New owner of Suunto Race - first feelings

[Jamie BG]

@helgonet12
actually epix 2 does have ambient sensor. and like the Race you have 3 base brightness levels - 1/3, 2/3, 3/3. I leave it on 1/3 and never have an issue.
For sleep profile you get 4 levels - the same 3 plus and extra ultra low level you can set it at. So when triggering screen when sleep profile is on there is barely any illumination - just enough to make out the time - you couldn’t use that dimmed watch face as a flashlight or anything like that - doesn’t push out enough illumination.
I suspect you friend may have had the brightness seirously ramped up.

It is the standard version of the Fenix 7 that doesn’t have an ambient sensor - they adjusted that with the Pro versions of the Fenix. But that is the only MIP watch models that garmin have that have an ambient sensor (always though it stupid that it wasn’t on their MIP watches). But all their amoled watches have ambient sensors.

[Maryn]

@Egika

thanks

[ChrisA]

First week with the Race

After one week of using the Race I can report some „long time“ observations:

• charged the Race exactly 7 days ago and its now on 15% charge. Thats with AoD, 24/7 HR, nightly SpO2 and 320 minutes of workout tracking with GPS in performance mode.

• recovery has not shown any drops or peaks. Normally that happened to me after early morning easy dog walks. Had none of them. For me recovery seems more ‘solid’ and closer to reality as e.g. Garmins Body Battery, which saw me down to 5-10% most of my workdays (and I never felt like being that exhausted)
  

• sleep tracking works great for me, and is on par with readings from an oura ring. I set my RHR in the watch to 9 beats over my average nightly RHR (53 -> 62) which works good for me. Cool thing is that the Race tracks Naps and does this very good. I fell asleep on the Sofa last week and a 40 minute nap was tracked and added to my sleeping time.

• the “torch” is awesome bright and really helpful in the dark.

• the whole user experience is great. The watch feels very easy and straightforward to use, multiple alarms, calling the phone (very helpful!) and setting up workouts, everything feels very easy to use and logically.

• I had zero bugs (besides a very minor one with the “fitness - Suunto 3 - watchface” not alwas updating the resources), nothing what you could call lagging, GPS tracking was very good, not as super-duper crisp like on the Vertical but as good as on every Garmin, AW, Coros etc. with multiband. Did not compare running HR to a H10 strap yet, but every run seemed reasonable, no sudden drops, spikes etc. music playback worked great with iphone and Huawei freebuds, voice prompts ducked the music and it then returned to normal volume evrytime.

• The screen is gorgeous, very bright, easy to read even in bright sunlight. Comes on quick enough while running, easily readable for my 53 year old eyes without glasses.

• The only thing that I was not impressed by, were the HR readings while doing a strength training. Here the Race’s values were too low, compared to a HR belt and also not as responsive,

As a whole I really enjoy the Race. IMO its an awesome watch and when the Vertical gets the same firmware it’ll make it as awesome too. I can highly recommend the Race! Impressive job Suunto!!!

[A Former User]

@sashaklepikov If the SR had been available as refurbished I would have bought it immediately, really impressive that display! But I think the 9 Peek Pro will be cool as well

[General_Witt]

Is nightly SpO2 necessary to get the HRV?

[Egika]

@General_Witt no.
SpO2 is measuring the oxygen partial pressure, thus the ability of your red blood cells to transport oxygen

HRV (heart rate variation) is a pulse metric. with breathing, your pulse changes ever so slightly. In Ambit times, the watch would calculate your respiration rate from HRV.
Now this has become a metric to judge your readiness for training.

Try googling those metrics.

[Mff73]

@ChrisA
Multiple alarms and calling the phone?

[GiPFELKiND]

@Mff73 yes multiple alarms and finding the Phone

[ChrisA]

@Mff73 “calling” may be a bad translation on my side -> you can find your phone with your Suunto (making your phone ring)

And you can now have more than one alarms e.g one for weekdays and one for weekends.

[Tieutieu]

Those things where in the specs, so not a surprise (but a good one nevertheless !). SV will/should get it to with the update to come.

[ChrisA]

@Tieutieu actually it’s funny how often you suddenly use those feature, you first thought you will not need very often or at all

[Tieutieu]

@ChrisA let’s see ! For now I don’t really use alarm on my SV, but, how knows !
But Searching phone could be useful for me sometimes !

[Mff73]

@Tieutieu
Thanks, I don’t read specs , so when I read that from @ChrisA (thanks) i assumed SV should got it as well.
Multiple alarms is nice for me. One for work days, and at least one different for exception nal wake up .

[General_Witt]

@Egika I was asking because I read that spo2 is a battery killer, to turn it off if not necessary or in a mountain environment.

[Egika]

@General_Witt said in New owner of Suunto Race - first feelings:

@Egika I was asking because I read that spo2 is a battery killer, to turn off if not necessary or in a mountain environment.

While it does not seem to consume a lot of battery, this one definitely is a metric without use for mortals in the lowlands.

[General_Witt]

Just opened mine.
The Titanium in the Race must be a different alloy than the Vertical. It’s less dark and has a different tint, between beige and light grey.
And of course the initial firmware upgrade takes 60 minutes to complete…
Other than that this watch is just beautiful looking, not even remotely comparable to Garmin watches. It looks like a generation ahead.

[mikekoski490]

@General_Witt

Vertical - Bezel material: Titanium Grade 5
Race - Bezel material: Titanium (not specified what grade it is)

[Egika]

Titanium - like Aluminum - is almost always anodized, otherwise the surface would not be inert as it is.
The anodization can be done in various colors not affecting the metal alloy structure otherwise.

[inkognito]

To find out more, feel free to send me both SV and SR and I will perform the X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence analysis to get the phase and chemical composition.

It is non-destructive but I will be very tempted to keep both watches afterwards

[Kostas Zinelis]

I believe Suunto is back in the game but I am facing the following bugs with the Suunto race all black:

1. Can’t answer/respond to a call through the watch.
2. Lagging/Image distortion at map viewing especially at 500m and 250m view.
3. Can’t rearrange the date format on watch face.

I hope all of the above to be solved with the next update.