Suunto Race S review after a week of use

sky-runner

I wore Suunto Race S for a week of activities along with my old Garmin Fenix 7X. Here is a comparative review. I know these are quite different watches, but I think there is still potentially some good feedback back to the Suunto development team. The reason I went with Race S is because it was inexpensive and it had a newer HR sensor. I thought that buying it wasn’t a large risk. I thought that if I liked it I’d use it for the next year and then upgrade to another Suunto watch with a larger battery, perhaps an upgraded version of Race if one is released later.

I should start by mentioning that I am an experienced trail ultra runner who has been using multiple different GPS watches in over 13 years of running. During my testing I did 5 trail runs of various distance and one gravel bike ride. 4 of the runs were on suburban trails and roads with rolling hills and one trails run - in mountains. The bike ride was on rolling hills too. All of these activities were partially on open terrain and partially under dense tree canopy.

Likes

I liked how lightweight and comfortable the watch is compared to my bulky Fenix 7X. It feels a bit small to me, but I could see myself wearing it.
I quite like the Amoled display, how crisp it is and much it is easier to read than MIP display of my Fenix considering my aging eyesight. However I wish the screen size was larger. Perhaps I’d be better off with Race.
I think that Suunto’s implementation of maps is excellent! I really liked how quickly it renders, how smoothly and accurately the map rotates. I also liked that the position on the map is accurate to the second. In comparison, map can be quite laggy on Fenix 7 and reportedly there is no improvement on Fenix 8. Great job!
Really like high contrast maps - very easy to glance at when running
Navigation experience was generally good. I really liked that on-route waypoints do sync from Strava. However the current way waypoint notifications work is suboptimal. I tested turn alerts during the bike ride and found them generally useful. I couldn’t look at the watch screen the entire time so having a chime alerted me about an upcoming turn. However. I think the same would be really annoying during a trail run with a lot of turns.
I found the scroll wheel to be useful. It is much easier and quicker, and more natural to zoom the map this way. I also liked that scrolling applies to the elevation profile too.
GPS track accuracy seems to be excellent - comparable to Fenix 7X track. When comparing the two, I couldn’t really pinpoint one being better than another.
Like pace accuracy with FusedSpeed. I think Suunto’s implementation of pace is more responsive and accurate than Garmin’s
Distance accuracy is generally good. I saw Race S distances consistently being 0.5-2% longer than Fenix 7X distances. I think that Garmin measures the distance a bit short and Suunto - a bit long. What’s interesting is that the GPX track distance is much closer between the two watches. For example, when I did a long trail run in the mountains, Suunto measured 17.73 miles and Garmin - 17.45 miles. However when I corrected distances for both in Strava (which is based on the recorded track), Garmin’s distance changed to 17.55 and Suunto’s - to 17.59.
I rather liked the overall watch UI - the way colors are used, etc. It felt modern and not over the top like what we see on Garmin Amoled devices.

Dislikes

I think that the total ascent (elevation gain) calculation is too conservative. During all actitivies, Suunto’s total ascent number was consistently lower than Garmin’s by anywhere between 5% and 15%. I closely watches both devices side by side when running on variable terrain, and based on my observation I think that Garmin is more accurate. I think that Suunto generally loses a bit of elevation gain when beginning a climb and when finishing a climb. So over time the difference becomes larger and larger. When running on a rolling terrain with a lot of small hills, the difference may end up being quite significant. For example, when doing my bike ride, Suunto measured 1196 feet of ascent and Garmin - 1342. When I did a long trail run the difference was also about 200 feet - 3863 feet vs. 4096. Again, the difference isn’t a function of the actual total ascent but rather a number of climbs.
I think wrist HR does have issues and generally less accurate than Garmin’s wrist HR despite the watch being smaller and lighter. For example, at some point during a climb that power hiked I saw Suunto showing my HR in the 80s. At the same time Garmin showed it in 140s, which was way more realistic. For the entire long trail run, Suunto’s average HR was 124 and Garmin’s - 137. I think the Garmin number is definitely more accurate. Similarly, I saw Suunto’s HR to lock to cadence when running at some point and being stuck at 150-160s while in reality it was 30-40 bpm lower.
I didn’t like that Race S can sync only 20 Strava live segments as opposed to 100 in Garmin case. 20 is a very small number. The main problem with that is that I can’t control which 20 segment it would sync. When I attempted to sync Race S with Strava, the selection of segments was rather random. I typically have 50-70 segments starred on Strava. To control segment sync with Race S I’d have to unstar most of them Strava and then star only the ones I want being synced before each run. That would be very annoying. Furthermore, once I unstar segments on Strava, it would be nearly impossible to find some of them again. That is more of the Strava issue, but having a very small number of segments makes it much worse for how I use Strava.
Another huge dislike is that running downhill segments aren’t synced to Race S. Despite what Strava says in their documentation, downhill running segments do sync to Garmin watches. They lifted that restriction about 2 years ago. Perhaps there is a difference in how Suunto pulls segments from Strava. I live in a hilly area, so not syncing downhill segments means that about half of all segments are excluded.
Made in China rather than Finland

