Title: Long-time Suunto user — bitterly disappointed with the Vertical
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@zapatista said in Title: Long-time Suunto user — bitterly disappointed with the Vertical:
I’ve owned Suunto watches on and off for over 25 years, most recently upgrading from the Suunto 9 Peak (non-Pro). I’ve always had a soft spot for Suunto, but what I’ve found with the Vertical has left me more disappointed than with any Suunto I’ve owned before.
Here’s what I’ve run into in less than 24 hours of ownership:
Watch face limitations: Only seven faces can be installed at once. Try to add more and the app just silently fails — no warning, no error, nothing. How hard would it be to display “You’ve reached the limit of 7 watch faces”?
Complications and essentials: Why do some faces not even show the date unless I waste a complication slot? Time and date are the bare minimum I expect without sacrificing a slot that should be for actual extras.
Pinned widgets: Only one allowed. Again, no message, no option. Just “one and done.” Why not give users freedom? One person’s “essentials” aren’t the same as another’s.
Missing tap-to-cycle watch faces: On the Suunto 9 Peak I loved being able to tap the watch face to cycle through different data. That was elegant, minimal, and powerful. The fact that Suunto removed such a stellar feature in the Vertical strikes me as absolute madness. Why take away functionality that worked so well?
Raise to wake / tap to wake: Raise to wake is flaky at best, and tap to wake isn’t even officially a feature — yet sometimes it half-works. Neither are consistent enough to rely on.
Button behaviour: Because raise and tap were so unreliable, I turned to the buttons expecting them to be a consistent fallback. But there is no button on this watch that will reliably wake it to the time screen with backlight. Sometimes a press does what I want. Other times it dumps me into the pinned widget, the Activity menu, or other widgets, and I have to swipe back just to see the time. This appears to be due to a two-stage sleep state: if the watch has been idle for “long enough,” a press wakes cleanly. If it hasn’t, the exact same press overshoots. From the outside, the screen looks the same (off!), so you never know what you’re going to get. Absolutely ridiculous.
Standby: “Standby on” burns more battery but at least makes wake behaviour less infuriating. “Standby off” saves battery but guarantees overshoot headaches. Why should I have to make that trade-off in a premium watch?
General UX: Poor communication everywhere. Features silently failing, limits undocumented, no feedback to the user. It gives the impression of half-finished software design layered over excellent hardware.
To top it all off — forum registration nonsense: Why on earth do I need to create another account just to post here? My Suunto App account isn’t good enough? That’s a ridiculous, user-hostile choice — and to make it worse, I was forced to consent to email notifications during signup.
The hardware is outstanding — the battery life, the GPS, the maps — but none of that matters if I can’t depend on the basics. For me, the most fundamental requirement is simple: press a button, see the time. Every time. The Vertical can’t even deliver that without workarounds, quirks, or luck.
Has anyone else experienced these problems? And if so, have you found any reliable ways to get around them?
… because I’m on the point of packaging this watch up to return it!
I get that you are disappointed. We are here to help (if we can). Let me know if you want a hug.
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@zapatista I think you are exaggerating a bit? Rather than complaining what it cannot do, why not enjoying what it can do? How is able to cycle through complications making your life any different than now? Regarding UX, I think Suunto watches have one of the best UI/UX on the market, simple and easy to use. Sure, there are bugs, and it’s annoying. But still. And to top it off with a complaint about registration here with a different account, I think you are having just a bad day, or?
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From all the issures raised from @zapatista, I surely miss the tap to cycle. Not a big deal anyway.
I have not tried other sport brands (only Apple for some weeks). But I am absolutely happy with my S9PP (some shortcomings here and there, but I guess this is always the same with any consumer product that cannot be tailored to specific needs) and always amazed at what a piece of technology mi S9PP. I can imagine SV would be even better. And also (althouhg a bit less lately) on the how good the UX is (shared with S9PP). Maybe it is just a personal question and the SV is not the adequate piece for you as the S9PP is for me.
