Features

[prashant]

Re: Suunto Vertical 2 General Discussion

Always knew about Sunnto but never went into details. How is the watch for someone who wants to use it for daily activities like HR and stress tracking as core and other general activities like outside walk, maintaining health etc. Is it only watch for extreme sports enthusiasts? Really loved the design of the watch and hence curious to know its features if they fit to daily use.

[BrunoH]

@prashant We all have different needs, but I can offer my view because I am far from extreme sport enthusiast! I am 56 years old and overweight with some arthritis in my joints. I can’t run but I can walk and I really like to cycle.

• Daily HR tracking is working well enough for me, but some people here in this forum have been complaining that it is not accurate enough. It is likely due to the fact that we all have different kind of skins and optical sensor works better for some and not so great for some others. Having said that, I am not using daily 24/7 measurements, it does not provide me any meaningful info. For the same reason I have turned off the sleep tracking.
• Strass tracking; I don’t think suunto provides any specific measurements for that. I know when I’m stressed and that’s enough. I guess HR and blood oxygen level measurements and sleep tracking (recovery) could provide some insight for you. Someone else can comment on this!
• Maintaining health: Suunto fulfills all my needs except for one. There is no weight tracking in the watch and Suunto App. You must enter your weight in the watch but it is only used for various fitness level calculations. You can’t see your weight trend in the smartphone app.
• All of the measurements and fitness level calculations motivate me to go out and do longer adventures. I work as a data analyst; so I get motivation from seeing how my own feelings correlate with the improved statistics provided by Suunto.

Suunto gives you statistics and summaries, but it does not tell you how you must feel in any given moment. It does not tell you that right now you should get up and start working out. It gives you the freedom of choise, which suits me just fine.

A couple of examples how I use and why I love my Vertical:

• I love mushroom hunting. I love the offline maps and I can always trust my watch to take me to my saved locations and it will show me the way back no matter how far I’ve hiked.
• I like swimming. The watch doesn’t recognize correctly my swimming styles, but I am pleased to get the total distance and consumed calories. Notice that outdoor swimming is worse because water interferes with GPS reception.
• Just last night I went trail biking in the dusk and came home 25 km later when it was pitch black dark. The wet tree roots were slippery and I fell in a very bad position but I didn’t have to worry if my watch is ok. It is and it will remain ok!

I am using my Vertical as my daily watch. Just remember that Suunto is not a smartwatch with all of the modern smartwatch features. You can’t pay with it and you only see a few first words of an incoming message with it, lots of emojis are missing and only one model supports offline music storage (mp3 music without having to carry your phone with you).

Unlike some other manufacturers Suunto is listening to their customers and you will be getting support and new features for quite a long time. It’s just that you will never know what is coming (nothing is shared beforehands) and it often takes a few months to get fixes to known bugs.

[ChrisA]

@prashant I would say it depends on what you need. Suunto‘s health tracking features like sleep, recovery, resting HR, HRV etc. are imo mainly there for training guidance (e.g. if you’re training is too hard or just right or not hard enough for reaching your goals). You can of course also use them for personal health tracking, but don’t expect a lot of guidance here, like advices on when to go to bed etc. You will have to interpret your data yourself (like if your resting HR raises and your HRV drops, you might be getting sick). For pure health tracking and special guidance (e.g. sleep coaching) you might be better off with something like an Oura ring.
Some personal experience: those health tracking devices like Whoop, Oura etc. are great to establish healthy routines like a good sleep routine or showing you how bad alcohol is for your recovery. But I would recommend listening to your feelings first and only look into those metrics, when you feel bad for no real reason. Then they may give you some useful information, but otherwise what do you get from a device telling you, that you’re recovery is 70% vs 85% on another day