DC Rainmaker Review

Honestly, while I agree with many criticisms and voiced many of them myself – sports mode customization, intervals, sensors support to name a few, I’m kind of speechless after reading the review. Quite a few people suspected it would be negative, but to this extent? And so openly biased.

Blaming Suunto for not having sleep analysis. Does his beloved Apple Watch have it? Oh, wait. It doesn’t.

He can’t show us payments because he’s in the wrong country. Well, he can start by showing us Garmin Pay that to this day doesn’t include majority of US credit cards. American Express, Ray? Citibank?

Suunto doesn’t support sensors, boo! Does Apple Watch? Footpods and power meters in their native app? What about Fitbit as the only other viable smartwatch platform? Anything there?

The Suunto app on the watch doesn’t sync perfectly, no way! How about picking up an Android phone and not reviewing a Wear OS device connected to an iPhone, for which all connectivity is handled by Google Wear OS app with an amazing 2 star rating.

He finds the price outrageous. Maybe it is. But given how he rationalized the existence of Garmin MARQ line… All that design, materials, fashion, appearances… You can’t say $1500 for a Forerunner 945 with better design and materials is fine, and Suunto 7 at a third of this price isn’t.

PS Really loved how he tried to dance around Fenix 6 having much worse GPS tracks when compared to Polar and Suunto. Ouch! That must have hurt.

Michał Muszyński

For me as a user who has been using Suunto for 6 years, S7 is a funny joke. If this watch offered everything that S5 plus maps, Google Play, Weros, then the battery would not be a problem for me but it is currently not such a functional toy. I can buy Fossil and I will have the same.

ChubbyCrusher

I don’t have a S7 but this is the biggest take away from me in the review:

“I have low confidence that Suunto will make much progress in that anytime soon. They don’t have a road-map (I asked, and got no response), and historically speaking the last 2 years we’ve only seen Suunto remove features in their products and platforms.”

As a company, I’ve just given up that Suunto will communicate with it’s core users and it’s clear that neglecting them the last few years with a slow to market SA app that still has missing core features so they can develop a smart watch hasn’t really panned out. For some the price, feature set, and battery life might work, but I don’t think it will work for most, especially because people think of fitness with Suunto, and will expect some of the basic missing features that Ray mentions. Anyway, I’m pulling for Suunto…I hope to buy another device form them some day.

Prenj

This review may be cruel, but hey… Suunto entered the market with the watch that is half-baked (it seems normal with their products lately) and much higher price than it’s competitors so if you are not offering much more for much higher price, what did you expect?

I really wish Suunto 7 becomes a success story and they get a substantial money injection which will help them strengthen their software development that will benefit all their watches in the future so they can get rid of the stigma of software that lags behind great built quality. But I’m highly skeptical of WearOS.

Bulkan

Here there is another review of external tester of Suunto

Manuel Silvestri

@NickK The fact that some features are missing in AW isn’t an excuse about the same missing features in a device of 479€. Come on, also mi band 4 tracks sleep and it costs 35€.
This is a watch with only very basic fitness and sport features which costs more than twice as much as others. I’m definetly thinking to return or sell mine because I don’t see any light in the next future of Suunto.

@Michał-Muszyński said in DC Rainmaker Review:

I can buy Fossil and I will have the same.

No, you won’t. The screen will be smaller and less bright, battery life shorter, poorer OHR quality, much poorer GPS quality, no offline maps, and no decent first party sports tracking app integrating into other platforms.

That’s here and now, assuming Suunto won’t make any improvements to S7.

@Manuel-Silvestri said in DC Rainmaker Review:

@NickK The fact that some features are missing in AW isn’t an excuse about the same missing features in a device of 479€.

It isn’t. My point was you can’t make a huge deal about it in one device and completely ignore it in another. No smartwatch on the market at present, with exception of Fitbit Ionic and Polar M600, has native sleep tracking. Maybe battery life of 1-2 days has something to do with it?

Come on, also mi band 4 tracks sleep and it costs 35€.

You can buy a watch for $1 and it tracks time! Does it mean all watches should cost $1? More importantly, does it track sleep or “track sleep”? How do you know? Did they publish validation studies?

This is a watch with only very basic fitness and sport features which costs more than twice as much as others.

Others being? Fossil? See my response above. You get what you pay for. And if you needed advanced sports features, I’m not quite sure why you purchased Suunto 7 to begin with. Its product manual, early reviews, and even this forum was quite clear about what’s missing.