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@timecode Yes, I was having a bad day, for sure. It was a long series of “What the ****, it won’t even let me do this?” moments, and plenty of head-scratching “Now, why has it done that?” and “Why isn’t this in the manual?”.
Maybe I did exaggerate in my annoyance, but I still think the core points are valid.
For me it comes down to design priorities. I understand trade-offs have to be made, but somewhere along the line I think they got skewed. Why give us a dozen accent colours, but no way to adjust how long the backlight stays on? That’s aesthetics over functionality — and for me, functionality matters far more.
The operating system the Vertical runs on has been around since, what… 2018/19? My impression is that some of what I consider to be missing basic features — and the difficulty of adding them now — trace back to those early design decisions. When “technical reasons” are mentioned, I can’t help but suspect it’s a euphemistic way of saying those foundations can’t easily be changed now. In other words: bad calls were made early on, and the user’s flexibility wasn’t prioritised.
For me, it’s about user choice and freedom. I use Linux and wouldn’t touch an iPhone with a barge pole! But everyone’s different. Perhaps I do have high standards and expectations — but is that really such a bad thing?
Thankfully, today’s going better, and I’m sending the watch back. I’ve ordered a Garmin Fenix 8 Sapphire Solar. I’m sorry to leave Suunto, but I do so with real disappointment, which is a shame after 25 years of using their watches on and off.
P.S. I spoke too soon! After resetting the watch to factory settings before packing it up, I turned it on again just to check. That was a mistake. It turns out that once it’s been powered on from a fresh state, there’s no way to turn it off again without going through the setup process and pairing with the app. Really? I doubt I’m the first person to run into that. Another questionable design decision to end on.
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@surfboomerang said in Title: Long-time Suunto user — bitterly disappointed with the Vertical:
I have a €800 washing machine and can’t turn off the stupid music when it is finished. But hey… that’s life. I have to deal with it.
Man, that sucks too! Lucky you never have to share a tent with it!
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@JonasLarsson said in Title: Long-time Suunto user — bitterly disappointed with the Vertical:
I get that you are disappointed. We are here to help (if we can). Let me know if you want a hug.
I’m sure nothing will make your “helpful” community prouder than a flippant remark like that. I didn’t post here for jokes — I’m trying to get a £500 watch to behave consistently in the basics, and I probably wouldn’t be here at all had the user manual answered my questions.
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@zapatista that was fast, enjoy your new watch
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@zapatista trust me, I hate change in general. Maybe you should give it a few days and you would realise it’s not that bad, at all. For some reason I think you’ll come back to Suunto in the end. Good luck anyway : )
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@zapatista said in Title: Long-time Suunto user — bitterly disappointed with the Vertical:
@JonasLarsson said in Title: Long-time Suunto user — bitterly disappointed with the Vertical:
I get that you are disappointed. We are here to help (if we can). Let me know if you want a hug.
I’m sure nothing will make your “helpful” community prouder than a flippant remark like that. I didn’t post here for jokes — I’m trying to get a £500 watch to behave consistently in the basics, and I probably wouldn’t be here at all had the user manual answered my questions.
Just to be clear: I wasn’t joking. I meant what I said. If that doesn’t meet your definition of “helpful,” fair enough.
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I read the initial post again and wanted to comment each item, but then I deleted the whole thing. It just doesn’t make sense. I’ll comment on a single item:
‘The hardware is outstanding — the battery life, the GPS, the maps — but none of that matters if I can’t depend on the basics. For me, the most fundamental requirement is simple: press a button, see the time. Every time. The Vertical can’t even deliver that without workarounds, quirks, or luck.’
The GPS and the battery life actually ARE the basics for a sports watch. And this watch doesn’t need a button press to show the time.
