DC Rainmaker Review
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@sky-runner I mean just watch his recent Felix 9 Enduro 3/4 comparison. He goes down to comparing wrist bands and to me enduro 4 and the roughly feature equivalent fenix are so similar. The maps are not snappy at all and we don’t have to talk about pricing because that’s nonsense with them
Instead for Suunto his whole review is framed with using elephants in a room ( for those who watched will know). Alone that framing is already setting up the whole review with a negative bias. He could have easily do a 2 for 1 review with the Run 2 and Race 3s. And the fact he hasn’t even reviewed the run 2 is imo actually pretty disappointing.
That’s the point folks. I still watch his reviews and such at times but he is not the guy he used be way back.
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What is all about this screen “low” brightness issue he is mentioning? I had vertical 2 with 2000nits brightness and i found it just fine. In some cases i would even want to be less bright (specially when there is darker outside)? Should that really be an issue in today watch market not having more than 2000nits? I know coros pace 4 pro have 3500nits but does it really matter that much in real word usage? That map zoom in/out lag is a little concern but i guess it is only SW issue and not CPU issue? Thanks
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DC doesn’t review to answer the question “Is it useful”. He reviews to answer the question “Is it more”. Quite simple, because the “Is it more” question is easy to answer. He cannot or dare not answer the useful question.
And like gps accuracy, he is a bit obsessed with screens. He gets quite annoyed when you say you find a mip screen better readable in bright sunlight than oled. But the way he tests is take a picture of the screen in bright light and back home look at the picture and conclude “perfect readable”. But that’s not my usecase. I run with sunglasses on, sweat and suncream in my eyes, running from treecover to bright sunlight, where the auto adjust is struggeling, and can only conclude, the oled screen isn’t always perfect readable where the mip screens I had were.
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@krakra that is the only point that I do not think was fair, not because it is not true that the 3S has “less nits” than current watches, but because for a year or two Ray has been saying in every review of a watch with even more nits that this is not necessary and all screen are perfectly visible in all conditions. So I did not get why picking on the 3S screen. Many other criticism were fair, included the US price that is less justified than the EU one.
Watch: Suunto Vertical 2 Titanium Black
Blog: isazi's home
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@isazi What about maps lag when zoom in/out?
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@krakra that is real, it does not always happen, but it is there, for all Suunto watches. It does not bother me because I would rarely start going up and down on the zoom scale without a reason, usually I would stay at one zoom level and only increase to look ahead.
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@krakra that is the only point that I do not think was fair,
Picking on the name is also e bit… nitpicking. DC had no problem with the jump forerunner 265 made to 570, but skipping a number in the race line?
While there is a good reason to call it 3s and not 2s. 2s sounds like it’s the same as a year old race 2. From a markering perspective 3s makes more sense.
I don’t mind a reviewer being critical. I prefer that. I want to know what’s wrong with a watch so I can decide if I can live with it. But it’s the tone that annoys me.
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@perfekt_tall no I did not mean it this way, but rather the facts about the race 3s price tag vs others. Thats all. If you think that components dont matter that is fine with you. I am not here to change your mind.
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@krakra that is the only point that I do not think was fair, not because it is not true that the 3S has “less nits” than current watches, but because for a year or two Ray has been saying in every review of a watch with even more nits that this is not necessary and all screen are perfectly visible in all conditions. So I did not get why picking on the 3S screen. Many other criticism were fair, included the US price that is less justified than the EU one.
He literally says in the Race 3S review that the less nits isn’t a technical problem: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2026/10/suunto-race-3s-in-depth-review-upgrade.html
From the review: “ To be super clear here, I have no issue with seeing the display at all. Period, hard-stop.”
He goes on to note how the specs are lower than others, but this is after the above confirmation that it does not matter for his ability to see and use the display.
It seems like people would not be happy unless he didn’t mention the brightness at all, and then I suppose the same people would be mad he didn’t mention the spec.
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@raven so why bother if this race-to-the-nits is as silly as the race-to-the-megapixel in cameras/phones 10 years ago? If basically all AMOLED screens are visible now, why someone should care how many nits there are? There are so many valid points in the written review (that I read on the same day it was published), but I do not agree that the nits is one of them. The video review is worse IMHO than the written one, because with all the elephants make the watch look worse than it actually is.
Watch: Suunto Vertical 2 Titanium Black
Blog: isazi's home
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@isazi Why mention the brightness? In my opinion, a few reasons:
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It’s one of the specs and he’s covering the specs. As you note, in other reviews he mentions how higher specs here don’t mean much and he’s repeating that here. Let’s call this the “objective” element here, and this is where his “it’s bright enough for my use” lives.
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He has an overall position that the Race 3S starts at too high a price. I believe he’s pointing out the “lower specs” here to suggest “why not a lower price if you’re going with lower specs”. Let’s call this the “subjective” element. I think it’s fair to have a quarrel with this part.
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As you note, in the video he has this “elephant in the room” theme going on, and let’s call this the “stylistic” element. It’s not a regular feature of his review. It’s slightly odd he does it here, but when I first watched it, the conclusion I has was: “Ray generally likes this watch and if it was at a lower price or if he liked it less, he’d have a different stylistic framing.”
That is, if the watch simply sucked: bad HR, bad GPS, etc. then there’s little need for the elephant metaphor, as it’s just a trash fire all the way down. However, given he does like it, but subjectively thinks the price isn’t right, he wants to call attention to some “paper cut” areas that gives him that conclusion.
Where I think he could have done better was to try to “work the problem” a bit more; that is, try to figure out why the pricing is what it is. In my mind, this is largely due to dropping the non-titanium model, so there’s no cheaper entry point. And I think one of the reasons for that is the existence of the Run series, which was not a thing when the original Race S came out. I believe Suunto removed the non-titanium option for Race 3S to have “more room” between Run series and Race S series. It also likely helps inventory management to have less SKUs to sell.
