Sunnto 7 Sensor Support

DMytro

@rhustox I might be a little biased on this, as it was mentioned a dozen times on the forum.
But let me tell you - absence of HR belt support and battery life were the exact two reasons my girlfriend didn’t buy an S7.

@дима-мельниченко said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:

@rhustox I might be a little biased on this, as it was mentioned a dozen times on the forum.
But let me tell you - absence of HR belt support and battery life were the exact two reasons my girlfriend didn’t buy an S7.

Ok, excuse our ignorance then not checking every single forum on the globe, any granny chats around the corner and all the radio frequencies talking about it before we bought it. Happy now?

Our mistake, Ok maybe. But not a mistake a big brand like this one should be willing to easy make. That’s all.

Brad_Olwin

@rhustox This does not have to be an extended debate, the S7 is unlikely to get sensor support in the Suunto Wear OS app. If your wife needs this, return/sell it and get an S5/S9baro/S9P. Or as has been stated many times use a 3rd party app but battery life will only be 5-6h I believe. That may be enough, it is not hard to import the .fit file back into SA. This is getting silly, I understand you did not know this, that you are disappointed, that is fine.

@brad_olwin said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:

@rhustox This does not have to be an extended debate, the S7 is unlikely to get sensor support in the Suunto Wear OS app. If your wife needs this, return/sell it and get an S5/S9baro/S9P. Or as has been stated many times use a 3rd party app but battery life will only be 5-6h I believe. That may be enough, it is not hard to import the .fit file back into SA. This is getting silly, I understand you did not know this, that you are disappointed, that is fine.

Great!

Jamie BG

@rhustox
Big mistake - no mistake from Suunto, it was never intended to pair with a HR strap, as it was never intended as that type of watch.

I don’t know about you, but when I consider a purchase, especially one that is a fair bit of money, I tend to do a bit of research, read some reviews, and watch some reviews about a product to make sure its a good fit with me.
Every fitness tech reviewer has made it blatently obvious, often in the pros & cons at the begining of the review that as far as they are concenred from a fitness perspective its missing, due to the lack of external HR support. As most later point out, it really isnt a true fitness, and thus isn’t really expected.

All tech reviewers haven’t even commented on it, and why haven’t they, well the review the watch based on its market - the smartwatch crowd who like to do some basic activity tracking and don’t care about HR straps, in fact it the smartwatch category its one of only two smartwatches that comes with a proper HR Zone metering (this is not standard on smartwatches whose activity tracking consists of duration, distance, HR, may speed/pace, with post activity breadcrumb map).

And while Suunto hasn’t obviously stated you can’t pair it a HR strap with the suunto app, it can with other apps, so its not like its actually missing that functionality. If this was so important I would have thought you would check.

When I moved from S7 to Fenix 6x Pro, I seriously considered a S9B / S9 Peak but didn’t buy one as it didn’t tick all the options under my need list and missed a lot under my want list, where as 6x ticked off virtually all of the need & want list.

Nigel Taylor 0

It’s also shown right there in the Heart Rate section of the basic checklist of features when comparing Suunto products…

https://www.suunto.com/en-gb/Compare-Products/?products=283411%3B247292%3B261241

…the exact kind of place where someone who has an existing Bluetooth or ANT+ strap would be looking to see if they are supported?

Brad_Olwin

@nigel-taylor-0 @Jamie-BG Give him a break, he did not know and was surprised and very disappointed. That is it. Let’s find solutions to the issue!

@brad_olwin said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:

@nigel-taylor-0 @Jamie-BG Give him a break, he did not know and was surprised and very disappointed. That is it. Let’s find solutions to the issue!

Oh right, seems here some are the ones responsible of this thing which are even way more upset than me of my words and conserns, what a surprise, but fortunately for you the mighty ones, you are the smartest buyers of the year!
Has anyone thought of a reward for them?

-The Smartwatch for Sporty Life- That’s how the slogan sounds.

Not a bloody chinese smartwatch with Wear OS and OHR funciton as the ones you can buy for 30€ at Amazon.

I had 5 Suunto’s by now and never complaint about, because everything for me was the expected, what a wrong idea buying this one model for my wife, that’s it.

For the wolves all mighty always doing all perfect I took some time here proposing interesting new features in case would be possible. Do not think of me as a complainer or someone who’s hobby is getting in fights or trouble, because at the same time I just appeared to this forum and the only one as a user, I could disappear right now and all could be the same, so please don’t act as idiots.

But yes, please let’s end up this ridiculous conversation. Your help is just a little on this big issue for me and the product isn’t what it could have been, let’s just be a little honest and clear.

Manuel Silvestri

@rhustox I understand your frustration. I bought the S7 more than one years ago and I sold it after one month. It was completely unuseful from my perspective of use. Bodyweight workouts, uphill sprints, running…the OHR was always wrong and, thus, also the relative metrics. If your girlfriend needs a smartwatch with sport features, she can find more satisfaction with Garmin or, at least, with the AW which is capable to connect a bluetooth strap. Another important note: both have also better battery performances.

