Race 3S & Race 3 rumours

[André Faria]

@Mads-Hintz-Madsen said:

@Richard-Thygesen said:

@Wilson75 why do you buy stuff with expectations of new features?

This is 2026 - not 1996.

This is the norm these days and if the competition is providing new features then so shall Suunto if they want to compete.

@aiv4r said:

@Mads-Hintz-Madsen That is why some of us want to get back to 1996, where our devices are not getting enshitified over the time.

Funny on how I agree with both of you ahaha
Had a bit of same experience with the 945 LTE and 965, new range, and ops no new features.
The truth like others said. I don’t needed it. But I also believe there is some psycolgy of buying under it that makes us want to buy devices that are supported and have newer features for long time. I was surprised to see HR Broadcast on the race s for example.

Also as @aiv4r said, some features are so poorly done that we almost prefer to not have it. It is either as complicated as for the costumer and for an enterprise to both buy the correct product and to launch the correct product (that will sell).
For your own health, enjoy what you have, and remember, the most powerful way to make a difference with a company is either buying or not buying from her. And remember, that maybe, just maybe, the rant and issues we have on the forum, are not the average joe experience (for every brand).

[aiv4r]

@André-Faria Yea exactly. I am also not against new features and new stuff in general, but lately I see too many features coming out of the thin air, that just makes everything less straightforward and more complicated (not only from Suunto, mostly from other brands, or brands copying stuff from each other)
There is a lot of good stuff added over time but it is also overcomplicating some stuff that is supposed to be easy.

And yes that is why we have this forum, to rant and to discuss things which might be important or less important

[André Faria]

@aiv4r said:

@André-Faria Yea exactly. I am also not against new features and new stuff in general, but lately I see too many features coming out of the thin air, that just makes everything less straightforward and more complicated (not only from Suunto, mostly from other brands, or brands copying stuff from each other)
There is a lot of good stuff added over time but it is also overcomplicating some stuff that is supposed to be easy.

And yes that is why we have this forum, to rant and to discuss things which might be important or less important

Back on track with Race 3S and Race 3, if true, for me this unification of hardware is a plus for the average joe.
It was a bit “complicated” to understand that the Race S had newer/better hardware but at the same time different size.
But yeah constraints of the time/development/hardware available at the time whatever.

On my side hardware wise no reason to upgrade from the Race S.
Feature wise, I am thankful for the introduction for the introduction of broadcast HR, which was a feature I use every time on the garmin (And yeah I know I can buy an HR Strap and it will be more reliable lalalalala), but honestly I would have loved if suunto had “copied” it from garmin, on a simple one click button.
I understand where it comes from the suunto way, but not my use case.
This and “save for later” . Would it worth an hardware upgrade? For me no.
Market will tell. Maybe suunto comes with something nicer that we all say “wow I want it!”

Right now, both for garmin and suunto, I almost would prefer they charge me for software upgrade with certain features if they were well implemented than having a new watch (but that would challenge all the way things are done, and probalby wouldn’t work finnancially ahha).

Back on the 3S, just hope that it maintains the race S design which I trully love.

[elbee]

@aiv4r

It’s not only from the manufacturers.

People are not able to judge watches on feature quality, so they judge watches on feature quantity. And then buy a Garmin.

Other brands have to join the feature quantity race.

For me, some new features are useful (more fine grained control of alarms) others are useless, like track mode. And I train on a track every week and did track races. But the way track training usually works, it adds nothing to benefit the training.

[2b2bff]

@elbee said:

People are not able to judge watches on feature quality, so they judge watches on feature quantity. And then buy a Garmin.

TBF I never had a Garmin crashing mid-activity, rebooting during my sleep or getting crazy because I plugged it into the wrong charger…
And don’t get me starting about Body Battery / Resources and Sleep tracking…

That said, If the new Race S does have a better HR sensor, a faster CPU and therefore feature parity with the Race 2 / Vertical 2 and a reliable charger, I’m all in…

[elbee]

@2b2bff said:

@elbee said:

People are not able to judge watches on feature quality, so they judge watches on feature quantity. And then buy a Garmin.