As an example of another company who recently did a similar thing with a different tech product, let’s look at Apple and their Apple TV.The last (3rd gen) Apple TV in 2022 had two prices, $129 for WiFi (64GB) and $149 WiFi+Ethernet (128GB) . In June they raised to $199 and $249 due to increasing costs of components. Now in October, the 4th gen is released, and there’s only an Ethernet/128GB version at $299.
If one only compared the $299 new model for the $249 version it was replacing, one could likely justify it. However, if one only wanted 64GB and last they checked saw the $129 pricing and missing the increase of that to $179, then it looks like a $170 price jump!
Back to Suunto, this is what I think Ray’s issue with the Race 3S is. If you only look at “original Race S” and “new Race 3S options” the “starting point” has changed. I think Ray could have done a better job with explaining the overall market thing by bringing the Run series in, and this would have been a good time to “combo” the review with the Run 2 which he has not done yet (likely due to too many things going on at once).
I think “objectively” Ray is fine; he doesn’t lie about facts, and he makes an effort to test things like GPS and HR. I think “subjectively” Ray is also fine, as he typically explains why he thinks the way he does. I don’t need to always agree with him; I just want to know where he got there. I think “stylistically” Ray also is usually pretty good, but in this case the “elephant” thing may not have done what he wanted, or perhaps it did do what he wanted “don’t forget these minor points” but at the cost of being easy to ignore his largely positive evaluation.
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@raven said:
I think “objectively” Ray is fine; he doesn’t lie about facts, and he makes an effort to test things like GPS and HR. I think “subjectively” Ray is also fine, as he typically explains why he thinks the way he does. I don’t need to always agree with him; I just want to know where he got there. I think “stylistically” Ray also is usually pretty good, but in this case the “elephant” thing may not have done what he wanted, or perhaps it did do what he wanted “don’t forget these minor points” but at the cost of being easy to ignore his largely positive evaluation.I never said anything against Ray as a person or as a reviewer, I have been following him since 2013, I am a paying member on his website for maybe ten years already, and often went to his open house when we lived in the same city. He is still my favorite sportwatch reviewer
However, I still think that the comments on the display are too negative, especially when he goes on saying that this display is old technology and they probably had spares in the factory and so they used them. When he reviews watches with GPS chipsets that support only one band, he says that, and immediately adds something like “but I do not care, if the watch is accurate specs don’t matter”. In this case it feels to me that he uses more space to complain about the screen, and only a brief mentioning of the fact that it is actually 100% fine.
Watch: Suunto Vertical 2 Titanium Black
Blog: isazi's home
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@isazi yep, he clearly has more complimentary approach to reviewing when it comes to one american brand registered in switzerland
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@isazi So the complaint is “ To be super clear here, I have no issue with seeing the display at all. Period, hard-stop” is too short a comment, and he should have extended this more positive view to multiple paragraphs?
If you say so. I think that suggests Ray’s viewers and readers are not intelligent enough to synthesize all the remarks to a singular conclusion: “the display, regardless of what the specs say, is good to use.” I didn’t have a problem coming to that conclusion. I don’t “count words” pro and con and decide whichever side “won” based on word count.
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If you say so. I think that suggests Ray’s viewers and readers are not intelligent enough to synthesize all the remarks to a singular conclusion
Your faith in humanity is bigger than mine, but you are probably also younger than me
Watch: Suunto Vertical 2 Titanium Black
Blog: isazi's home
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@raven I think another reason he mentioned the brightness is to point to the broader market trend. Many competing watches are now offering 3,000 nits or more. Ray notes that the Race 3s screen is perfectly visible in use, but it may still be worth highlighting that buyers are paying a premium for a 2026 watch that does not necessarily match some of the display specifications that competing products have already moved to. I think the real issue is less about day to day visibility and more about whether the hardware aligns with the premium price point it’s being sold at and if we are just focusing on the display specifications here, then no, it doesn’t make sense, hence why he considers it an elephant.
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If indeed there is no steel version because of the Run 2 then that’s a massive own goal as the Run 2 is severely limited compared to the Race 2/3 such as no 3rd party integration support, no SuuntoPlus etc.
I’d still get a Race 2 (titanium is on discount) but if I wanted something newer, I’d get the Coros P4P.
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If indeed there is no steel version because of the Run 2 then that’s a massive own goal as the Run 2 is severely limited compared to the Race 2/3 such as no 3rd party integration support, no SuuntoPlus etc.
I’d still get a Race 2 (titanium is on discount) but if I wanted something newer, I’d get the Coros P4P.
I should be clear that idea, “no steel due to Run” is my speculation and I haven’t seen any statement by Suunto in that regard. There may have been other reasons. I agree they should have continued to offer the cheaper model (and in my Apple TV example, think removing the cheaper model was a mistake there too).
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If you say so. I think that suggests Ray’s viewers and readers are not intelligent enough to synthesize all the remarks to a singular conclusion
Your faith in humanity is bigger than mine, but you are probably also younger than me
I guess the main thing I’d ask you, isazi, is whether you read/viewed Ray’s remarks on this and thought he was saying “Suunto should have used higher spec brightness rather than what they used.” If so, then either Ray wasn’t clear enough, or I myself misinterpreted him. I thought he was saying “this tech is fine, no need to change it, but the overall entry cost of the phone is too high compare to last gen,” and the spec comparison was more in showing what others at this higher price point are doing. Basically, what @strain notes above, which I agree with.
If we both agree that Ray wasn’t asking Suunto to put in “better brightness” then I’m not very concerned if there’s some people out there with worse comprehension skills. I don’t need reviews dumbed down for the lowest common denominator of intellect.
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