It’s nice to see some positive comments, so many posts are pretty negative. I fully agree with your experience. I have switched between Suunto and Garmin for 20+ years. Over time, each had their strengths and weaknesses. I think Suunto Race 2 is one of the best options sports and adventure watches available. The UI is logical, intuitive and provides simple and effective options for navigating with the 2 buttons, scroll wheel (great for map zooming in and out), and touchscreen. The data is spot on, no fluff, and the new oHR sensor works great. I personally like the architecture of keeping Suunto Plus apps separate - you add only stuff you want, unlike Garmin packing it all into the base watch (and making it cluttered and more of a learning curve). It looks amazing and feels great on the wrist. I won’t be switching back to Garmin anytime soon if ever.
Three improvements I would like to see (1) add routable maps with trail and feature names (2) allow more than 2 Suunto Plus apps to run during an activity (3) sync all data both ways between the watch and app so all data is global (like the app) vs local to the watch. That would allow for multiple watches to act as one from a data perspective. It would also allow data added from other sources (bike computer, manually entered) be reflected on the watch.
My 3 cents.