TBF I never had a Garmin crashing mid-activity, rebooting during my sleep or getting crazy because I plugged it into the wrong charger…
And don’t get me starting about Body Battery / Resources and Sleep tracking…

That said, If the new Race S does have a better HR sensor, a faster CPU and therefore feature parity with the Race 2 / Vertical 2 and a reliable charger, I’m all in…

Both of the garmins I owned did crash. The 965 only once, just like the race s I now have. Charging a garmin was a nightmare. The cable could pop out of the connector for no apparent reason. Have to say, the Suunto charger isn’t any better.
You actually look at body battery, resources and sleep tracking?

HR sensor is easy. If you now have a watch with an optical that works for you then the race s will probably also work. If your current watch doesn’t work for you, neither will the race s. It’s more person dependent than sensor. I wouldn’t buy a new watch because some marketing says it’s the best sensor ever. (I never had a watch with optical sensor that works for me)

[Tami999]

@elbee said:

@2b2bff said:

@elbee said:

People are not able to judge watches on feature quality, so they judge watches on feature quantity. And then buy a Garmin.

TBF I never had a Garmin crashing mid-activity, rebooting during my sleep or getting crazy because I plugged it into the wrong charger…
And don’t get me starting about Body Battery / Resources and Sleep tracking…

That said, If the new Race S does have a better HR sensor, a faster CPU and therefore feature parity with the Race 2 / Vertical 2 and a reliable charger, I’m all in…

Both of the garmins I owned did crash. The 965 only once, just like the race s I now have. Charging a garmin was a nightmare. The cable could pop out of the connector for no apparent reason. Have to say, the Suunto charger isn’t any better.
You actually look at body battery, resources and sleep tracking?

HR sensor is easy. If you now have a watch with an optical that works for you then the race s will probably also work. If your current watch doesn’t work for you, neither will the race s. It’s more person dependent than sensor. I wouldn’t buy a new watch because some marketing says it’s the best sensor ever. (I never had a watch with optical sensor that works for me)

I’ve used 9PP, Vertical 1, Race 1 and now Race 2. Race 2 is my first Suunto I’m happy with OHR. Rarely use chest strap now, similar readings.

[Steven Hambleton]

I wonder if the Race S is jumping to version 3 because they’re rolling out the next gen platform (based on Run architecture) across all future watches.

Of course this will require all features (Guides, Suunto+ etc) to run on the new platform.

But who knows…

[withManish]

@dreamer_ said:

@withManish said:

@dreamer_ said:

@2b2bff said:

@dreamer_ said:

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with Suunto deciding to release watches every year if it helps the company improve its financial numbers. After all, Garmin has been doing this for a long time, and now Amazfit is doing it too. Perhaps the 2 year wait does not have any sense if you maintain the older devices. This is also common in other devices like smartphones.

The key should also be to maintain support for older devices for a period of time.

The faster pace you release new devices, the more devices you have to support… That is the problem about releasing devices in shorter intervals.

Or perhaps the revenue is a lot more than the cost of maintaining an additional device. That is something that only Suunto will know…

It’s not about maintaining additional models; they don’t deliver on their promises. I am okay with them launching a model every 6 months. The problem is they forget to fine-tune real issues. With every software update, they introduce a new set of bugs, and they don’t look at them or totally ignore them.

For example, most of us have complaints about battery performance issues that go unaddressed, which is critical compared to the heartbeat (just an example).

