Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical
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I have been using my Vertical s/s for 10 days and I am pretty disappointed if I’m honest. I purchased the non solar version as I preferred the black as opposed to grey look from the photo’s. Additionally, I didn’t feel as though the solar would benefit me much more than a bit of a gimmick. Additionally, I purchased a custom, choosing a fabric strap, which also meant that returning was not an option unfortunately.
Initial impressions were not great, I wasn’t blown away by the overall feel, indeed, I was disappointed by the feel of the strap (nylon) and have since set about trying to find a strap similar to my Suunto Alpha Core, which in my opinion, is a far superior strap. The other main thing that disappointed from it’s appearance and fee was the two markings at the top and bottom buttons, I can not believe that these have no luminous coating.
Moving on, I started to feel let down when I realized that I could not change the Altitude graph on the watch face to the barometer, I mean really…
Similarly, there is no button lock in normal/standby mode, this is such a basic addition and really should be considered. I spend too much time having to get back to the home screen from accidental button presses during normal day activities.
I’ve had trouble synchronizing with Apple Health, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and to make things worse, as it time stamps steps and heart rate at 10 minute intervals, it means step counts for example are counted in addition to iPhone steps for example. This was not the case with my Garmin Fenix 6 or my Apple watch (I understand that prioritizing the device affects these things in Apple Heal settings but it makes not difference here).
I am unable to choose which phone notifications are allowed, something I think the Garmin allows, but as I do not use such features, it’s not a major problem.
Not able to have more than one alarm is a bit of a pain and not being able to customise the units is a bit off. For example, I like to read temperature in degC but see my distance etc in miles, not an issue with other devices.
The altitude reading is way off, compared to other devices I use, including my Suunto Alpha Core. the HR is a bit of a hit and miss, sometimes reading extremely high for no reason. Step counts are a joke. Sleep does not count outwith the time set for sleep in the device, unlike other devices.
I’ve not bothered too much with the activity side of things given my disappointment with other aspects of the watch.
With no gps activities, apart from a few minutes testing, notifications off and opening the app daily to synchronize, I am finding batter has lasted the 10 days and will probably make it to 2 weeks, but cant see it lasting any longer than that.
All in all, I will likely swap back to my Suunto Alpha Core for daily wearing and continue to wear my Garmin Fenix 6 for activities.
I so wanted this to be everything the Core was, but with the “smart” things working well in a Suunto watch.
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@plisken said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:
I am unable to choose which phone notifications are allowed, something I think the Garmin allows, but as I do not use such features, it’s not a major problem.
Correct if your phone is Android.
Not an option if your phone is an iPhone and this is an Apple issue not Suunto or any other watch maker - Apple prevents it. Note there are some ways around this - using focus and some other options. -
Another device sent (at least it says NEW MODULE on the service booklet) today. Unfortunately I will be away from home for a month to test it
Will keep you posted in any case. -
@Jamie-BG I am not so sure this is the case.
Please find below a screenshot from the a Fitbit app running on IOS;
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@plisken It’s a lie from some developers. Because it is possible. I’m a developer and you can do that, like you described. It’s more or less fingerpointing and that’s more or less not accurate at all
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@RightNow I know it can be done, as I currently have 3 different devices on IOS, Fitbit, Garmin and Suunto.
I’m not so sure the Suunto integration with IOS is particularly good, especially when it comes to syncing with Apple Health.
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@Jamie-BG this is not true. Garmin in the iOS app allows for notification filter at least for calls and texts.
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Oh dear! I’ve been away for a while and didn’t even notice my thread is going on and on
Sad to see that I made the right decision for myself by selling the watch after only a few days of testing. Zero important bug fixes in over a month. With this pace, the SV will be completely outdated if and when all the critical bugs are fixed.
It’s such a shame! The watch design, the hardware, the software design, the intuitive handling - it’s all beautiful, just perfect!!
Suunto should get their priorities right! Don’t continue to improve stuff that’s already good, don’t add new features… Fix the critical bugs
S9P Ti - ex Altimax, A3P, SV Ti
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@Simon said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:
Oh dear! I’ve been away for a while and didn’t even notice my thread is going on and on
Sad to see that I made the right decision for myself by selling the watch after only a few days of testing. Zero important bug fixes in over a month. With this pace, the SV will be completely outdated if and when all the critical bugs are fixed.
It’s such a shame! The watch design, the hardware, the software design, the intuitive handling - it’s all beautiful, just perfect!!
Suunto should get their priorities right! Don’t continue to improve stuff that’s already good, don’t add new features… Fix the critical bugs
Well you should check S9PP… 6 months to get a software update and guess what fixed?
