Suunto 7
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@Brad_Olwin Perhaps, things got better in the past 12-18 months, or Suunto knows something about connectivity others don’t. I had Polar M600 back in 2016-2017 as well as a number of Android smartwatches until 2018. My mileage on iOS was bad, real bad. The watch would disconnect if you leave your phone on a desk and walk away for a few minutes and never re-connect. Pandora streaming app, though totally independent of the watch while in offline mode, would continuously crash. Google Music would fail to download even a quarter of my songs… And I don’t mean songs for offline use. I mean a song list from my music library. And on and on…
I understand Suunto strategy here and would even buy into it. A smartwatch from Suunto, with legitimate fitness bits. S5 or S9 still required for serious training. Sure!
But not at $499 a pop. I think even $399 DCR suggested is way too much. When M600 was released in 2016, it was just $320, in the neighborhood of other Android smartwatches of the time like LG Sport released six months later. And M600 was fully integrated into Polar platform, activity and sleep tracking including, from the day one and included at least heart rate sensors.
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@Brad_Olwin So it’s more in line with its stated specs than the Spartan (on the earlier watch’s launch)? Pretty much what you see advertised is what you get?
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@Fenr1r Yes, the stated specifications are accurate. The screenshots of the watch are accurate too…I know, hard to believe and not mockups.
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@Brad_Olwin Very pretty indeed - altho’ I’d probably still need glasses to read my wrist. And good to learn Suunto’s better at expectations management now (at least as far as a new product launch goes). Thank you.
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@NickK I have had no connectivity or syncing issues. I have run the watch out of battery and the activity up to the time the watch died is saved and synced.
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@Fenr1r I wear glasses and do not need them with this. The screen is 484x484, easy to read.
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@Brad_Olwin Even the maps?
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I was thinking of replacing my Spartan Sport with a new Suunto model, most likely S9, but I was also thinking there was something coming soon. This wasn’t exactly what I was thinking but a lot of the things I was hoping for.
Some specs are simply not what I want right now, and so, still more waiting time for me. What about this S10 you are all talking about?
This S7 goes in the right direction for me, just add HR belt support, get rid of all things google, enhance battery life to S9 levels and I am good to go. -
@Fenr1r yes, the maps are able to be zoomed quite a bit, here are zoom levels near me of a trail area.
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@Brad_Olwin Useful pix, thanks. Crucially, for assessment of the Suunto 7: does the mountain look like a rabbit? Is it particularly full of the things? Was it named after a particularly leporine local individual?
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I had 2 android wear watches for 4 years: lg watch and mobvoi tic watch. I even had few days monster from casio f21 android designed for adventure with barometer (but not serions sport at all)
Few facts:
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These watches do not use transflect screen which soak light from ambient, they use classic lcd which do not have backlight… like phones. This screens consume a lot of power and they are invisible in sun, but very good visible in dark (oposite from transreflect)
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these screens are very sensitive for touch and water. It can not be forever turned on, after 5 sec they go to slip and you can wake up it with wrist turns. They are not appropriate for seriuos athletes, because screen is almost invisible under sun.
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Glass material can not be saphirre or mineral.
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Android watches are very difficult to pair with BT senzors. Very few apps support Heart rate senzor or bike senzor or stryd.
5 They are good for basic sports, forget custimizable screens like now, maybe few fields and very limited functionality.
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Suunto 7 is not ONLY future for Suunto ( I guess and hope). Number 7 is lower than 9 so this is not flagship. Polar has midlerange android wear watch m600 for about 3 years. They released flagship last year vantage V, which is not android wear.
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Android wear is 80 % smart watch and 20 % sport watch. Suunto 9 is opposite ( 20 % smart watch and 80 % sport watch.
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If you want a toy with perfect support for notifications, colorfull maps, go for it. You will charge it every single day, i can bet on this. My casio f21 worked 1 day and/or 3,5 hours with GNSS max.
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2 years is around and I think that in summer they will release suunto 10 WITHOUT android wear
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No external sensors… really? No watch screen customizations? No activity tracking to their own backend platform, besides Google Fit?
How does it differ from Fossil Q HR and other WearOS watches that sell for half the price?
Right now Suunto 7 looks like another step away from Suunto core user base - which also raises questions over the future Spartan-derived watches and the current Suunto App that works with the SportTracker back-end.
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@DmitryKo In all fairness, the Suunto magic dust is there:
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First party fairly sophisticated sports tracking app, with multiple views, stats, and all linking via Suunto platform to a variety of real deal services like Training Peaks. No need to use jokes of an app, which is the vast majority of Wear sports apps – Endomondo and Strava, I’m looking at you!
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Built-in full-color offline maps during your outdoor activity. How many watches except for high end Garmin have this?
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Heatmaps to pick your outdoor running without tapping too much around the phone and/or watch
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A fancy looking, and I’d imagine customizable to a degree like all WearOS watch faces, Heatmaps watch screen
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Your workout data is transferred into Suunto app where you can further slice it and dice it. The configurable lap tables are quite nice. Better than anything from Garmin or Polar in that regard. Same goes for weekly/etc. summaries
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FusedTrack / FusedAlt / FusedSpeed… Or is there a FusedTrack? Nah, I think there isn’t.
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More buttons than your typical Android smartwatch with 1-2, making sports usage and glove operation way more relevant
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Battery life: don’t remember LG Sport giving me anywhere close to 8 hours of OHR, GPS, and music. And it was bulkier than 7. Not to mention both its GPS and HR were horrific. Ditto for M600, though at least it was good HR wise and reasonable GPS wise.
The jury is out on OHR for me (though I tend to believe @Brad_Olwin it’s good because otherwise, why would Suunto go with changing the package?), but this might be another improvement over existing Spartan and S5/S9 lines.
I’m fairly certain future updates will add more functionality, though without a clear roadmap this is a no go at the current price.
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So we have the S5 and S9 with their own Software and SuuntoPlus, all set with the SuuntoApp.
And now we have the S7 with a new Software for tracking activities and the Wear OS, with all this Google Stuff.
Two platforms where people have to work with at Suunto HQ. Oh my.
And I totally don’t understand why S7 doesn’t send Steps and Daily HR to SuuntoApp. This is nonsense in my opinion, I hope they change that. And adding Google, well I try to avoid Google. When all future watches will have this Wear OS stuff…hm.
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@Fenr1r from the right direction it looks like a rabbit! I will snap a photo in the next couple of days:)
Vector/T6c/Ambit 3 Peak/S5 Copper/S3/S7 Ti/S9 baro Ti/S9P Ti/S9PP Ti/Vertical Ti/Race Ti/RaceS/Ocean/Wing
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@jthomi agree with you on activity tracking. Sure hope it gets unified into SA.
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@Brad_Olwin It’s still a month till release and as far as I understand some posts here and on the web, there are still some beta functionality on the watch that needs to be get better. Remember, “your watch gets better every day”…
So a lot of time to change some small things, or even bigger ones. Adding HR from chest belt should be crucial!!