To be completely honest, I personally had that same impression with the previous generation and again with this one regarding updates—especially with this Q2 release, which strikes me as rather underwhelming given the high expectations, particularly concerning the much-discussed navigation feedback. I don’t know if they’ve been focusing on new devices or what the reason is, but that is purely my own perception. It is understandable how frustrating it is to wait months for something like the Q2, only to receive an update that not only leaves previous-generation watches behind but also leaves the latest generation fixes in limbo—forcing you to think you’ll have to wait months all over again.
I also believe that seeking higher profits shouldn’t mean neglecting to bolster your teams to address development shortcomings. In fact, higher profits should provide more financial margin to increase the development team resources.

Regarding AI, Coros has coincidentally been working on an MCP connector in recent updates, allowing any AI to connect directly to Coros without relying on third-party platforms—a direct, free connection. Suunto should take note of this; if they truly intend to charge for AI-based training features, having a competitor offer this for free would reflect very poorly on Suunto.

Totally with you. First of all, I am not interested in any AI on my watch or handing over my health-related things to AI; the best is to go to a coach or a doctor and take advice from someone who understands the human body well rather than believing in stupid AI. I might be wrong, but AI is best at machine learning, not at being human; we are not supposed to do that either.

[withManish]

@elbee said:

@2b2bff said:

@elbee said:

People are not able to judge watches on feature quality, so they judge watches on feature quantity. And then buy a Garmin.

TBF I never had a Garmin crashing mid-activity, rebooting during my sleep or getting crazy because I plugged it into the wrong charger…
And don’t get me starting about Body Battery / Resources and Sleep tracking…

That said, If the new Race S does have a better HR sensor, a faster CPU and therefore feature parity with the Race 2 / Vertical 2 and a reliable charger, I’m all in…

Both of the garmins I owned did crash. The 965 only once, just like the race s I now have. Charging a garmin was a nightmare. The cable could pop out of the connector for no apparent reason. Have to say, the Suunto charger isn’t any better.
You actually look at body battery, resources and sleep tracking?

HR sensor is easy. If you now have a watch with an optical that works for you then the race s will probably also work. If your current watch doesn’t work for you, neither will the race s. It’s more person dependent than sensor. I wouldn’t buy a new watch because some marketing says it’s the best sensor ever. (I never had a watch with optical sensor that works for me)

The Suunto charger isn’t any better; in reality, it is sh*t, so the magnet isn’t that powerful. A little move, and it’s gone; in the USB-C area, they are still giving us the old connector; WiFi is so poor that map downloads take hours to finish (Most of the time I put watch in router itself to no poor single issue).

HR doesn’t work properly, and SpO2 takes too long to check. Multiple warnings are needed to fix the watch on the wrist. The reading comes up at 80-85 most of the time, while a regular machine shows 95-98 easily in a few seconds.

The main issue is not that the hardware is still good enough to work, but that too many features add unnecessary load on it, and it finally crashes. Let it be a modular software system; I download what I want rather than loading everything onto the watch.

[2b2bff]

@elbee said:

Both of the garmins I owned did crash.

I didn’t say my Garmin did not crash. But it was more predictable. Actually my Fenix 6S Pro never crashed, neither my Vivoactive 4 that I had before. The Epix Pro did crash on some versions, creating a 10km loop from the current starting point.
But never did it restart out of the blue…

The cable could pop out of the connector for no apparent reason. Have to say, the Suunto charger isn’t any better.

Never had this cable problem, but I read about it a lot.

You actually look at body battery, resources and sleep tracking?

In fact, I do. Not really as an actionable item, but I like to look at it. And if only to make sure I get enough night sleep in. Despite the fact the my Race S struggles to get awake phases like the toilet break, I have several occations where It detects a nap in the evening before going to bed - usually as I’m watching something - and adds the same time slot as night sleep. As we cannot edit anything about this in Suunto App, I now have double the time added to my sleep, that has been falsely detected in the first place…

HR sensor is easy. If you now have a watch with an optical that works for you then the race s will probably also work. If your current watch doesn’t work for you, neither will the race s.
It’s more person dependent than sensor.