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@zhang965 Yeah, I saw
Very unfortunate. I’d love to have a longer battery life than my S9P. But the huge amount of bugs in S9PP and SV is just not worth it for me. -
@Simon it is indeed sad. Doesn’t exactly yield any confidence in Suunto if it is incapable of addressing long discussed issues. To me this forum is more of an echo chamber instead of a place where Suunto comes to actively deal with customers/potential customers.
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@altcmd said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:
@Simon it is indeed sad. Doesn’t exactly yield any confidence in Suunto if it is incapable of addressing long discussed issues. To me this forum is more of an echo chamber instead of a place where Suunto comes to actively deal with customers/potential customers.
An echo chamber, nice wording.
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@zhang965 What else would you call it? My long-standing gripe with the software has been the limitation on single external HR strap, or other pods even. I have 3 different HR straps in use at any given point, and keep one of them at work. Now imagine me having to keep swapping out the pairing 2-3 times a week. This has been the case since Spartan and how many years has it been since? We were waiting for ages for some structured workout implementation and gosh, it finally did arrive with Guides, but meh, half-baked implementation that is not a standard feature (as also mentioned by DCR). Don’t get me wrong. On paper, the Guides idea sounds great but it has to match real world practicalities.
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@altcmd said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:
To me this forum is more of an echo chamber instead of a place where Suunto comes to actively deal with customers/potential customers.
This is a community forum, not support. But as you may have noticed, not only bugs are forwarded from here to Suunto by mods and volunteeers, some developers (for the app and the S+ apps) are actively participating in the forum.
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@altcmd said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:
@zhang965 What else would you call it? My long-standing gripe with the software has been the limitation on single external HR strap, or other pods even. I have 3 different HR straps in use at any given point, and keep one of them at work. Now imagine me having to keep swapping out the pairing 2-3 times a week. This has been the case since Spartan and how many years has it been since? We were waiting for ages for some structured workout implementation and gosh, it finally did arrive with Guides, but meh, half-baked implementation that is not a standard feature (as also mentioned by DCR). Don’t get me wrong. On paper, the Guides idea sounds great but it has to match real world practicalities.
Don’t get me wrong, I do love your echo chamber, it’s absobloodylutely precious.
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@isazi I understand. And hence some of the concerns I have highlighted are nothing new. I am not seeking support as per official channel cause again, none of them are new to Suunto.
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I come from Garmin and I am really happy with the Vertical (none solar).
- Battery lifetime is just great, in both, GPS mode and none GPS-mode.
- GPS accuracy and height measurement for trail running is great.
- Map detail is for running on point. Route is perfectly visible. Love it.
- Only while indoor rowing the distance is shown wrong. Better would be no distance at all. This is the only criticism I have at them moment.
The first days I had problems downloading the maps. That was a bit annoying, but was not Suunto‘s fault, but was due to a misconfiguration of the child protection in my router.
In other words: I don‘t regret switching from Garmin to Suunto and I am totally happy with the Vertical.
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@sebastiant I agree with you. I had a Fenix 5splus, battery was a disaster and display too small to use maps.
I never had a Suunto before but this Vertical is very good as you wrote in battery and GPS. I was very impressed to see how fast the compass is adjusting itself when you change direction. A few times I navigated by choosing a Point of interest and the navigating was perfect and gave the total meters I was away from the POI. I didn’t have to use my smartphone to find my way.
What I also like is the Suunto Coach which makes a daily or weekly comment of your activities.
Minor points and very strange for a smartwatch in 2023:
- lack of good watchfaces
- stepcounter not correct, always a few thousands steps less than reality
- caloriewidget not correct
- sleep recording OK but not time to wake up, watch let me sleep till I got up but I’m awake an hour or more before that
-optical heartrate most of time correct but sometimes it suddenly is getting up or down and than after half a minute comes back to normal.
But all this things seems software related and I hope it can be solved in the near future by Suunto.
But concluded I think this is a very good watch that regarding the very good battery, gps and practical maps, can be a good companion for lot of years to come.
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@Philip said in Conclusions about the Suunto Vertical:
stepcounter not correct, always a few thousands steps less than reality
Do you mean the number of steps during the activity? Suunto only counts the steps of one leg if I’m not mistaken. My cadence while walking is twice less than what Garmin counts. I found this description somewhere online:
At race pace, cadence should be at or above 180 steps per minute, or 90 revolutions per minute (counting one leg). Suunto uses revolutions per minute, so a good goal at race pace is 90-92 revolutions per minute.
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@smopi I recently took an easy evening walk of 3.87 km around my neighborhood. My SV counted 4496 steps, which is supposedly close to the truth considering my average step is approximately 80 cm. That proves my SV counts both legs.
BUT I do get extra steps even while working on a keyboard…
I wouldn’t rule out individual differences based on personal running styles, or perhaps there’s a faulty sensor if your step counts are half of what you’d expect.