All the items mentioned by the OP are nuances. Of course they can influence the overall reception of the device by the user, but to make such a harsh judgement by a user with a 25 year soft spot for the brand after less than a day of possession is weird to say the least.
Good luck with your new Garmin device (around twice more expensive, by the way). -
@zapatista Understood and hope you’re happier with the Garmin.
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@zapatista said in Title: Long-time Suunto user — bitterly disappointed with the Vertical:
So, this is what I’ve discovered over the course of the day.
First, ignoring raise-to-wake, and setting that to “off”. The following was observed with the watch lying face up on a desk.
After the last button press/swipe, 8 seconds later the backlight goes off, so the screen dims. This timing is very consistent. (By the way, to be able to adjust this time would be an obvious and very useful feature to include - even the cheapest smart phones have it!)
Then anywhere between 1 and 2 minutes after that, the screen goes completely black – this time period appears to vary widely, dependent on what, I have no idea! (@Egika so I don’t know why your screen never goes black, maybe it’s always on your wrist.)
These timings appear to be the same whether standby is set to on or off, the only difference being the intensity of the screen between the initial dimming and it going fully black.
Watch buyer tests £500 watch by not wearing it and observing results. Is disappointed and returns it to manufacturer. Hopefully the next watch will perform better under the same conditions - i.e. not being worn.
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@wakarimasen That was as part of a controlled experiment in an attempt to understand how the watch was programmed to behave (because I was none the wiser after studying the manual)
Of course I wore it too! It’s fatuous of you to suggest that I didn’t!
The backlight goes off after 8 seconds, on or off the wrist. Like it or not, you’re stuck with it. £500 watch with no adjustable backlight, and no possibility of adding that feature for “technical reasons”?!
Come on Suunto surely you can do better than that. Other people can! -
@zapatista said in Title: Long-time Suunto user — bitterly disappointed with the Vertical:
@wakarimasen That was as part of a controlled experiment in an attempt to understand how the watch was programmed to behave (because I was none the wiser after studying the manual)
Of course I wore it too! It’s fatuous of you to suggest that I didn’t!
The backlight goes off after 8 seconds, on or off the wrist. Like it or not, you’re stuck with it. £500 watch with no adjustable backlight, and no possibility of adding that feature for “technical reasons”?!
Come on Suunto surely you can do better than that. Other people can!Overusing exclamation points can make your writing seem unprofessional, immature, or insincere, weakening its impact and credibility. It can also come across as rude, demanding, or aggressive, making the reader feel like they are being yelled at. To avoid overuse, limit yourself to one exclamation mark at a time and avoid using them in every sentence, reserving them for moments of genuine excitement, enthusiasm, or importance. According to Google Gemini.
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@JonasLarsson
If you need AI to tell you how a piece of text “makes you feel,” then perhaps the problem isn’t my punctuation but a shaky grasp of grammar — or the range of emotions an exclamation mark can legitimately convey.Let me spell it out for you:
“Of course I wore it too! It’s fatuous of you to suggest that I didn’t!” — justifiable indignation at a preposterous claim. I’d spent the best part of a day wearing the watch and grappling with its bizarre, counter-intuitive behaviour. Two exclamation marks may be emphatic, but they’re hardly out of bounds.
“…no possibility of adding that feature for ‘technical reasons’?!” — surprise and incredulity. The question mark is a clue here.
“Other people can!” — exasperation, plain and simple.
That’s not “immature” or “unprofessional,” nor “rude” or “yelling” — it’s called emphasis. Dismissing it as poor writing is just you trying to nitpick and police my tone, rather than engaging with the point - a lot like your earlier “hug” remark. And yes, I’m still genuinely amazed at the notion that anyone thought that was an appropriate contribution, except maybe Google Gemini! (here ! = astonishment at the absurdity of it… are you getting the hang of this yet?)
If it really does take an AI tool to interpret such obvious cues, then I think that says more about the dangers of using algorithms to replace human judgement than it does about my writing.
