DC Rainmaker Review
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If someone is willing to pay me for my time, I’m sure I can find (1) reviews from DCRainmaker that criticize Garmin and (2) reviews from DCRainmaker that are overall positive on non-Garmin watches, for those that seem to have missed them and have what seem like weird observations.
I do recall Ray having done both in the past; actually, part of why I bought the Suunto Race S was generally good thoughts from Ray and DesFit on the model. The only minorly negative point was some concerns on the HRM, but as someone who uses a chest strap and wanted to use ZoneSense which required that, I only needed the watch’s HRM to be accurate outside of sessions.
It seems some are simply unwilling to accept any criticism of Suunto; the Race S had a more basic non-titanium version, the Race 3S does not, so the price doesn’t go as low as it previously did. That’s a valid thing to note for those who don’t care about titanium and would prefer a cheaper option.
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DCR, aka Garmin “promoter”, seems to have missed the original pricing of the Titanium Race S at USD 450. Actually DCR seems to missed the existence of the Titanium version altogether, while DesFit at least mentioned it, but also made the wrong price comparison of 350 vs. 600 USD as well.
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Offering my perspective as someone who has written a good number of reviews for watches and other sports gear:
- Desfit does come across a bit as a spec “recapper.” He doesn’t often have a lot of negatives to say about a watch, though his approachable tone and lack of sensationalism also make what he does say (good or bad) easier to digest. Still, it’s not all specs, but that’s a good chunk of what he does.
- Chase the Summit is pretty solidly the one I would dub the biggest Garmin fanboy. That’s not to say he doesn’t offer some positive things about other brands, but he really tiptoes around the warts of anything Garmin. (Garmin as a company is finicky, and I know he doesn’t want them to pull his access to future devices.) He’s also put up content on launch day even when he doesn’t have the device in hand, so I think that generally taints a lot of his video work as likely being more shallow or “PR speak” or just incomplete.
- DCRainmaker is the best of these “big three” YouTubers, though he does favor Garmin over other brands, and sometimes that manifests itself in being inconsistent in his approach. For example, he has dogged on Suunto’s naming conventions in the past, whether with skipping the Race 2S generation naming or even going back to 9 vs 9 Peak vs 9 Peak Pro, but then he gives Garmin a pass on the weirdly haphazard Forerunner 1XX, 2XX, 5XX, 6XX, 9XX lineups, that don’t seem to deliver reliable step changes between them. I do think he is blind (or just numb) to some of Garmin’s flaws, while being certain to drill home things with Suunto or Coros that he doesn’t like as much across multiple reviews. Still, at least he’s “showing his work,” especially in his written reviews, where he posts lots of comparison charts and goes into a lot of detail and actually offers an opinion. Plus, I like that he adds a swim component to his reviews, too.
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@TrailEyes My perhaps bad recall is Ray specifically called out the Forerunner 570 naming and was more negative on that model for not providing enough to justify the switch from 2xx to 5xx, so depending on how you look at it, he’s not been silent on it in the past.
I do agree there’s areas where he could be more critical more often, especially with the overall large number of models Garmin makes. Take this recent review of the Garmin Marq3: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2026/10/garmin-marq-gen3-in-depth-review.html
Ray notes in the article: “ – Increase in sales: They say they’ve had “8x the amount of sales turnover” since MARQ Gen2. Meaning, there’s clearly demand for this product. Given we’re on the 4th generation of it now (assuming you include Chronos as the first generation), Garmin wouldn’t be sticking around if it wasn’t making them money. Garmin has very clear internal rules around financial ROI/margins.”
And then, later:
“ Writing a review for a watch like this is tricky. There’s a simple reality that for a large portion of the population, this watch will seem like a waste of money. But the same could and would be spent on photography gear, I and many other photographers buy. A $2,000 lens on a $2,000 camera body, and that’s just one lens (a lens that I managed to flood the other day, costing me another $1,000 in repairs…sigh). Sure, that gear will last many years, but as Garmin pointed out with their Fenix 1 metrics above, people can and do still use these watches long term (more than a decade in that case)”
In my opinion, these could have been put as a subtitle “Should this watch an exist? Should any watch cost this much?” And then, sure, put in the above points to show it apparently does well and why not make it if people buy it, but at the same time this could be used to poke at Garmin, effectively saying “however, the existence of this just increases the overall number of models Garmin has, which can be confusing to new people” and perhaps point to the midrange area where Garmin could reduce model options for more clarity in the lineup. Now, one might argue that’s a side topic not really belonging in a Mara article, and if so, ok, then have it as a sister article released around the same time.
So I do see areas where Ray could point more things out; it’s the claim he never does so that some in this thread seem to think is the case I quarrel with. I also think people shouldn’t just accept any one reviewers thoughts as “what they should think” and come to one’s own conclusions based on your own analysis and needs, using reviewers to help that process rather than replace it.
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I couldn’t care less about what DCR and other Garmin employees of the year say about R3S. It’s a fantastic device and anyone who buys it will enjoy the heck out of it.
