Suunto 7 - kayaking - bad experiences

pilleus

Okay, a second workout with the kayak and my S7.

S7 and kayaking is the worst case I have ever seen on a GPS watch.

All possible options aren’t working.

S7 mounted to the deck of the kayak: Heart rate is showing the maximum pulse all the time.

S7 on the wrist, display enabled when turning the wrist, to the able to read the data for a very short moment while the arm is moving forward: The display will be activated all the time because of the movement of the arm. Battery usage in 2 hours (1,5 hours paddling, half an hour sitting in the sun on an island) 56 percent (from 68 to 12)!

S7 on the wrist, option turning the wrist to activate the display disabled: No possibility to have a look on the screen for some information (speed, heart rate, distance)! No possibility to press a button without stopping paddling.

GPS track and heart rate are really bad.

S7 is not an option for kayaking, not at all, never! 🤬

I love my S7 for walking, mountain biking and cycling.

Here the link to the activity:

https://www.suunto.com/move/thomasschnhtl/5e8df11e73f4656a8a2cc792

pilleus

Please, can someone move this topic to the S7 category.

It’s primarily a problem of the S7 and not of the Suunto app.

Thanks!

sartoric

moved to s7

pilleus

Here a similar workout with the kayak. The power was a bit less, because it was very windy.

Look at the heart rate and the GPS track of the Ambit 3! This is awesome and correct.

The S7 is far, far away from this precise recording. With the heart rate of the S7 I would be dead, really dead. And I removed the ascent of 115 meters before comparing the activity with the one of the Ambit 3.

There should be a way to fix the problems.

https://quantified-self.io/user/0ntwZkfvMLhji8GViw3t4alT3py1/event/0HBe5FOU3Hwh4jODg07d

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@pilleus With the new FW in regards to GPS ?

pilleus

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos said in Suunto 7 - kayaking - bad experiences:

@pilleus With the new FW in regards to GPS ?

No, I didn’t use the S7 after the update for kayaking. But on a short walk over one hour. The GPS track is not really better than before and far away from Spartan Ultra and Ambit 3. On the other side I have very good results for cycling and mountain biking. It’s strange.

isazi

Finally went kayaking with the S7. My experience:

The track looks good overall (haven’t had time to check in detail, but I will)
Battery consumption was too high, I burned 70% of the battery in 2 hours
Having the map was amazing, could find a different way in a wood with many canals here, would have stick to the usual “path” without it
Altitude was all over the place, did more than 300 D+ and D- according to the watch, maybe it was the water or the sensor got clogged, I don’t know

Hopefully I’ll go again during the summer.

Egika

Same here. Display is always activating with each paddle stroke…
Very annoying - I wonder if Suunto have the different sport modes tested or if they just test trail running…
Position and altitude are fine - I still wonder why for example for SUP altitude is registered at all and not automatically set to 0 (i.e. Barometer mode). This has been an issue with many water sports since Spartan series at least …

Jamie BG

yes very painful re watch display always activating, does it also with SUP. had to go in and switch display to off, and then use button when I wanted to check and switch off again after. Got approx 10% per hour based on that method - which is close to tying into their 12 hour battery life when using GPS only (possibly may have been less than 10% per hour as first 40 mins had display activation issue, when noticed changed display setting. Also did look at watch fairly regularly for naivgation purposes).
So based on that think battery life is OK.

marty313

@pilleus I am use my S7 to track my sea kayaking trips and I am largely happy with it except for 2 points:
Battery life. The battery goes from 80% to 5% in less than 2 1/2 hours, probably because of the display flashing with each stroke.
The altitude graph is ridiculous - I must be paddling some BIG waves!

Egika

@marty313 altitude registration for water sports is something I have told Suunto quite a few times.
Sailing, kite boarding ext should just have a horizontal line for altitude.
Kayaking though can be different as you go down the river substantially when doing white water.
So a differentiated profile (like in MTB where you have Trail and Downhill) would make sense. Or the ability to manually switch between alti and baro like before.
(Funny thing is, that my S9B still registers altitude when set to baro only)

Whatever - the paddling movement turning on the display has been reported before. Waiting for a fix or setting here.
2 ideas:

Enable cinema mode and have display constantly off - you just can’t check your data then without 2 button presses
set backlight to lower level (2/3) manually. Will be more difficult to read but still possible.

isazi

Went kayaking yesterday. The latest (September 2020) update did definitely fix the battery consumption issue (as the watch does not wake up all the times). Altitude is still unreliable, probably due to wrist movement and water.

Egika

@isazi same here!
Battery - awesome!
Altitude - very questionable compared to the good accuracy when running