run it will still last a day and a bit comfortably.

4) The in-built heartrate monitor that doesn't need a chest strap anymore is also great (I've never been a big fan of those straps as I don't think they're very comfortable) although I'm pretty confident it's not as accurate as using a chest strap I still much prefer it to a strap (I'm no Olympic athlete so accuracy is not really all that important).

Furthermore the watch also has a few smart watch functions that I really like such as Google pay (in Sydney you can pay for public transport using your watch, I don't even need to get my phone out of my pocket anymore it's brilliant and works very well), ability to control music when using Bluetooth headphones (handy when working out) and receiving messages on thee phone.

The Bad The only thing I do not like about the watch is that the software hasn't proven to be flawless to say the least. After a few days the watch didn't want to pair with my phone anymore and whatever I did did not want to connect. For some reason it stopped finding my phone; The only thing that worked was resetting the watch and while that's easy enough it wipes all the settings (even it linked to the app on the phone for some reason it doesn't save those). This happened again a few weeks later and a full reset resolved the issue.

In my humble (and perhaps rather uneducated) opinion half-baked software development is pretty common these days and Suunto seems to be no exception to that (we just bought a new "Smart" TV that was also a lot less smart than it allegedly should have been and required a number of resets and downloads of software before it started working as it should..... our car had similar software related issues).

The Ugly There are two things that I think Suunto could improve on: 1) The charging "dock"; You need to check 3 times to ensure the watch charges properly, even when the magnet attaches the watch to the dock it doesn't mean the metal pins are aligned (I have had a few occasions where I wanted to use the watch and it wasn't charged). Furthermore because the "dock" is very small and weighs not a lot (it's a glorified USB plug really) you can never get it to sit flat or sit at all on anything without the watch laying on it. While this may seem trivial, I can assure that after this charging dock has slipped behind the table it was laying on AGAIN after I picked up the watch, it gets pretty annoying. Why does Suunto even provide one of these things; Is it not a lot easier and cheaper to just have a USB-C connection or (dare I suggest it) a lighting connection? Would also allow me to charg mywatch while travelling / in the office / etc. without needing to bring the dock. 2) Price; I bought my watch at a massive discount that made it extremely good value (thank you JB Hifi!!) but far-out this thing is expensive without a discount...... I probably still would have bought it but it would have taken me a lot longer to convince myself.

Overall this is a great great sports watch that does everything I want it to do and then some and it also does it well. Some minor niggles but nothing that would prevent me from buying one again (although I hope it's going to take a while before I have so I can save up a bit ;) ).

Almost a great watch – The Suunto Core is a good quality watch with simple but well considered features and intuitive functionality. It is not really a smart watch, but… Read more

more of a digital watch with extra features. It also runs on a battery so doesn’t need constant recharging like most smart watches. As a military style or adventure style watch is seems durable and is a good size with 49mm diameter face. I found it reasonable value at $240 from the Good Guys. My only criticism is the exact same criticism I read in other reviews in that the digital display is very dull and difficult to read in poor light. The ‘light’ button offers little extra brightness. Unfortunately, the display quantity is critical for a watch and this is a deal breaker for me. I don’t recommend this watch. If the display was brighter this would be a very good quality, reliable, tough and practical everyday watch.