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@elbee exactly
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@raven said:
“ Writing a review for a watch like this is tricky. There’s a simple reality that for a large portion of the population, this watch will seem like a waste of money. But the same could and would be spent on photography gear, I and many other photographers buy. A $2,000 lens on a $2,000 camera body,I do hope he spends 2000 euro/dollar on a lens because it’s twice as good as a 1000 euro/dollar lens and not because it looks expensive.
But to say in defense of the gadgetbloggers: they have to be more positive about garmin. Loosing Suunto fanboys doesn’t do much for their income, but loosing garmin fanboys has a bigger impact. Garmin is the bigger brand, so reviews about garmin attract more views. Maybe they are aware, maybe they don’t.
But I mainly stoped reading the blogs. They emphasizes things I don’t find that important (their obsession with gps accuracy) and never mentions things I find annoying in a watch. Their blogs just are not for me.
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@elbee There’s a difference between fair critical comments about specific things, and general “kicking around” of any company. I don’t think anyone expects Ray to become anti-everything Garmin.
For example, when Garmin released their Connect+ subscription service, Ray was not entirely positive.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/03/garmin-connect-plus-subscription-walkthrough.html
Quoting from the article:
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“ Whereas Garmin Connect+ is largely in-house on-device software features that in any other year would have just been built into the Garmin Connect product. The singular feature that might have some sort of real-world cloud-cost dependency would be the AI insights, but that’d depend very highly on how much real AI backend processing is there, versus just marketing it as AI. After all, most of these insights don’t really seem all that different from what Garmin is already doing.Look, I don’t actually have any problem with Garmin charging a subscription for added features – as long as those features are substantial enough to warrant it. And more critically, not taking away from features that should have been included in Garmin’s $1,000 (or $3,000) watches. After all, this isn’t a $99 Fitbit, or an effectively free via subscription Whoop device/band. I think Garmin could go in the direction of providing more value by tying in some of those other subscription costs. For example, they could add in one free Outdoor+ map/region download per year, or they could add in some carrot for inReach devices, and so on. Same goes for a much larger library of workout videos, akin to what Apple, Fitbit, and others have done. These are things that would substantially increase the value of a subscription to consumers.”
—As I recall, in various Garmin forums and comments on his pages, most people agreed with this and few people, if any, were defending Connect+ as a reasonable value. And again, going simply by recall, I think in more recent Garmin posts when Connect+ is a factor he notes he doesn’t have a current subscription to the service. So he isn’t simply blindly being the “Garmin employee of the year” that some think — wouldn’t he be upselling Connect+ all the time if so?
So, I doubt callout out Garmin when appropriate will lose him many views; if anything, it helps show him being relatively unbiased. I mean, if he really wanted to appeal to Garmin users, he’d shoot down every Apple Watch review and he doesn’t do that.
It may turn out if Ray became overly critical Garmin may stop sending him advance units (rather than viewer backlash), and if so, he’d simply get them on his own and his reviews would be a bit later, while meanwhile Garmin would get (I think) serious pushback on their “retribution.”
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I agree with Ray that GPS and OHR accuracy are very good, and I also would have hoped for a slightly lower price, 450EUR maybe, as that was the price of the Race S titanium already.
One thing I also agree: the sync with the app is too slow and it happens constantly, but this is not Race 3S specific, it affects all watches. Suunto is well aware of this, although I do not believe they are prioritizing this at all.
Something I disagree, and I understand that Garmin users would feel disoriented by this (I was when I switched to Suunto) is the fact that you cannot change a sport mode, but have to create a new version of it. I find it something very useful to be honest. Instead of a running mode with everything possible, or a running mode that I need to change often, I can have multiple. I have one for training, with the metrics I look at, and one for racing, just with pace distance and time. And with different configurations and S+ associated. And I have a mode for trail running in flat areas, and one for course with elevation. And so on, I find it quite flexible and better than having a sport mode with tens of data pages that I have to scroll. Although, Suunto should drop the limit of 20 sports in the shortlist.
Watch: Suunto Vertical 2 Titanium Black
Blog: isazi's home
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I couldn’t care less about what DCR and other Garmin employees of the year say about R3S.
I go back to my first job out of college when I think about reviewers. I was working at a newspaper, and the editor of the newspaper used to be the direct boss of Roger Ebert, the famous film critic. So we only ran Ebert movie reviews in our paper.
The thing is, I didn’t always agree with Ebert’s assessment of movies, but after four years reading and editing his reviews, I was able to figure out what stood out to him, what mattered most when he watched a movie, and what were his “unwritten” thoughts – basically how to read between the lines. So I didn’t care about how he felt about a movie, but the way he said things mattered and helped me determine if I would like a film.
It’s really a talent to read or listen to a reviewer long enough and be able to understand/assess your own takeaway.