My Fenix 6S Pro has been spot on. The Epix Pro as well, unless the firmware decided to do something different. (Long ongoing issue that HR is detected way too low for 10-20 minutes until it finally detects it correctly.)
The Race S can be very accurate, even more so after the algorithm change, but it can be way off. Usually I war a chest strap during “real” activities. But I don’t want to have to wear something during a commute ride or a hike. And there it should just be reliable.

So, yeah, if the newer sensor eliminates those misdetections I’m a happy camper…

[Steven Hambleton]

@2b2bff Wrist sensors are unreliable during cycling activities anyway so I wouldn’t trust anything but an arm or chest strap.

[Mi_chael]

@André-Faria

For what I’ve read, Race 3S (aka OW261) will be RUN 2.0

Wait and see !

[sky-runner]

@withManish said:

too many features add unnecessary load on it, and it finally crashes. Let it be a modular software system; I download what I want rather than loading everything onto the watch.

Features that are not immediately used don’t really add any load. I am a software engineer with 30+ years of experience and the above doesn’t make much sense to me. The reasons for the crash are likely way more nuanced and difficult to reproduce; otherwise they would have been fixed long time ago. My strong suspicion is that that the root cause is in fact due to an attempt to make the software more modular with parts of the software running as independent apps. The mechanism to make it modular uses a web app like execution environment with Javascript and garbage collection (Duktape Engine), which I imagine is hard to make work 100% reliably on a watch hardware with such limited resources - both CPU and memory. The reliability issues likely arise at where this engine is stitched to the rest of the operating system.

[elbee]

@sky-runner

I presume those are all assumptions (pun intended )

I only have 29 years IT experience but I do know that ther are quite some OSes that become more unstable if storage space is limited. So, even if a user don’t use added features it might add to crashes or reboots. (notice the might)
And yes, a watch has limited resources… compared to modern computers. But javascript and garbage collection (which you don’t approve) are quite old and run on computers with even less resources.

But making software work 100% bug free is next to impossible. It’s also a human resource and marketing priority issue if bugs will be fixed.

[dreamer_]

@Mi_chael said:

@André-Faria

For what I’ve read, Race 3S (aka OW261) will be RUN 2.0

Wait and see !

Interesting. Perhaps Suunto is killing the Race S and mantaining the Run with everything (navigation and S+) and the new plattform. That will make sense.

[aiv4r]

@dreamer_ Contrary I hope they will keep one watch model away from S+. As an additional plus would be it does not crash due to buggy or too many S+

[isaac.net]

@dreamer_ said:

@Mi_chael said:

@André-Faria

For what I’ve read, Race 3S (aka OW261) will be RUN 2.0

Wait and see !

Interesting. Perhaps Suunto is killing the Race S and mantaining the Run with everything (navigation and S+) and the new plattform. That will make sense.

I don’t have any information on that, but my feeling is that the platform created for the Suunto Run has been stalled since they created OpenSuunto+ for the rest of the devices. The latest updates for that device don’t include any functionality, so my opinion is that the new Suunto Run 2.0 will use the platform for the rest of the line…

We won’t have to wait long to see where things are headed…

[SergioB]

@dreamer_ this is my speculation: Suunto Run 2 will be something more similar to Garmin Venue/Vivoactive. A watch for people that occasionally do sports, but also want (many) smartwatch function.

And therefore I think Suunto Run 2 will keep the same software platform of Run 1, which is built and will be developed for a different scope (more smartwatch-oriented)

[dreamer_]

@aiv4r said:

@dreamer_ Contrary I hope they will keep one watch model away from S+. As an additional plus would be it does not crash due to buggy or too many S+

I completely agree. When I mentioned S+, I was referring to features that the Run lacks and not how the OS is designed. It is clear that the S+ redesign is urgently needed—one free from the ridiculously small app limits (like in other brands), and free from the crashes. I understand that resolving things like these issues is central to the Run’s operating system.