Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical

Simon

I know, this hardly justifies creating an extra topic, but maybe it helps Suunto to make better decisions in the future. I’ve been a huge fan of Suunto watches since the Altimax. I’ve owned the Vertical for 5 days now and did three different activities with it: A multisport hike & fly, mountaineering, and road cycling. In every of these activities the watch failed miserably - and always for different reasons.

The hardware itself is really cool. But the software is so extremely faulty that I see zero chance that even the worst bugs will be fixed within a whole year. The map, for example, is so unreliable that I wouldn’t dare taking the map as a backup solution in case of an emergency (e.g. white out in the mountains and the main map got lost).

If it was only about some low priority issues… But many of the main functions of the watch are unreliable and faulty. The Suunto way in the past was to offer a reliable product with far less tools than other brands (Garmin, Coros, Polar…). But what was offered did work really well. But product quality has degraded over time. My S9P is okay. It does have bugs, but I really love the navigation, which - despite not having maps - works much, much better than navigation on the Vertical. And the core functions are mostly reliable.

Time to look at the Fenix 7 for me … Never used a Garmin watch before and maybe I won’t like it and will stick with the S9P. But the poor quality of the Vertical brought me to this point. And despite I always wholeheartedly recommended Suunto to my friends, I can’t do this now. Too big is the disappointment in recent company decisons.

Cheers! My Vertical Titanium is now for sale for 515 EUR

And by the way: Also the latest Vertical firmware update from today is a disappointment. Map still doesn’t work reliably; still seeing the “black screen of death”.

isazi

@Simon said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:

The hardware itself is really cool. But the software is so extremely faulty that I see zero chance that even the worst bugs will be fixed within a whole year. The map, for example, is so unreliable that I wouldn’t dare taking the map as a backup solution in case of an emergency (e.g. white out in the mountains and the main map got lost).

Interesting, I have used the map in various countries and had zero times it did not work. I even moved from one map to another (crossing border between provinces in my country) and also in that case zero issues.

Luis Andés Olmedo

@Simon I do have quite a different opinion of Vertical.

I have it for 8 days now:
1 long trail run navigating a route
1 day of MTB
1 day of strength workout
4 days of running using Humango S+ guide

No issues and coming from Garmin Fenix 5, 6, 6x and 7 I must say that maps are way clearer and more legible in the Vertical.

That’s my experience

nseslija

@Simon I have the watch for over the month now… Hiking, road cycling, walking, indoor activities… The watch performed really well, the maps are great, OHR is much better then on S9B… GPS accuracy great…0 failures…

SuperFlo75

I have my SV for about 5 weeks now, and no issues with this watch. Reading in this forum, I just wondered several times about the reported issues… just crazy. I didn‘t update the Firmware today, because I didn‘t have the time today, and I‘m at 30% battery now after one time full charging the 16th may… I wanted to charge again when it is below 15%… I like the endurance of the battery!

Tieutieu

No issues at all, on month, 65 hours of various exercices, 500km, 15000D+.
No Bug.
@simon I dont understand what do you mean by « Maps not reliable ».

Simon

@isazi Reading through the “Vertical bug collection” thread here, it seems to be a quite common issue. I was expecting that it’s a rather rare thing and that we see a concentration of bug reports here. But at least for me, the maps failed on a multitude of ways. And sadly, it’s not only the map. The bugs are allover the operating system. But to mention a few specific issues with the maps:

Quite often I saw the black background with white squares. Typically, a soft reset is required to solve this, which interrupts the activity and takes time.
The details of the maps are too low for off-the-grid navigation, e.g. for glaciers or remote mountains. The map in such places is almost useless.
Same for cities and complex structures. Today, I missed the track for a short wile and looked on the map to find the best way back. Turns out, if you see, for example, a bridge over a river, which is connected to your road on the map, it’s not necessarily truly connected. My road passed right under the bridge and there was no way getting onto it . The map didn’t have that level of detail to see this. My real map on the phone does, of course.
The already taken path, the solid red line, is shown above the blue route. And on a round trip, it’s not uncommon that parts of the track are shared on the way to and from the furthest point. Since all lines are solid, this gets quite confusing even after passing the same part of the route twice. After only two passes, there’s nothing left of the blue and you can hardly see the white arrows that help with upcoming turns. The S9s have a dotted line for the taken path. That seems to work better. But maybe there’s a reasons not using a dotted line on the map.
The max scale of 500 m is far too little. If you have lost the track or deliberately choose to deviate from it, it can be tedious to find the track again by panning around. Even the Ambit 3 Peak could show you the whole track with your position in one screen, which can be really helpful. It’s quite perfect on the S9s. Yeah, it certainly can be a performance issue with the map. But you don’t need the map background for such an overview. And why is the zoom out even then limited to 500 m when turning the map completely off? I would suggest to keep the no-map navigation exactly the same as it was with S9 and before.

isazi

@Simon I am not talking about “reading here and there”, I am talking about my experience using the watch every day for a month. Of course your experience is different and as valid as mine, but that does not change that my experience is very positive so far.