Suunto Vertical 2 / Run / Race S (gifted away) / Vertical / 9 Peak Pro (gifted away) / 9 Baro / 5 Peak (lost on adventure) / Vector
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Trail Runner / Hiker / Kickboxer
Instagram: @rytipps -
I take all those reviews as another source of information, and mostly ignore their opinions on the stuff they review.
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@isazi
Maybe I am wrong, but seems to me that DCRainmaker would not have been so negative, if the US price was $499 or $450.
At $599 in the US it is at a non-insignificant disadvantage against its recently released “direct competitor” from Coros - Pace 4 Pro ($450).Run 2 and Race 3S are significantly more expensive in the US vs EU / rest of the world (I assume this is predominantly due to Trump’s tariffs). This wasn’t the case for all previous Suunto models. It is also not the case for any competitors’ offerings as far as I am aware.
And for these reviewers being US-based and/or the majority of their viewers being US-based, from their perspective it is logical to have their verdict of the respective product reflect its US price much more than its rest-of-the-world price.
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@TrailEyes I understand what you’re saying here but my point is that I dislike the fact that all those YT reviewers refuse to reveal that they are more or less sales personnel of Garmin. Or whatever they call them. They are not transparent about their affiliation with Garmin. So, regardless of how good they are at what they do, I personally wouldn’t bother paying attention to them. I’m quite capable of making my own decisions without having to rely on that kind of “information “.
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@Highlands I mean the point is , reviewing a garmin means more clicks, more clicks means more money. So, they review a watch . Do cross comparisons across models and what not. While they claim they are independent , they are not really as they give garnin just more “airtime” compared to others. I mean classic example is DCr hasn’t even reviewed the run2 yet…
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@Highlands I mean the point is , reviewing a garmin means more clicks, more clicks means more money. So, they review a watch . Do cross comparisons across models and what not. While they claim they are independent , they are not really as they give garnin just more “airtime” compared to others. I mean classic example is DCr hasn’t even reviewed the run2 yet…
Garmin also releases more models in general, right? Looking at Apple, which sells a ton of Apple Watches, those models get covered very quickly because there’s viewer interest in them, but I imagine the overall number of videos/reviews for Apple is less than Garmin over time simply as there’s less models and they tend to get released once a year rather than multiple points of the year.
Meanwhile, let’s take Huawei, which gets little coverage, also due to viewer demand, this time the lack of it, and the fact the models aren’t available in some major markets like the USA. So for people like Ray to cover them, I guess the only way that’s work is if they were funded totally by Patreon rather than ad revenue through YouTube.
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All the other reviews I’ve read mention a reliable GPS and heart rate. Everyone has to find what matters to them. I have a small wrist, I like watches with a style that isn’t too sporty (I still love the look of my 9PP, which I wear every day), and I couldn’t care less about a microphone, flashlight, voice features, or a speaker… I do hiking so maps are a +. In Garmin, the map are on really pricing watch (much more than Race 3s). So I think I will try it!
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DC Rainmaker reviews were among the ones what convinced me to buy Race 2 instead of Garmin. After 3 month I have it, I regret the buy. I do not blame anybody but me - I was not properly reading between lines. Now I feel DC Rainmaker made more honest review of Race 3S then on Race 2. In my opinion, the multitude of problems can no longer be concealed. Or we accept honest reviews or we accept the lie.
I am still trying to go ahead with Race 2… -
Or we accept honest reviews or we accept the lie.
There are so many lesser-known reviewers out there who deserve to be discovered and who, more often than not, are far better than the more famous ones
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In my opinion, the multitude of problems can no longer be concealed.
What I’ve learned from sportwatches over the last 20 years, they all have their annoyances but most you can live with. Some annoyances are that big it makes you buy an other watch (for me that happened with the garmin forerunner 965). Does my race s have annoyances? Yes, sure. Did any reviewer ever mentioned the annoyances I experienced with my watches? No, never. Not one. Does that make me awkward? Might. Or reviewers just don’t live with a watch 24/7 for quite some time. They just have superficial experience with specific watches.
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Lately, a lot of new channels have been popping up on YouTube where we can watch “reviews.” Of course, most—if not all—of them just read out the specs; there’s no review to speak of. Besides, if you take a closer look, you’ll see that these “reviewers” had the watch on their wrist for a maximum of 2–3 days when, for example, they demonstrate how the sleep screen works. They’re flooding us with low-quality junk, devoid of any substance. Lately, I’ve stopped watching all these reviews because I can find most of the information on the manufacturer’s website.
You can criticize Ray for many things, but he’s probably the only one who creates text-based reviews with tables and charts—and he puts a lot of work into them. He often makes comparisons and conducts lengthy tests to see how the battery performs in real-world use, etc.
I really like the watch, but I get the impression it was released too early. They could have held off and released it with a working race intensity planner, a working AI assistant, and a working MCP server. As it is, we get the impression that something is coming, but in reality, we don’t know how much it will cost after the trial period. Well, that’s not how it should be.
The price argument is valid; I’m surprised Suunto didn’t offer a choice (steel or titanium, 64 vs. 32 GB).
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