Annoyances

The elevation profile implementation could be better. The profile is too compressed vertically considering its height on the screen, so there is almost no difference in the appearance, whether it is a climb or a downhill. It is difficult to understand it just by glancing at the screen. I think Garmin’s implementation in Climb Pro is much better. In particular, I like different colors used for different gradients in Garmin’s Climb Pro.
How difficult it would be to allow to customize each unit separately? The choice is either metric or imperial. I mostly prefer imperial units since I started running in the USA, but I still prefer temperature in Celcius. Also, I’d like the vertical speed unit to be in feet/min rather than feet hour. I know I can use a special feet/min vertical speed data fields. But that doesn’t apply everywhere, for example in the SuuntoPlus Climb app. In general, having multiple different data fields for the same metrics but with different units is a poor workaround. Giving users ability to customize units (like it was available in Ambit software) would be a better solution.
Really annoyed by having a bunch of predefined sport modes that cannot be adjusted. If I wanted to tweak a sport mode a little bit I have to start from scratch. Also, having “Basic” in each sport mode name is silly and redundant. It would be better to allow editing each sport mode but have a “Restore to default” option.
It is 2024, and Suunto should not require users to manually enter magnetic declination. How many users even know that it needs to be entered to get accurate magnetic compass bearing and map orientation? In the place where I live the magnetic declination is 16 degrees, so it affects the map orientatio in a very noticeable way. I think that magnetic declination should be pushed to the watch by the app, perhaps at the same time when it updates satellite orbits.
Compass periodically loses calibration, perhaps due to the magnetic charger. I observed that on 9 Baro and I have also observed that on Race S.
Don’t like the strap with pushpin. Including a nylon strap would be a much better option, and that would make the watch even lighter.
Shouldn’t pull all starred routed from Strava by default. Only newly starred routed should be synced.
Missing the Up Ahead feature from Garmin. It would be great to have it. This is an ability to see multiple upcoming waypoints with distances to them on a single screen.
Didn’t like that I had to enter my HR zones on the watch as opposed to the app. The same applies to some other user biometric settings.
Lack of the Web UI. I know this has been discussed a lot. However I do still use Web UI quite a bit, especially when I need to import or export some data, such as a GPX route. I know that I can run Suunto App on an Apple laptop, but that doesn’t work as well as a Web UI running in a browser.

Conclusions

Considering a few dislikes of things that are important to me, I am not ready to switch back to Suunto yet and will continue using my Fenix 7X as my primary device. I am still deciding whether to return Race S or keep it.

What I’d really prefer is perhaps a watch with a larger display (e.g. Race), with titanium body, and nylon strap, and with an improved HR sensor, and all things that I liked about Race S. Also, the conservative calculation of total ascent has to be addressed because it is perhaps the main showstopper. That was one thing that really annoyed me when I owned 9 Baro. What would it take to make the ascent calculation more accurate?

From observing my Garmin, I think that Garmin’s algorithm analyzes the trend of the altitude change over the last 10-20 seconds which allows it to effectively filter out changes in elevation that dont’ fit the trend e.g. due to arm swinging or wind gusts. Often I can see that it adds the last bit of ascent once I’ve already crested a hill and started running down. Because of that it is sensitive enough to pick up smaller changes in elevation e.g. 5-6 feet (1.5-2 meters) without false positives. I can see that the ascent calculation algorithm used in Race S has improved compared to what I saw in 9 Baro, but I think that it is still too concervative. For example, Race S ascent numbers are even more conservative than ones that come from DEM based elevation gain in Strava and Caltopo. A number that comes from a barometer sensor has to be more accurate than that.

JonasLarsson

Thanks for putting in the work.