Sunnto 7 Sensor Support

isazi

@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.

A Former User

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-3702210

On 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?

brotzfrog10

@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://trailrunnermag.com/training/why-you-should-be-skeptical-about-your-wrist-based-heart-rate.html

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.

Bulkan

@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.

isazi

@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

brotzfrog10

@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.

MavRaven

@brotzfrog10 said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:

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.

Why hate on people that dont care about the chest strap by taking the example of soccer moms, maybe just accept that there are people who use it for running/walking/hiking who focus on having a smartwatch with good fitness features which fits the Suunto 7 perfectly.

Even if there was a 100% proven 10% difference with the heartbeat readings from the OHR Sensor most of the more “casual” users probably don’t care.

It’s not completly black and white, some people have different requirements and different expectations and thats fine. I can understand that its a must have feature for you and thats fine but that is not true for everyone.

There are different marketing strategies, and the extreme fitness enthusiast is not the unit mover you make them out to be, the suunto 9 for example beeing a great device with good sales in its niche is still not a mass market device, if suunto orientied the 7 to more mass market then i can understand that they have different priorities than pleasing the hardcore crowd.

I would rather have sleep tracking first then strap support for example.

If they do release strap support in the future as an option then that will be nice for anyone who wants to use it, but it would be insane if they had to change anything big in the design of the watch for example, if it increases the battery drain by 50% for example then i would probably never use it.

pilleus

Test 2, S7 on the wrist, Ghostracer running with wrist heart rate measuring, setup the same as yesterday.

Battery usage with wrist heart rate: 96 - 66 percent in 2:27 h = 12,25 percent per hour
Battery usage with external Polar OH1: 16,65 percent per hour

From previous tests I know, that wearing the watch on the wrist in very cold conditions (today -3 °C) is less battery using than mounted on the handle bar.

I think that the battery usage when using an external sensors (BLE) is less than the measured 4 percent per hour.

aeroild

I just did a test with my Suunto 7 running Ghostracer in stand alone mode connected to my Polar OH1 to track HR when I went cross country skiing. In Ghostrace I selected running (running and cycling are the only choices), enabled barometer and external sensor. Screen turned off after a few secs and I activated the screen only 5-6 times during my 1.5 hour exercise. Outside temperature was -10 degrees celsius. Battery usage was around 30 percent, which would mean about 20 percent per hour. In other words, Ghostracer could have recorded about 5 hours of activity before going out of battery. The tests done by @pilleus indicated that it could go even longer. In my opinion, Suunto has no reason not to add support for external sensors!

isazi

@brotzfrog10 said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:

@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.

My goodness, you either can’t read, or you are a top tier troll. And because I now believe you are a total troll, I’ll avoid wasting my time replying to you.

brotzfrog10

@isazi That is fine with me. All you’ve done is be insulting anyway.

brotzfrog10

@MavRaven I respect your opinion. As I mentioned in a previous post I feel Suunto missed a huge opportunity by not adding their full Suunto app experience into WearOs. I’m far from the only person to think that. I also get some don’t care if Bluetooth sensor support exists on the watch. That’s fine and I get it. My earlier point was I don’t see adding it putting anyone off from buying it but not having it certainly stops some people from buying it. Now if the architecture of the watch or how Suunto loaded their software on the watch prevents it then so be it. It’s still a big missed opportunity in my opinion (again being clear my opinion).

I agree with you also in regards to sleep tracking. It’s something that google hasn’t developed anything in that vain but with the Fitbit acquisition being finally official maybe they will finally be able to add some of those features into WearOs.

Brad_Olwin

@MavRaven I think you nailed it. The target user for the S7 I think will care much more about sleep tracking and 24/7 HR than a belt. I know I do. For what I would want a belt for the battery would not least long enough anyway. Belt support in the current iteration I am not interested in. If Suunto could leverage the smartsensor to sync less often and not reduce battery life anymore than OHR I’d be for it.

Jamie BG

@aeroild I think a lot depends on person and activity. Lots of reviewers have noted that when it comes to running/cycling the S7 sensor can do a good job for most people, however same and different people/reviewers have all pretty much noted that strength training, HIIT etc (sharp movements, where HR may elevate/descend dramatically) it isn’t great - but then other than the Apple Watch sensor, most aren’t that good either.

This is why most fitness watches cater for external sensors and the S7 should too.

Aleksander H

I compared my S7 to the Polar OH1 doing intervals. For me, it worked. they kept within 1 - 2 beats of each other (I used DCRainmakers tool to compare). Only difference I noticed is that the S7 lagged behind the OH1 by maybe 1 second. So the optical sensor seems pretty good for me. That said, my main issue isn’t the accuracy. It’s the simple fact that I want to be able to wear it over my jacket sleeve during winter which, obviously, prevents any kind of optical heart rate sensor from working.

aeroild

@Jamie-BG The internal optical HR sensor works great for me when running and cycling in summertime. My wish is the ability to connect an external sensor during wintertime when I want to see the screen

Egika

@Brad_Olwin said in Sunnto 7 Sensor Support:

If Suunto could leverage the smartsensor to sync less often and not reduce battery life anymore than OHR I’d be for it.

And this is something with potential probably!!
The Suunto HR sensor is capable of data storage that will be synced after the activity, when no live data transfer is possible (eg. during swimming).
How about leaving the high power processor in sleep state and only wake it up every 10s or so for a HR data sync.
Possibly the time could be user selectable - some might only want it for analysis after the training. Then only sync HR once when training is stopped. Others might be fine with data every minute etc.

I love this idea that could be even more power saving than wrist heart rate

Aleksander H

@Egika Could be “activated” when raising the wrist, much like maps are. That said, I think it would be a bit confusing for people to have to have a specific hrm belt. Or is this kind of thing part of the BLE standard for HRM belts?

Egika

@Aleksander-H this is not BTLE spec - but it is a function already built in the Suunto HR belts. So no special needed.

olymay

As the weather here in the UK is getting colder and wetter, it would be hugely beneficial for me to have external sensor support, simply so that I can wear the S7 on the outside of my sleeve.

I am also considering getting back into cycling later this year, and it would be nice to mount the S7 on the handlebars.

External sensor support seems like a simple software update (this is just my opinion as I am NOT a software developer) and it is my only real frustration with the S7.