The truth is: there has been only two real sports smartwatches to date. Polar M600 and Sunnto 7. I will be the first to agree that M600 was a much stronger contender out of the gates for sports, especially gym use. It still does a lot of things even Suunto 9 can’t do (Hpace zones per sport mode? Structured workouts? Detailed sleep tracking?). But M600 failed where it matterer for smart watches. The daily use. Design. Materials. Screen.

Suunto may or may not improve 7. Buy what they have today based on what you need today and you won’t be disappointed. Or don’t buy.

Manuel Silvestri

@NickK If Suunto puts the S7 in the section watch for sport, I buy it because i’m expecting that it’s a usefull tool with all the related features for it. Instead, it has not all the features that it should have, including sleep tracking.
And I don’t think the only watch to compare with is the M600. Garmin Venu it’s a sport smartwatch and it tracks sleep, or not? It evaluates VO2 max, or not?
I’m the first that expects that Suunto fills these gaps with the other manufacturers, but it is always several step behind them.
Just to finish…probably if I knew this forum before, I certainly wouldn’t have bought it. I only hope in further improvements.

@Manuel-Silvestri said in DC Rainmaker Review:

@NickK If Suunto puts the S7 in the section watch for sport, I buy it because i’m expecting that it’s a usefull tool with all the related features for it.

You realize same section has S3 and S9 in it? Do they have same features? Why don’t you expect same features in S3? It’s in the same section, no? How come it doesn’t have GPS or barometer? How dare they!

Garmin Venu it’s a sport smartwatch and it tracks sleep, or not? It evaluates VO2 max, or not?

You are making it too easy. Venu?

Does Venu’s pay supports all major credit cards? No. No AmEx or Citibank for you in the US. Same goes for most of other countries
Does Venu let you install apps like Keep, Telegram, AccuWeather, etc? No. They don’t exist. They can’t exist.
Does Venu let you install as many apps as you want, even lame ones? No. Because Garmin’s ConnectIQ has limitations on a number of apps/data fields on the device.
Does Venu let you download as much music as you want? No. Because of similar ConnectIQ limitation.
Does Venu let you type in replies to messages, text or chat? Nope.
Does Venu let you read full notifications including pictures, etc? Nope.
Can you deal with email messages – like delete, etc – on Venu? Nope.
Can you listen to your voicemails or place calls on Venu? Nope again.
What’s offline mapping/navigation options I have on Venu?
Can you get access to custom app specific notification actions on Venu? Nah…

I can go on and on.

Venu is a an advanced activity tracker, with a nice screen, and a handful of smartwatch and sports features. Truly a jack of all trades, master of none. It falls short on all fronts. There are better activity trackers (anything Fitbit), better smartwatches (Apple Watch, Fossil, Suunto 7), and better sports watches (even Forerunner 45 is probably better).

Just to finish…probably if I knew this forum before, I certainly wouldn’t have bought it. I only hope in further improvements.

Return your S7, get Venu. Better still, get Venu but make sure to keep your receipt.

Manuel Silvestri

@NickK I’ll do! Thank you for your kind support!

Matthias Hüls 0

Using the S7 for about 3 weeks for running and swimming (pool) and as a daily companion, I have to admit that Ray is correct here. While GPS can compete with a Forerunner 945 or AW, OHR is biased. For example, in pool swimming it +- gets distance correct, but OHr is erratic and completely useless. And an annoyance is the battery use in smartwatch mode (2-4%\h!), which is not up to Suunto‘s promise of 2 days at all. On the other hand, the hardware itself is beautiful, a fact also acknowledged by Ray.
My impression of Ray‘s review is that of a huge disappointment with respect to initial expectations. And I don‘t have the impression of Ray being a Garmin fan boy, quite the opposite, considering his criticism on Garmins sportwatches.
Point is, Suunto has to work fast on their side, namely the Suunto app on S7. And they should work on their communication strategy, shiny catchwords as for advertisements will not suffice.
Personally, I decided to sell my S7 and go for an AW3, which is chepaer, mare accurate on sensors with additional smartwatch functionality.

@Matthias-Hüls-0 said in DC Rainmaker Review:

For example, in pool swimming it +- gets distance correct, but OHr is erratic and completely useless.

Please show me the OHR that consistently works great in the pool. Also, a regular contributor @Saketo-Nemo found the pool OHR quite acceptable

And an annoyance is the battery use in smartwatch mode (2-4%\h!), which is not up to Suunto‘s promise of 2 days at all.

