Wrong elevation gain
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Hello,
I have some problemts with the elevation gain computed by my suunto race S on bike activities (i did not track it with running). It overestimates by a lot (20% to 60%) the elevation (when compared to GPS colputed elevation or to a bike computer equipped with a barometer).The altitude curve seems very noisy and I guess that the problem comes from this noise which is added to the elevation sum. I understood that the altitude is only measured with the barometer and that there is no GPS correction. I tried to wear my watch on the left and right wrist and there is no difference. I know that wind can perturbate the measurement but it seems very weird to me that the elevation is not corrected with GPS as the watch has offline maps. I would rather, as it was the case with my old garmin, not have access to elevation during the activity but computed with accuracy once the activity is finished.
I have several questions :
- Is it a common problem?
- Can it be a hardware problem?
- The noise in the curve is a very high frequency noise, it is very easy to get rid off this noise with a simple lowpass filter. With this kind of filter, i am able to easily retrieve the right elevation. Why isn’t it implemented?
- Can I gps correct the elevation with the suunto app?
I was very pleased with the watch but I am very disapointed with this problem as I am mainly (~80%) using it on my bike.
Thank you for reading me

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@Maxime-Bouvier I think this may be an issue with your specific watch rather than a general issue with Race S. If anything, I find my elevation gain to usually be a bit too conservative. Perhaps your watch barometer sensor is dirty.
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@Maxime-Bouvier The problem could be wind, water, the location of the barometer sensor relative to the ride direction, dirt, or a hardware issue.
Suunto doesn’t smooth out barometer readings, and any disturbances can cause much higher readings.
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@maszop said in Wrong elevation gain:
Suunto doesn’t smooth out barometer readings, and any disturbances can cause much higher readings.
I heard, but have not tested yet, that some fixes for sudden increase/drop in pressure will be tested with next firmware.
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I have exactly the same problem and even worse as on my last ride suunto has measured 8597m of elevation while my bryton said 1238m.
Note: As I just went down (533m) and up (1700m), it shall be a around 1200m. -
It seems to be a problem of this watch model in my opinion. The same here, the elevation gains are completely exaggerated, even when I’m using trekking mode and following a route set by Suunto that has predefined elevation gain values. I even contacted technical support about this, but they couldn’t tell me exactly what was causing these errors.
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It seems to be a problem of this watch model in my opinion.
I can’t say for cycling, but for trail running and mountaineering, as far as I’m concerned, it’s ok
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@snow I wish I could share the enthusiasm of the lucky owners of the Race S, which haven’t been affected by this defect. This post shows however that at least three people are having this problem, so we can initially assume it’s a model issue. But I won’t be too quick to jump to conclusions, because we’d need to look at the statistics more closely. I’ll send it to the service under warranty and see what they can do.
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