Race S2 -> release?

BokiRun

@Nelson-Diogo
I gave up on the Suunto smart belt. I now use the igpsport heart rate monitor and it works great with the watch.

elbee

@Nelson-Diogo said:
Not all but many.

Your many is based on, what?

But I agree, sportwatches in general have quite a few functions that are not very user friendly or lack finesse.

Nelson Diogo

@elbee Most of my friends are runners and I’ve contact with a lot of other runners trough the years. I’ve seen many progress from beginner to advanced amateurs and I also always had an interest in training so I’m well aware of people doing structured workouts by their Strava feed.

Even from my own experience. I remember along my running journey that sometimes I did not cared about intervals but there were other periods when I wanted to test some structured workouts. This was more then a decade ago…we’re in 2026…no watch from any brand should be handicapped like this.

Suunto Run seems to be Suunto wanting to appeal more to road runners but they cut one of the core features…planning. And it’s no hardware limitation. It’s a Garmin move…cutting software features to upsell a more expensive watch.

And then we have Suunto Run with “Resume Later” and “Music” that the other Suunto’s don’t have…doesn’t make sense.

aiv4r

@Nelson-Diogo can’t you just create intervals on the watch itself, like on the other watches?

Steven Hambleton

@aiv4r Even if you could, would you want to?

Egika

Here are some more rumors:
https://gadgetsandwearables.com/2026/07/26/suunto-race-3-s-ai-coach-leak/

VoiGAS

@Egika Interesting! Sounds like the only real difference will be a paid AI coach. Unfortunately thats in line with other manufacturers products currently. Samsung Galaxy S24 - S25 - S26 was also just “more AI”
Curious if older watches will get the deeper integration to Suunto coach too - if these rumors are true

elbee

@VoiGAS said:

@Egika Interesting! Sounds like the only real difference will be a paid AI coach. Unfortunately thats in line with other manufacturers products currently. Samsung Galaxy S24 - S25 - S26 was also just “more AI”
Curious if older watches will get the deeper integration to Suunto coach too - if these rumors are true

It’s probably me, but the last time I got a watch with something new that was actually useful was my Ambit 3 run. That had navigation based on gps. It made longruns more interesting and I could enter trailruns that provide a gpx.

After that? Not really. The ambit 3 had some omissions (most important a vibrating alert) and limited battery life. The forerunner 935 fixed this, until the batterylife was down to less than 8 hours in gps mode (so a while day hike wasn’t possible anymore). The forerunner 965 added maps that made navigation slightly more convenient, but also added a lot of annoyances (forced voice assist during navigation being the biggest)

Overal I’m happy with my race s and will be for the coming years. There are some bugs to squash (including a big one with unstable bluetooth) and there are some nice to haves my previous garmins had (with live tracking being the nicest), but other than that? Definitely not waiting for an AI coach, nor willing to pay for it.

Except 1 thing. Being able to generate a local route for a given kilometers on a giving terrain on a given hillyness, for both running and cycling. That would be useful for me. Now I use strava, but I don’t want to pay for strava anylonger and route creating in strava isn’t as good as it used to be. And this would be solely in the suunto app, so every watch that has navigation will benefit.

aiv4r

@Steven-Hambleton of course, thst is how I and the people I know who has Suunto does structured workouts, easy and simple.

aiv4r

@Egika oh man, watches looks promising, but the AI coach stuff gives me “lost our way” vibes. Might be the end of Suunto for me depending on how well one can hide it and mot get bothered by it.

Egika

@VoiGAS no worries. It’s still rumors and new hardware will be more than just a new name

elbee

@aiv4r said:

Might be the end of Suunto for me.

Good luck finding a manufacturer that doesn’t add AI.

aiv4r

@elbee it depends how they add it. If you make MCP access, that is pretty nice and cool and does not really bother anyone. If you push AI to read your metrics and give recomendations and create training plans and etc, that is different level of annoying.

And there is always an option to use the older watch that does not support the newest and “greatest”

elbee

@aiv4r
Yeh, how they implement it makes a lot of difference. Suunto isn’t that good in making things optional by default. For instance, I find morning report completely useless (there is really zero info on it that I need to know first thing in the morning) but I have to dismiss the screen every day. My previous garmin had the same useless morning report, but at least you could disable it in the settings. (luckily I discovered turning of sleep monitoring also turns of morning report)

But AI is something else. It’s such a hype and everybody wants to jump on the train. I’m afraid it will be forced on everyone.

But like you said, there is always an older watch. My race s is fine for many years. I also nurture my iPhone 12 mini, because I like the small formfactor.

Nelson Diogo

@aiv4r yes but you don’t have a way to plan them outside of the app or watch. That’s not enough. With any other suunto watch and entry level watches from other brands you can plan and send them to the watch from outside plataforms like Runna, Intervals or TP.

dreamer_

@Nelson-Diogo said:

@aiv4r yes but you don’t have a way to plan them outside of the app or watch. That’s not enough. With any other suunto watch and entry level watches from other brands you can plan and send them to the watch from outside plataforms like Runna, Intervals or TP.

Except for TP—since it’s unclear what will happen now that it belongs to Garmin. Even so, the future of all training platforms is quite uncertain given the rise of AI.