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@binoworld-uk Garmin are sports watches first with a few smart features added in. The S7 is a smartwatch first with many great sports features added.
The S7 should not be compared to Garmin devices (or even typical Suunto watches), instead it should be compared to other smartwatches (WearOS, Apple, etc) where it comfortably beats most of them in most categories.
I believe it achieved it’s mission and then some. Is it perfect? No. But it is the first WearOS device from Suunto and it beats WearOS devices from companies that have been making them for years (Fossil, Mobvoi, Samsung, etc).
The S7 is now over two years old. Barely any other WearOS devices get major updates beyond a year (security updates still come through on all devices as and when they are released by Google. These are NOT monthly like they are with the phones).
I would love Suunto to release an S7mkII, as with iterative improvements, modern hardware, and customer feedback they could really knock it out of the park.
What has held the S7 back (in my opinion) has been the lack of advertising and market awareness (Samsung, Fossil, and TicWatch are all people really talk about) and charging too much (£420 when new was crazy money, even the overpriced Samsung watches aren’t that much and the S7 could do so much more!).
I worry that the lack of sales of the S7 will mean it will be destined to be a one off
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@olymay said in April is Coming ! (S7):
What has held the S7 back (in my opinion) has been the lack of advertising and market awareness (Samsung, Fossil, and TicWatch are all people really talk about) and charging too much (£420 when new was crazy money, even the overpriced Samsung watches aren’t that much and the S7 could do so much more!).
Personally I think what held it back was the many missing features when it launched. Many reviews you find online were not the best because they were all based on the original software. They weren’t updated to reflect what the S7 is capable of now.
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@aleksander-h said in April is Coming ! (S7):
@olymay said in April is Coming ! (S7):
What has held the S7 back (in my opinion) has been the lack of advertising and market awareness (Samsung, Fossil, and TicWatch are all people really talk about) and charging too much (£420 when new was crazy money, even the overpriced Samsung watches aren’t that much and the S7 could do so much more!).
Personally I think what held it back was the many missing features when it launched. Many reviews you find online were not the best because they were all based on the original software. They weren’t updated to reflect what the S7 is capable of now.
I agreed that these missing features did hurt it, but none of the Samsungs, Apples, Fossils had those features either. Yes they could be added with third party apps on those devices, but that was also the case for the S7.
I feel that many reviewers were treating the S7 as another Suunto watch and comparing it to things like the Suunto 9 or Garmin/Coros/Polar watches, which was simply crazy.
At launch, even when it didn’t have all the features it does now, the S7 was still a WAY more complete fitness smartwatch than any other smartwatch on the market.
However, this did not justify the insane price at launch. £420 was simply too much for a smartwatch. Especially when it wasn’t being advertised and barely anyone knew about it.
When people saw my S7 and asked about it barely any of them even knew of Suunto, let alone the S7. Those that did were divers and only knew about the dive watches.
Once I explained it people most were extremely interested - a full on smartwatch that could track fitness as well as proper sport swatch, yes please they said! Then they saw the price and noped out faster than a greased up whippet.I have never seen an advert for Suunto here in the UK (apart from a few targeted adds on social media but they don’t count). But I see adverts for Apple and Samsung pretty much daily. It’s no surprise to learn they are the top two smartwatch sellers.
With aggressive advertising and more aggressive pricing then Suunto could take a sizable chunk of the market. If they keep as they are then they will sell even fewer S7mkII then they did the first one (if they even release one at all).
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@olymay said in April is Coming ! (S7):
I have never seen an advert for Suunto here in the UK (apart from a few targeted adds on social media but they don’t count).
It was actually advertised quite a bit here in Oslo. They had digital posters going for a while at one of our most used tube stations (Stortinget). I’m guessing it’s a better known brand here in Norway than the UK though. Most people I know know what Suunto is, even if they aren’t particularly active people. Among my British friends though, few have heard of it.