Well, your mileage may vary, but I took my watch off the charger about 8 hours ago. It’s at 85% as of now. That works out to be less than 2% battery, in smartwatch mode, with many notifications received, emails previewed and deleted, timers run, weather checked… Oh, and I have an always-on display to boot! At that rate, I could expect 53 hours. And it should probably be more, because at least 16 hours of those would logically be Theater Mode / DND during sleep.

And I don‘t have the impression of Ray being a Garmin fan boy, quite the opposite, considering his criticism on Garmins sportwatches.

Care to show us some of that criticism? Apart from a single article about bugs he probably wrote because his Forerunner crashed, lost weekly quality workout or race, and Ray was very, very disappointed. Last time I checked, Ray hasn’t met a Garmin watch he didn’t like, nor didn’t think was absolutely amazing, most advanced, perfectly priced, and so on. From a lowly Forerunner 45 to MARQ Athlete. And I find it increasingly funny that known Garmin issues (remember ANT+ antenna debacle in Fenix 5) somehow get completely missed by Ray in his rigorous testing.

Check out Fenix 6 thread in Garmin forums and a number of issues reported by people there. That’s half a year after the release. And somehow, none of these issues stuck Ray or have been mentioned in Ray’s review

Again, I’m not saying Suunto 7 doesn’t have its fair share of shortcomings (and even more so on iPhone side), but let’s call spade a spade. Had Suunto 7 been called Garmin Fenix 7, the tone and emphasis of Ray’s review would have been completely different and many of his criticisms wouldn’t even have been voiced.

Yak Ima

I like my Suunto 7, but Suunto MUST fix this like right away…

Route navigation. I can’t believe that a watch with maps doesn’t have navigation. It completely blows my mind.
Sensors. Just like evetyone else. Let me decide if I want to run out of battery fast or not.
Let me configure my sports profiles. For general use they are ok, but if I want to do interval training I need different data screens.

Other than that I’m perfectly fine with it. Battery life, OHR, sync, options… The watch looks gorgeous.

Brad_Olwin

@Matthias-Hüls-0 I have an AW4 and have done extensive comparisons with the S7. My take:

AW4 OHR does not work as well as S7 for me, I get a lot of flat line OHR when running.
The GPS accuracy of AW4 is nowhere near as good as S7
To get the functionality of S7 a third party app is necessary
Downloaded offline maps on the AW4 require a third party app and are much more work than S7
Getting my data out of the watch and into 3rd party analysis is a PITA on the AW4
AW4 Stryd app is great, if Suunto Wear OS app would allow these sensors this would not be an advantage.

I have data for wearing the S7 and AW4 on the same runs to verify my claims for the first two points. I agree as a smartwatch for iOS AWs can’t be beat but… they are not great sport watches in my experience.

@Brad_Olwin To add, I run extensively with AW3 last summer and Stryd app connected to Training Peaks. While the setup is a dream come true for structured workouts and running with power, I had Stryd signal drops and the app freezing constantly. Several times on all my long runs, sometime for good half a minute to a minute.

Interestingly enough, no other device – be it Suunto, Polar, or Garmin – lost Stryd on that route. Bottom line: AW comes with issues of its own. YMWV.

vlado

@Yak-Ima Completely agree with all three points

Bulkan

@Yak-Ima I agree! But I would like to know the data of how many users use sensors via third apps Here most of the users aren’t in the target of this watch, maybe we want to like this watch, is a Suunto, but is not as our previous Suunto. For me the sync in Suunto app of steps, heart rate and calories pushed from google fit will make a better experience in the Suunto’s ecosystem.

I read @jorgefd78 about LTE. I don’t find useful LTE but there are a lot of users willing to have that in a sport watch. But if now the main critique is the battery life of the Suunto 7 I can’t imagine with LTE.

Today since this morning to 20:20h battery status 61%. I didn’t workout, twisted ankle!

Brad_Olwin

@Yak-Ima Just to ask, is the Running Interval Sport mode not sufficient for Intervals? Or are you asking for Interval set ups for other sports?

JANTIKAINEN

Quick OHR comparison from this morning’s commute to work.
Polar OH1 (left upper arm)
Suunto 7 (left wrist)

Distance: 8,87 km
Duration: 24:45
Temperature: -6 C

Polar: avg 128bpm, max 150bpm
Suunto: avg 122bpm, max 151bpm

S7 = red

If I look at the course profile the S7 should be more right in the beginning but it’s hard to say, what was the reality.
I’ll try it again on my way home and also with running.