What's wrong with my Suunto Ocean

[snajperist]

Watch was bought 2 months ago. So far I’ve experienced several issues that are quite annoying.

No-fly icon - I never did scuba diving but this red airplane icon appeared after 7 days of use. I tried to restart, shut down, but nothing works. Icon is still there.

Heart rate - one time before going to sleep, it showed 140 bpm. I was lying and I thought I was having a heart attack. But after restart it showed normal pulse of 60-70 bpm. Happened one more time and I had to restart it.

Altitude correction - takes 10 minutes outdoors and usually fails. It showed 7m when I was at sea level (my hand was literally 0.2m above the sea surface)

Sleep - yesterday I was watching TV for 1 hour, then I was active for at least 30 minutes before going to sleep. Everything was counted as if I were sleeping.

Steps - exactly 3 steps from chair to couch, it counts 7 steps plus 3 after I sit down. So 10 instead of 3 steps.

Compass - needs calibration almost always before using.

Shutdown - after shutting down, time is restarted to Jan 1 until I sync it with phone. Should it at least count time while being off, I mean it’s a watch…

Really don’t know if something is wrong with product I got. It wasn’t cheap and I expected such issues would never happen.

[Jonathan C]

@snajperist it helps to understand how most of these aspects work in the first place.

With the exception of the no-fly icon I can attempt to explain the rest.

Heart Rate
Suunto is known to not have the most reliable OHR sensors, but even if it does it’s fairly easy to pick up the wrong signals. Chest straps are much better but not foolproof either. In that case the most reliable HR sensor is the pulse check.

Altitude
Automatic correction uses GPS which is not very accurate for vertical positioning. Calibrate manually to known elevation.

Sleep
According to the manual, “Suunto Ocean tracks your sleep based on accelerometer data.” If you have been very idle during your TV session it is possible that the 30-minute activity could be treated as an awake period. Setting a sleep schedule on the watch that matches your own should anecdotally improve tracking accuracy.

Steps
Again, estimation based on accelerometer data. Suunto has a tendency to overshoot in the past but recent software seems to try make this more realistic.

Compass
Any device is subject to magnetic interference so ideally you would want it calibrated before every serious use case.

Shutdown
I agree with you on this.