Aleksander H

@manuel-silvestri Apple watch has better battery? I thought they were comparable?

As for OHR this will always vary to some degree between people. I have done runs with my Garmin connected to a polar h7 and compared it to my S7 OHR using DCRainmaker tools. Differences were negligible for my running (not tested other activities). Some times it would lag behind the H7 by a second or so when my HR increased or fell greatly, but it matched up after that. But I know people’s experience has varied. DCRainmaker didn’t have good results for instance.

My only reason to need BLE HR support is for winter activities so I can wear the watch over my jacket when skiing. I’m currently using my SSU for such activities.

Manuel Silvestri

@aleksander-h For sure, that’s why it should be possibile to pair a chest strap. Also for the newest Garmin watches or Polar, the reliability of OHR is bad for some activity. I use an old Fenix 5 and I’m completely aware that if I don’t use a chest strap for the activity I usually do, I obtain wrong data.

Egika

@manuel-silvestri as mentioned before it is possible to pair a chest strap (just not in the built in Suunto wear app). You can use it with other apps like Google Fit etc.

Manuel Silvestri

@egika I know that it’s possible, but if someone buy an S7 and must use another app because of the lack of chest strap connection, why buy a Suunto?

Egika

@manuel-silvestri because they have the best design, awesome support, are really tough for water sports, whatever else.
Why buy anything else that is not a Suunto where your data ends up in a different platform as well?

I moved from S9B to S7, I know, I’m crazy, but I liked having the WearOS for the daily use.
I normally read the user guide before purchase any item. I knew ahead that not have Sensor Support but imagined that was only on initial release and comes later on a FW update (same with create custom intervals). I would like to log all from the same Suunto Wear app and at the moment for me the only external sensor that I would like to pair is the cadence for my bike. By this reason I don’t want to use another external app than Suunto Wear app.

I can understand that it’s a battery life matter, but it’s better if this is available and the user can choose. I can understand also that my S7 can have an autonomy of 12 hours now, and only 3 hour if have paired a cadence sensor, to say anything as example. No problem with this. I could evaluate if this is useful or not and take my decision based on my use or activity of this day. Maybe the customers that prefer or like to pair the HR chest strap think the same. If I need to recharge my S7 twice a day or after each activity, no problem, I can decide if I need this sensor or not.

Some Suunto decisions are strange: remove the dark theme on SA, remove the m/s units that I had available on my old A3P and now no, etc but I still have confidence on the devices and I had worse experiences with other brands.

pilleus

I moved from S7 back to SSU. Because I like WearOS too, I have a Oppo Watch (46 mm) to gather heart rate, steps (natively in Google Fit, the health app of Oppo is deactivated by ADB) and show notifications during the day.

S7 without sensor support is not suitable for cycling (mounted on the handle bar there is no heart rate and no data from the power meter) and not for kayaking (on the wrist no option to read the data, on the deck no heart rate).

So I use the SSU with connected power meter and heart rate from the Oppo watch (heart for bluetooth). By the way the Oppo watch has the best wrist heart rate reading I ever had with a watch. No difference to a Polar chest strap or OH1. And the battery usage is equal to the S7, the display brilliant and the charging time unique (30 minutes from 33 to 100 %).

Sleep tracking without any watch, because I use Google’s Nest Hub and have a detailled database in Google Fit, which I need for my health insurance.

So far my setup and I can wait for new options coming from Suunto and Wear …

aeroild

Now Spotify with offline music has come to Wear OS, which is great. I assume we got this watch because we want the smart watch features like playing offline music. We want this feature even though it means shorter battery life. So shouldn’t Suunto now realize that we are also willing to accept shorter battery life if we get the support of an external HR sensor? If we want best battery life we use the internal sensor, if we want best HR data we use an external sensor. Simple as that.

diynevala

I read most of the discussion here, and I find it very depressing that Suunto is just dropping S7 like a failed concept.

Most of the discussion was about the wrist OHR being inaccurate, and external HR draining battery.

To address the accuracy of OHR, I have not had problems with it. But practicing judo, there are strict rules against watches and jewelry. Therefore I really, really need external belt support!

As for the battery drain, you can only do judo for 2h max. at a time, it does not matter if it drops from 80% to 40%. Actually, when the watch is not on my wrist, it should not use the OHR therefore saving that bit of energy?

Just do something to remedy this! Make an extra Wear OS app, call it Suunto external HRM recorder! It does not have to have ALL the functionalities of the main Suunto App, it just needs to save the data in the same system!

Alternatively, make importing data easier. I have NO IDEA how to move data from any app to Suunto. IS THERE SUCH POSSIBILITY?

DMytro

@diynevala you did try using other apps to record an activity with an HR belt, right?
Btw, if it’s only a belt your wearing, why not record your training with suunto app on your phone? You’d save a ton of battery on your watch and stay inside the ecosystem, so no need to hassle with an activity import afterwards.

Egika

@diynevala just link your Suunto belt to the Suunto App and record your Judo session with the app directly - phone next to the mat