Sunnto 7 Sensor Support
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Today I tested the Suunto 7 with the external heart rate belt Polar OH1 during a fatbike tour.
The app for recording the activity was Ghostracer.
Here the setup:
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S7 settings:AOD (always on display)
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S7 connected via Bluetooth to the phone
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S7 wifi enabled
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Ghostracer settings: Display ambient, GPS 1 second, auto stop enabled, wrist heart rate disabled, barometer enabled and calibrated to the start altitude, other sensors disabled, 8 fields on the screen, see attached images
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Duration of the activity: 3:13 h
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Moving time: 2:53 h
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Distance: 39, 73 km
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Elevation gain: 807 m
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Start and end altitude: 374 m
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During auto stop display is on, heart rate is syncing
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Battery usage: 97 to 50 percent = 47 percent = 14,6 percent per hour
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Temperature: -3 °C, the S7 was mounted on the handle bar, no warm up through the wrist, all the time in the cold wind, barometer not affected
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S7 ascent is accurate, difference to Strava correction 1 m!
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I used the Casio WSD-F21HR on my wrist, the most accurate watch concerning ascent, no difference to my SSU and today 1 m difference to the S7!
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The Casio WSD-F21HR used 42 percent of the battery {340 mAh vs 450 mAh S7), but the app used the e-ink display during the activity and the readability is far better than the ambient mode of the S7.
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My result: it’s no problem to use external sensors, if the Suunto wear app would accept this option, because the AOD could be disabled and the display would be used by the Suunto wear app and the 3100 coprocessor. Today’s temperature was not the best for wearables and their tiny batteries. In warmer times the results will be better.
I have no doubt that adding the option to use external sensors together with the Suunto wear app and the Suunto hardware would be a game changer!
P. S.: I use the Strava results, because during the import of the Ghostracer activity into the Suunto app the ascent will not be displayed.
Ghostracer settings
377 m is in the house, 374 m (start and end altitude) in the garage
Ghostracer display (ascent / altitude, speed / duration, heart rate / distance, average heart rate / battery)
https://www.instagram.com/moves.are.life/
Suunto Vertical Black Lime
Suunto 9 Peak Pro Black
Suunto Spartan Ultra Stealth Titanium -
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@pilleus cool!
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@pilleus Thank you so much for doing this test.
Looks to me that an external HR sensor is more than feasible as far as battery life is concerned.
Please Suunto, please please please add this functionality. (Did I say please?)
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@brotzfrog10 I disagree about wrist HR and strap. I have used my Suunto Spartan Sport WHR with my Polar OH1 connected and compared it to my Suunto 7. The readings looked the same. If this amuses you, then I’m glad to have amused you.
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@isazi Can you give an example? If you’d like me to pull
up data on armband and chest strap heart rate sensors I’ll be happy to attach it to my reply? I just assume with a forum dedicated to a sports watch company that wouldn’t be a point I would need to watch paste such data to as we would all be on agreement with that. As for the price drop part I did present evidence to back up my opinion (other WearOs devices not lowering their MSRP and other brands in the sport tech market not doing it either even with release dates before the sunnto 7. You may not agree with my opinion and that’s fine but I’ve certainly given examples to support my opinion. -
@aeroild I’m glad you had a positive experience with your activity. What activity were you doing though? As I mentioned in my posts wrist flexion based movements are very tough for wrist heart rate sensors as are high intensity intervals which are the two scenarios which I touched on in my previous posts and are the two scenarios in which having the option to connect to a separate sensor would be extremely useful in my opinion.
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@brotzfrog10 I totally agree that we need support for external sensors. My point was that things aren’t as black and white as you made them out to be.
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Hahaha. I was on Zwift with the browser running in the background and I saw all the notifications for posts on this tread. I expected controversy and you all delivered!
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@aeroild The takeaway should be Suunto needs to continue to develop their own OS. It is the only way to maximize efficiencies and provide as many features as possible.
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@fazel I very much agree. With Suunto 5 and 9 I love what the watches offer I just wish they had some kind of long term training load feature like polar, garmin and coros do. They have a great in workout effort measurement with EPOC and TE but nothing that really measures load over time (just time working out and time in various heart rate zones). Even some kind of Trimp value for each workout would be nice.
That and allowing the sleep and stress apps on the watches to show more detail on the app side would be nice too. This latter request maybe not being possible depending on the licensing agreements with first beat whose software is responsible for these metrics
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@brotzfrog10 Yes, I think we are in agreement. The making on the 7 appears pretty awesome. That would be a feature that I’d be interested in seeing ported over as well. Tight integration with Training Peaks could fill training load and structured workout gaps.
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@pilleus This is a great post with data, I suppose that in Suunto they did their test too. Let’s see if we can all together request this and get it. Patient and data are the great tools we have to get there.
If the s7 would support stryd for me would be a game changer, I would use it almost all the weekdays.
