Suunto Vertical is here

shampoo

Audaxjoe

@shampoo said in Suunto Vertical is here:

Hello !

I currently own the first version of the Apple Watch.

I run on average 10-12hrs a week. My coach and I use Final Surge as a platform for obtaining my workouts and results.

I have two questions. The first is, given my usage pattern… Basic watch for most of the time and 10-12hrs of outdoor running. As a ballpark figure, how many days do you think I can go without needing to charge ? With my Apple Watch Ultra, I can go a day and a half… often less as I stream podcasts and music via LTE. I wouldn’t obviously be doing this with the Suunto.

I do very similar, about 15 hours on average. With all notifications on, HR tracking sleep etc I normally charge once a week. The battery is never near empty.

shampoo

@Audaxjoe Thanks

What I like about the Apple Watch Ultra is that I don’t have to bring a phone. If my wife needs to call me, I am available… Back around Christmas, I got injured with IT Band syndrome 10km’s away from home and I was able to call a cab and pay for it with my watch… So I have to decide if this convenience is worth it when compared to the battery life. It"s not so much that I have to charge it often, it’s that I have to always plan ahead if I have enough better for the run… If I stream music during say a 1h45 minute run, I can go through 70% battery… So I basically have to be sure I have that much… I would just like to not have to think about it so much.

Are you all bringing your phones with you ? Cash ? Or you’ll just figure it out when/if you get injured on a run ?

Audaxjoe

@shampoo personally I’d just carry my phone, in a waist pouch thing, I don’t notice it is there. I’d also go out without my phone!
But I have never had a full on “smart” watch.
Choice you make I guess.

With the Vertical you would not notice the battery drain on an hour and a half run.

Tieutieu

@shampoo I also bring my phone in a belt pouch or in my shorts when they have pockets. For music I bring my wings.

slurpnik

Hello, long time lurker here. I finally got myself Vertical Solar, after watching and reading every review and discussion about it I felt I knew exactly what to expect. Still, a few things surprised me I wanted to share after one day of use and testing.

The Good
Not to repeat what is known - the build quality is great, weight is spot on, watch looks awesome … What surprised me is how comfortable it is. I have very small wrists, yet it is MUCH more comfortable than my previous Garmin Instinct. I even wore it during night and it was perfectly fine. I did not expect that - magic, but it works! If someone has small wrists and is unsure, I’d suggest this will not be an issue. Also buttons are just amazing. Battery is fantastic - with my usage (and with settings: brightness medium, standby off, raise to wake low, HR on) it dropped 1% after one day. Weird, but I’m not complaining!

The bad
USB-A charging cable in the box felt … legacy? Dated? I know we’re not saving much of the environment since the magnetic puck is proprietary, but I can barely find a USB-A charger in my household and it’s going to be worse going forward. Mixed feelings.

Then I tried setting up wifi to download maps, and for whatever reason it only saw every wifi of my neighbors except mine. It took me a long while to figure out that WPA3 authentication was the problem. Once I switched it to WPA2, it found the WiFi network and it worked. I don’t think it’s a big deal, I’m obviously not happy I had to downgrade security of the network, but I don’t like that it was the gotcha and not documented anywhere that I’ve seen. This is a really good article on setting up WiFi https://www.suunto.com/en-gb/Support/faq-articles/suunto-app/how-can-i-download-offline-maps-to-my-suunto-watch/ which mentions issues with 5Ghz and networks with captive portal as common pitfalls. Since WPA3 is mandatory on routers since 2020 and people should really be using that, I think this could be improved.

The Ugly
I expected the UI lag, but it still surprised me. It’s not great at all (yes on latest firmware), and it took away quite a bit of excitement and joy from the new watch. I can see why some people not expecting it might be very disappointed. My current plan is to just get used to it until I don’t notice it - after all, it does not affect functionality, only user experience.

Lastly, once I downloaded maps, I quickly noticed that in my area near my home there are four perfectly straight lines running through the map:

I scrolled the map for a long time, it looks like they connect to some road in distant city on one end, and abruptly end in a field on the other end. Other than that, these four lines seem to run perfectly straight through any terrain across the whole region for dozens if not 100+ kilometers. I reported this to support, they advised to delete and redownload the map, which did not resolve the issue. Then they advised to check online maps to see if these are not roads - I wasn’t offended by that request, people report weird things, but sadly that’s not the case either. I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere yet, I hope that it will be fixed now that it’s properly reported to support. If there’s anything I can to to help debug this, I’d love to help. This left me with very mixed feelings at the end of my first day with watch.

So that’s it, I am unfortunately sick and couldn’t take it out for sports yet, but looking forward to making friends with my new Vertical Lastly, thanks for being a great community, it was one of the factors for the buy!

Tieutieu

@slurpnik welcome among SV users !
About White lines on maps, I’ve also noticed one on a walk in a town few days ago. Not at all zoom levels. Strange. That was the first time I had it.

slurpnik

@Tieutieu Thank you! Glad to be here!