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@aleksander-h said in April is Coming ! (S7):
@olymay said in April is Coming ! (S7):
I have never seen an advert for Suunto here in the UK (apart from a few targeted adds on social media but they don’t count).
It was actually advertised quite a bit here in Oslo. They had digital posters going for a while at one of our most used tube stations (Stortinget). I’m guessing it’s a better known brand here in Norway than the UK though. Most people I know know what Suunto is, even if they aren’t particularly active people. Among my British friends though, few have heard of it.
And that emphasises my point. With some advertising in the UK and other countries (advertising does not need to be expensive either) then Suunto could gain some significant brand awareness.
Most people I have spoken to really like the sound of Suunto and how they operate (designed and made in Finland etc (ignoring the S7 which is made in China)).
Unfortunately they then see the prices and decide they can get the same or more for less money from other brands. Right or wrong that is the perception.Suunto need (in my opinion) to broaden their advertising as well as price aggressively.
But dropping the S7 like a dead duck after just one year of updates means many people (me included) will be extremely wary about buying another Suunto device -
I’ve been using Galaxy Watch 4 and S7 parallelly for the past few months now.
S7 is obviously shining on the sports side and also the easy use of offline maps is something the Watch 4 is lacking. On the smart side the Watch 4 is a bit better over the S7.
For example I don’t know if it’s the Wear OS 3 but with Watch 4 I can read full long messages (email and whatsapp). S7 is not able to show long messages completely. Battery is about the same with both watches in normal use but during an activity the S7 is again shining over the Watch 4.
I really hope that S7 is not the last Wear OS device from Suunto. -
@jantikainen The galaxy watch can track multiple sleeps per day, like a fitbit. Something the S7 unfortunately can’t.
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@harboe
yes that’s true but it’s not relevant to me since I don’t take naps.
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@harboe i totally agree with you. Lack of tracking multiple sleep sessions is really bad. Because every nap is kinda booster to your energy during the day and kind of status of your wellbeing… But unfortunatly even resources doesn’t increase during day when you are stationary in your bed or something it must be shown somehow that you get yourself some energy so your watch without that thinks on the end of the day that you are dying
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@zoran-z - take a look at your resources widget - naps should reflect as boosting resources - which in my opinion is the correct way of dealing with naps; and shouldn’t be added to overall sleep as it knocks the percentage of stages out of whack in relation to overall sleep duration.
If it naps/rest time when your stress is low, it should be increasing resources. If it isn’t it’s due to the firstbeat algorithm not being updated. The S7 was one of the first watches with the firstbeat sleep tracking integrated with stress and sleep score, however when you see the improvements that have been made to it over the last year or so (reference the Garmin Fenix lines) - its amazing how much more developed and refined it has become.
Though still wish we got the HR graph across the sleep stages graph like Suunto does. Always really liked looking at that one. Instead now just look at stress overlaid against sleep stages.
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@zoran-z for me resting, like sitting on the couch - and taking a nap even more - is reflected in a significant raise in resources on any Suunto watch I have / had. Be sure to set your resting heartrate not too low! It’s not the lowest average HR in sleep, but the one you have during the day while not doing anything. For me it’s about 10 beats higher than the sleeping HR.
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@chrisa Is there possibility to configure resting heartrate in S7? Im not aware of it.
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@chrisa Thank you for advice. Didn’t know about that funcionality…
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@brad_olwin I agree on the need for customizable HR zones. Mostly because Suunto still claims that the watch offers “personal heart rate zones” under the specifications on the Suunto 7 page. But please Suunto, a generic calculation of heart rate zones based on max HR is not the same as personal HR zones.
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@aeroild I think this thread is about s7’s possible software update and not feature requests
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@r-s-0 So in other words you could directed your comment to half of the posts in this thread.
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@r-s-0 I think this comes down to a very subtle distinction between how we differentiate „possible upgrade“ and „feature request“
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@aeroild Yeah and it’s been bothering me for a while
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F freeheeler referenced this topic on
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No more WearOS from Suunto?.. (from Google I/O '22 about WearOS 3)