Simon

@Luis-Andés-Olmedo Yeah, I can imagine about the Garmin maps :'-D Maybe I just stick with the S9P.

Obviously, the watch works for some and doesn’t for others. Weird I’m only using custom sport modes, but except for that, my use cases are pretty trivial. Not even using guides or apps.

Tieutieu

@Simon said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:

@isazi Reading through the “Vertical bug collection” thread here, it seems to be a quite common issue.

You’re right it is a quite common issue…for those expressing in that thread.

Concerning Maps, the Watch was released a month ago, some things that you miss are well known, I’m sorry again but don’t get why you bought it if that were things that seems so important to you (500m zoom, details level…)

Concerning « black map » it should have been solved with the update ; just try one soft reset, it should work

isazi

@Simon BTW it is very appreciated by everyone that you shared your experience, and when I say that my experience is different is not to diminish the value of yours or patronize you, it is just to present a different one, because people with good experiences are usually less vocal and this ends up in just increasing the bias of people reading the forum.

Mitch9

@Simon Sorry, but I really can’t understand your listed issues.

Why do you compare it with a smartphone (totally different screen size and level of detail!)?

What’s your navigation problem if you do a round trip?

Just test the watch open-minded with the hotfix release and you will get an other result!

lessthanmore

@Simon said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:

The bugs are allover the operating system.

But you are solely mentioning maps, maps and maps.
What are the other bugs that are “allover the system”?

Please don’t get me wrong but if you read the thread that you are referring to, you will see that there are only 2-3 people stating the bug. I’d say it’s the minority.
I can only say that I had 1-2 bugs (e. g. white/ empty activity when starting an activity, slow OS).
Based on reading here several threads I’m actually waiting for the watch to restart/ fail but it did not happen yet

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

The 500m is a real bummer for me as well but will change.

About the details on the maps it also depends on open street maps. We could improve those if needed. But glaciers … I wonder what area.

Simon

@Tieutieu I wanted to try it. I wasn’t sure if the 500 m scale or the missing details are issues for me.

@isazi Thanks! Yeah, I’m sure the watch works for the majority. Would be terrible if not. But it still seems to have far more bugs than previous Suunto products.

@Mitch9 I just mentioned the Smartphone map to express that the Vertical map is not just missing details, but it can be misleading, if not to say wrong.

About the round trip: I was a bit confusing there :'-D Hard to explain. If you pass over the same part of the map several times, you can’t see the map there any more and neither can you see the planned route or the direction arrows. NOt a big issue. But a dotted line could be a better choice for the taken track.

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos For glaciers, the map needed some details like altitude values along the contour lines or names of huts and summits. It’s not a bug and not Suunto’s “fault”. The map is what it is, but it doesn’t work well as an emergency backup there. As a positive, the map movement is quite smooth and rotation when turning around is totally fluent, that’s cool - and that wouldn’t be possible with more details on it - given the current hardware.

Is there a plan to increase the 500 m limit in the very near future?!?

@lessthanmore To mention a few other issues I had: The heart rate intensity display doesn’t work well. The current HR is fine, but the values for the upper and lower zones are often wrong; sometimes they just say 0 or they are not visible at all. Weird! After soft reset/reboot, certain audio alarms are enabled, despite being disabled before. The compass was once suddenly totally off - and I don’t think I had any magnets on me that could have caused that. Then, during navigation, the watch sometimes gave the warning “You are off course”, when I wasn’t or just due to GPS-inaccuracy in a city. The screen immediately switched to “You are on course again”. Both screens are blocking view on the map for too long - or you have to press the middle button to dismiss them, which is annoying. Personally, I would so much love to disable these warnings altogether! But that’s a complaint I have since the Ambit 3 Peak …

Simon

Thank you all for your honest and kind feedback and advise! It is interesting to see that the watch does work flawlessly for some.

babychai

@Simon “You are off course” & immediately switch to “You are on course” happen few times to my S9P and Spartan Trainer when i go to hiking. So not only happen to SV.

Now i’m wearing both watch S9P & SV for hiking. Those message are also appear both of my watch at the same time although i’m still on the right track. So i guess is a GPS accuracy issue ‍️

boudaj

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos
As for maps, is there possibility to download different types of OSM maps except for those offered in Suunto app? There are different OSM maps with all kinds of specific details. It is possible to download them e. g. to Garmin watches.
.

mikekoski490

@babychai said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:

@Simon “You are off course” & immediately switch to “You are on course” happen few times to my S9P and Spartan Trainer when i go to hiking. So not only happen to SV.

It was also something that both my Garmin Fenix 6X did and Coros Vertix 2 as well. Suunto does it less, but those other 2 companies may have improved in the past year too.

Łukasz Szmigiel · S9PP 2.37.48

@boudaj I think it’s not a matter of maps but just different layer visibility and / or colors.