Regarding lines: mine are present at all zoom levels.

Mitch9

@slurpnik said in Suunto Vertical is here:

@Tieutieu Thank you! Glad to be here!

Regarding lines: mine are present at all zoom levels.

Have you found the lines on OSM?

slurpnik

@Mitch9 No. I did check OpenStreetMaps first since I know it’s the source of data for maps on SV, but there is simply nothing that runs in a straight line for dozens of kilometers across the whole region - not road, not electricity lines, no paths…

sartoric

@slurpnik
if you search the forum you’ll find a similar issue reported.
those could be some map boundaries wrongly tagged in OSM.

https://forum.suunto.com/topic/10389/black-straight-line-in-map/7?_=1711272008783

So, you should check OSM

isazi

@slurpnik for the map, please send the coordinates of where you see these artifacts to @pavel-samokha and he can check

slurpnik

@isazi Thank you for advice I sent a direct message to @pavel-samokha

Swaddy61

@slurpnik I’m a little puzzled about the UI lag, even though you are on the latest software. I had a Coros Apex Pro before the Vertical, and once I updated the SV firmware I would say the lag is no different to the Coros, and MUCH better than it was on the earlier firmware. Not sure how much faster it could be - there is ‘some’, but negligible. What watch did you have before?

I certainly could not comment that it was the worst aspect of the watch!

slurpnik

@Swaddy61 I had the first version of Garmin Instinct. Nothing fancy, pretty old now but did the job. You actually made me curious so I recorded these two videos where I think you can see the difference:

This is SV:
vertical.mp4

and this is old Instinct:
instinct.mp4

But as I said, I am committed to getting used to it In the grand scheme of things, it’s easier to get used to small lag than it is to deal with shorter battery life when in the mountains. It’s about tradeoffs, and I knew what I’m buying.

Swaddy61

@slurpnik In that case it is definitely good that you didn’t see the original lag with the old software!! Your video is an accurate representation, and obviously different things are important to different people. Either I am used to it, or found it so much better than before, that now it doesn’t even register as a lag.

I came from the Coros, which was also a good watch, but overall I am much happier with the SV (still have the Coros as a spare) and it’s features / build quality etc.

GPS accuracy, battery life and the Suunto App were big drivers for me to change to the SV. The SV isn’t perfect, but it is mighty close - for MY needs!

Tami999

@slurpnik said in Suunto Vertical is here:

@Swaddy61 I had the first version of Garmin Instinct. Nothing fancy, pretty old now but did the job. You actually made me curious so I recorded these two videos where I think you can see the difference:

This is SV:
vertical.mp4

and this is old Instinct:
instinct.mp4

But as I said, I am committed to getting used to it In the grand scheme of things, it’s easier to get used to small lag than it is to deal with shorter battery life when in the mountains. It’s about tradeoffs, and I knew what I’m buying.

Thanks for that! Yeah first time Suunto lag made me return my Peak 9. Than later i ordered Peak Pro 9, and just after few days I be able to buy Vertical solar with huuuge discount. I get used to lag a bit… well i think its not actually a lag, but low refresh rate when scrolling/using buttons (to save battery?). Watch response instant but animation seems laggy, like low refresh or something. The difference between SV and Instrinct is big!

slurpnik

Update for 2.33.12
Since I recorded the two videos above, Suunto has released a new update with better UI responsiveness, so I decided to record the same video on the new release:

Previous version:
vertical-2.30.38.mp4

New version:
vertical-2.33.12.mp4

To be honest after the initial disappointment, after three days with the watch AND especially after this update, I would consider this issue resolved (at least for me!) I hope this helps community and those who are reading and deciding.

One more insight I wanted to share is about sleep tracking. Since I was sick, I was taking pills during night and I set an alarm on the watch for 4:30 in the morning to take medicine. After alarm woke me up, SV thought we’re done sleeping and showed me the morning report, however I just took the pills and went back to bed. When I actually woke up in the morning, the sleep length was adjusted, and all times were absolutely spot on!! I think I did quite a bit to confuse it, yet it worked very reliably. Very nice job with the algorithm!

Tami999

@slurpnik For me UI is much faster but not perfect (I get used to previous update UI speed). When You scroll down like once per 1-2s. Its perfect, but if u click like fast 5 clicks in row down button its lag a bit. Iam happy so far with today progress, and will dont mind if in future it even more speed up. Good work Suunto.

slurpnik

I apologize if this was mentioned, I tried searching forum for “icons” and no luck:

Is there any article that shows what various icons in activity screens mean on Vertical?

I found https://www.suunto.com/en-gb/Support/Product-support/suunto_spartan_sport/suunto_spartan_sport/getting-started/icons/ but it does not include the icons I don’t understand. Thank you in advance!