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@brotzfrog10 said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:
@isazi Can you give an example? If you’d like me to pull
up data on armband and chest strap heart rate sensors I’ll be happy to attach it to my reply?No you said that that is true for everyone, and you are amused by people thinking differently.
Well keep trolling
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@isazi you clearly didn’t read my other comments before and after talking about that statement. It was directly after me sharing my own experience with my heart rate data being way off after a HIIt workout with lots of wrist flexion as I stated. I didn’t reiterate that part of the topic again but it appears I should have because you assumed I was talking about all activities when I wasn’t as I was addressing workouts with wrist flexion and at higher intensities.
My point does however remain as I am amused or perhaps better said not in agreement with someone who says the heart rate data captured during a HIIT workout or a workout with lots of wrist flexion is good enough when it’s clearly not when compared to a chest or armband heart rate monitor which is something that’s clearly been proven not to be true. Now one could argue about the semantics of what good enough is, so for me it’s as accurate as possible. I’m unsure of your motivation here as a moderator and your need to be an aggressor on this subject. If you don’t agree with me that’s fine but I’m a little confused by your need to attack me personally. It’s fine debating an opinion but you’ve been going me a troll and master in a derogatory way. I’ve said nothing of the like to anyone else.
Not agreeing with an opinion is quite different from ridicule someone personally.
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@brotzfrog10 I agree with you, I also want the possibility to use external sensors, and with that I would like rel 24h heart rate tracking that is synced to the app so I can skip that mess that Google Fit is (I really don’t like that). But you are here fighting a holy war against I don’t know whom, you joined just a week or so ago the forum and have been flaming non stop for your cause. And no matter people agreeing with you, you need to be totally right, you need to know that your speculation on Suunto’s pricing is the only possible explanation on current pricing, you need to convince people that you know what a company you probably have no stakes in has to do. Your total focus on your cause it’s admirable (in some weird way), except that unless you have some proofs on Suunto’s pricing, or some large scale study about ohr, it’s just your opinion. It’s not the truth, it is what you believe. Large difference there.
And now keep commenting on how right you are. -
Apparently you can count on Rainmaker to also want HR for Suunto 7
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/01/stages-adds-ant-bike-lights-support-suunto-7-firmware-update-and-zwift-large-event-update.html#comment-3702210On my side, the 7 never draw me too much attention, except when people here spoke wonder about it.
But yes, no external sensors is a deal breaker for me, I don’t buy any watch without hr/candence/power meter support.
Couldn’t we just have created a poll so we could add some numbers? -
@isazi I did join just recently joined hoping to see what kind of roadmap there was for the Suunto 7 and it appeared to me that sensor support wasn’t on it. Then my initial comments about the sensor support were met with criticism saying that the Suunto 7 was geared more for soccer moms from the moderators and HR sensors weren’t important. Which again was disappointing for the reasons I already mentioned.
Also to back up my information on wrist heart rate monitors
https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a29801627/how-accurate-is-your-wrist-heart-rate-monitor/
https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/chest-strap-vs-wristband-heart-rate-monitors
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732081/
https://mhealth.jmir.org/2020/4/e14707/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-020-0226-6
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5984393/
Excerpt from the last study which used a Phillips branded wrist sensor which to my knowledge is also in the Suunto 7 so this may be even more relevant to the discussion though I have no way of knowing what generation of the sensor is being used in the watch now. Also while the study a reasonable consistency in steady state and at rest measurements between the wrist and chest strap though still around 10 beats off.“The largest LoA (− 17.5 bpm and 19.9 bpm) were found for gym activities, which is the most diverse set of physical activities.”
Which once again goes to my point about hiit being problematic for wrist based sensors.
A couple of the other articles are referencing some of the journal studies I also posted but I thought it might be helpful if you didn’t want to read a full study abstract.
While none of these are looking at the Suunto 7 specifically they do compare wrist sensors with chest straps and discuss the mechanism by which wrist sensors can be wrong.
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@brotzfrog10 said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:
@isazi I did join just recently joined hoping to see what kind of roadmap there was for the Suunto 7 and it appeared to me that sensor support wasn’t on it. Then my initial comments about the sensor support were met with criticism saying that the Suunto 7 was geared more for soccer moms from the moderators and HR sensors weren’t important. Which again was disappointing for the reasons I already mentioned.
Correction: Some moderators, which are people which opinion. I always defended the support of exrternal HR and stryd.
But you only answer @isazi.
Tu comunidad Suunto en Telegram: https://t.me/suuntocommunity (spanish)
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@Bulkan said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:
Correction: Some moderators, which are people which opinion. I always defended the support of exrternal HR and stryd.
But you only answer @isazi.
And I already said in the past sensors support is the reason why I keep using my S9
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@Bulkan that’s a completely valid point, but That moderator for whatever reason continued to question the validity of Bluetooth connected hr sensors being more effective then the built in wrist based sensors, especially in certain use cases. For whatever reason. Yet he himself uses the S9 because it allows sensor support so go figure.
