Is the Vertical as sub-standard as it seems?

Jamie BG

sorry - for some reason this was a delayed duplicate post - and as I can’t delete - have edited it out.

6294946

@Jamie-BG I think this is just a bit too convenient to say that whoever is complaining is just one of the unlucky 2 percent. What we would want to know is whether that rate is actually higher than 2 percent for suunto vertical than for other watches in 2023. My subjective reading is that for suunto vertical that number might be higher but of course it is very hard to say without having some systematic data. Obviously those who complain are going to be more active on the internets, but it is very different for apple watch which has millions of users and thus 2 percent leads to a lot of complaints vs suunto vertical which has much less users but still a lot of people raising the issue on this forum.

dombo

@6294946 I would say it is more complicated. I had lot of issues with my vertical when I bought it. I went directly to my training/holiday camp to mountains and was trying all features of the watch. Disaster, unusable,… Then I gave up on using suunto for biking and bought karoo bike computer. I still use basic features of the watch, using it on bike as backup recording device (imho very expensive backup), with navigation and maps just occasionally. no problem with watch lately. so as conclusion: more you use your watch, more problem you have.

isazi

@dombo I use my Vertical every day for sport, with S+ apps, guides, maps, and so on. I have used it for around 195 hours and just shy of 1500 kilometers. Zero issues, just one single crash while commuting to work. So, there are people using their watch a lot and not having issues

v.sacre

Same for me @isazi. At this point, nothing bad happened to my vertical.
I guess it is the case for most of the people.
But we tend to speak and remember only bad experience.

e6321

Not sure about display, I find it very readable. As far as MIP displays go I think its about as good as it gets.

Sleep tracking is useless, step tracking is useless, spo2 is useless and arguably ohr is aswell. Annoying but hey you dont buy a suunto for these (cue argument about why Suunto bothers)

Hardware wise I think the watch is great. GPS is the best ive seen (minus a few suspected software issues)
Barometer as far as I can tell so far is spot on, which is surprisingly difficult to find these days. Garmins is certainly subpar.

Software is lackluster and quite disappointed with Suunto slow update rate. Widgets really could do with being sped up and the fatal bugs really do need addressing.
Theyve been releasing buggy watches since the first ambit so don’t excuse this with the “software takes time to test” nonsense.

larrybbaker

@isazi I am in the same boat. The watch has performed flawlessly for me. One map/routing crash before the last update. Daily use. OHR very close to chest strap HR (Polar H10) if I position it on the wrist correctly. Sleep tracking fairly accurate as far as hours slept. SpO2 is correlated with what I get from my AW8.

This is my 5th Suunto and I have had only minor issues with any of them - most occurring around the transition from Movescount when SA was new.

altcmd

@larrybbaker good to hear. I don’t really care about OHR as I prefer to wear the Verity Sense or H10. Workouts have been fine but the interval Guides is a mess to be honest. I guess it helps Suunto tick a box but I sincerely hope this is improved. Navigation on maps continue to be a mess if using turn-by-turn. Still no swim drills. Interface very laggy and rather restrictive in many sense. These individually are small but stacking them all up makes me sad, but then this has been Suunto’s story ever since the demise of Movescount. Good if they can improve things but history says otherwise.

stromdiddily

@altcmd What’s the issue with t2t nav and the maps?

Brad_Olwin

@stromdiddily said in Is the Vertical as sub-standard as it seems?:

@altcmd What’s the issue with t2t nav and the maps?

I guess I would add what is a mess about Interval Guides? Which 3rd party are you using?

The screen lag issue I don’t get, what is the lag problem? I push the button and the screen changes. Is it instantaneous? no, neither is a screen switch instantaneous on my Apple Watch Ultra or on the Garmin Epix2 I owned. I guess I cannot tell the difference between these. When I open an app on my iPhone it is not instantaneous either. So far this has not caused me any harm.

altcmd

@Brad_Olwin and @stromdiddily
Guides: perhaps a personal preference but the TP guide target numbers do not show a range but the average point. And if doing a HR interval that is a narrow cross between zones, it is sometimes hard to discern the range one wants to keep. Of course I can remember then but that defeats the purpose of a Suunto guide let alone the watch. Out of range beeps or vibration is also missing.

TbT: discussed at length before so will no repeat again. Great if it works for you but I do not believe the navigation prompts Suunto gives is standard and as per what everyone else does on their watches.

Lags: my comparison is not to anyone but since you brought it up, I too have used a few Garmins in the last few years (7, 7S, 955) and the screen hiccups were not so noticeable as they are in Suunto. Again, I don’t care what others do here, but there is a noticeable lag on the vertical that was also the case on 9PP. Of course it does no ‘harm’ but just because Apple isn’t doing split second screen changes does not mean Suunto is in the clear. It’s a bit absurd if, not for the first time, some people have raised the issue and the response is a bit dismissive. Don’t worry, this isnt life threatening

Alarm, constant altimeter/compass calibrations, etc. but no point adding it on.

e6321

@altcmd the screen lags are particularly annoying. For checking things like altimeter or barometer, Its shouldn’t be a 7 second task of choppy scrolling through widgets.

Egika

@e6321 said in Is the Vertical as sub-standard as it seems?:

For checking things like altimeter or barometer, Its shouldn’t be a 7 second task of choppy scrolling through widgets.

You will like the next update

dombo

@isazi so then it must not be related to the firmware. and my (or our, who we are experiencing issues) watches are broken and should be replaced. or?

Mff73

@Egika
stop teasing, it is so frustrating

Likarnik

@Mff73 december is coming

Jamie BG

@6294946 - My point was more around that even apple watch whose OHR is sort of considered a gold standard - even they have issues, and even their watch OHR doesn’t work for everyone. There isn’t one OHR sensor that works well for everyone - its just a fact of life.

Per your statement - you really can’t consider apple like to like with fitness watches as the base market and requirements are completely different.
Assume there are 2m apple watch users its very liikely that 95% of that 2m wouldn’t even know if there HR sensor is working correctly for them or not (and more importantly don’t really care - they just care about closing their rings - so no no real care about HR and or tracking accuracy; its really the say 5% (plucking it out the air but could be right based on the apple watch users I know) that would be interested in OHR accuracy due to health and sport tracking and thus are more likely to complain.
The difference is that 95%-99% of fitness watch users are interested in how good their OHR is (1% is guys like ex pebble users who use garmin to get as close to their pebble exeperience as the can and other weird people who buy fitness watches for notification and long battery life). My point is you can’t compare apple base with fitness watch base. So its very likely that with the fitness watches you would have a much higher percentage of complaints than comparing total apple watch base - the trick is trying to compare to the apple watch base that actually cares about OHR.

altcmd

@Mff73 yeah. Been hearing that for a while already.

isazi

@Likarnik December 2024?

craigeggleton

@Egika Any sense of when the next update will be dropped?