DC Rainmaker Review
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Cool to see the race 3s being launched! Kudos to Suunto team!
As others said price is similar to race s titanium, and what I believe wanted to tell, and I believe is a nice call, is if Suunto would have kept the steel version it would allow to have a more competitive price.I only have seen the video, and a bit in the hurry…
Honestly I think he was cold truth. And not
in a way against Suunto but in a kinda of “wake up, there is competition doing stuff differently “.Most of us here have some kind of preference towards the brand, so it is easy to live with some stuff, but I believe for the average Joe comparing spec to spec it may difficult to be sold on it.
On my side sold the race s ti for the same pri, and update wise I buy and when I get a good deal on a 3s may buy it.
Also to see how it is holding up reliability wise -
@sky-runner said:
On Garmin you can do this too. There is an option to clone a sport mode - “Copy Activity”.As far as I remember, this wasn’t there in the early days when I was a Garmin user (since 2013 to 2020), good they copied it from Suunto
However, this does not change that I do not consider the criticism a real point, more of a “I am used to how Garmin works and do not see the value in what others do differently”. And it is not a direct critic at Ray, just a comment.
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As far as I remember, this wasn’t there in the early days when I was a Garmin user (since 2013 to 2020), good they copied it from Suunto
I had the copy function on my forerunner 935, which I bought in 2017….
Although I don’t see it as a major annoyance and the end result is about the same, I don’t see the reason or advantage of suunto having readonly default activities.
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Back to the review, after watching the video I think the review is not biased. Every criticism is well explained. Maybe except the price because its compared to steel. But on the other side there is no Race3S steel, so thats also not completely wrong.
And the Garmin Fanboy thing sounds like a strange conspiracy theory. Ray not even mentioned Garmin, but instead how good Suunto was in the past - and Coros now is… -
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Your endless criticism bores me.
See how easy it is dropping an opinion?
Apparently not bored enough to not bother since you took the time to reply.
I value your reply very much!
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Apparently you have never seen a mirror…
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DCR reviews have long become irrelevant
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@neilme
I think his testing of HR and GPS accuracy is quite usefull.When it comes to features he mostly list the specs. I would have appreciated a deeper evaluation of some features.
I guess it is up to us buyers to evaluate what features we need and what price we are willing to pay.
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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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