Reliability of watches by updating

Thank you for your answers. I am confident that Suunto is a respectful company and cares about its customers. Coming from the American giant, I had my own experience with 2 watch models, starting with the Race and its Amoled screen. I sold it to a friend who only uses it for activity and who also suffered 2 crashes, 1 of which was in competition.
I switched to the Vertical and right out of the box I got an error message. I restarted the watch, did the latest update and loaded the maps for my area.
What’s crazy is that I love the design of the watch!! it is very comfortable to wear with a simple and concise interface. I don’t need contactless payment options, notifications of all kinds, ECG (which uses this on a watch)… It doesn’t lack much to be perfect in my eyes. I am ready to make concessions to the inaccuracies of the cardiac sensor.
The step counter is completely on the street. I wore a second watch for a day to compare during a day at the office. The vertical told me 110569 steps, the other 3259. We are far from the tolerances… it is certainly not useful data but it enters into the calculations of the algorithms I think (just like the OHR).
Finally the crashes, how to set off confidently on a 100 kilometers prepared for a whole year with this idea that it could crash at any time. This has never happened to me with my previous watches for 10 years (if I add up it must represent 15/16,000 km of running and maybe 70,000 km of cycling without counting the hikes).

It is for all these reasons that it is difficult to trust this Vertical. I tried a Fenix 7 PRO but I find it ugly now. This is why I am asking if the watch could be made more reliable by updating and will this be done…?

Tieutieu

@Fizzgig the VERTICAL is a very reliable watch. here you can mostly see people that have issues asking for help, like you do. It’s pretty normal. But most users have no issues.
That being said, you really ran out of luck with your SV out of service right out the box.
For sure there will be updates. But updates can’t fix the probably few faulty units.
Nobody can assure you that you won’t have any trouble in the future if you make another try with the SV.

First ask you what are your needs. If the SV has them, it an awesome watch. If your key features are missing, don’t buy it again .

@Tieutieu THANKS ! If I am interested in the vertical it is because it has all the functions that are necessary for me. No need for extras that won’t be of any use to me.

What I’m asking here is: does Suunto fix the problems and bugs by updating. If so, is it reliable? I don’t want to make concessions on the reliability of a product (hardware or software)

Given what we read here (and elsewhere) since the last update, the RACE, the Vertical and the 9 Peak pro are affected by significant bugs.

zhang965

@Fizzgig said in Reliability of watches by updating:

Todd-Danielczyk Tieutieu

Thank you for your answers. I am confident that Suunto is a respectful company and cares about its customers. Coming from the American giant, I had my own experience with 2 watch models, starting with the Race and its Amoled screen. I sold it to a friend who only uses it for activity and who also suffered 2 crashes, 1 of which was in competition.
I switched to the Vertical and right out of the box I got an error message. I restarted the watch, did the latest update and loaded the maps for my area.
What’s crazy is that I love the design of the watch!! it is very comfortable to wear with a simple and concise interface. I don’t need contactless payment options, notifications of all kinds, ECG (which uses this on a watch)… It doesn’t lack much to be perfect in my eyes. I am ready to make concessions to the inaccuracies of the cardiac sensor.
The step counter is completely on the street. I wore a second watch for a day to compare during a day at the office. The vertical told me 110569 steps, the other 3259. We are far from the tolerances… it is certainly not useful data but it enters into the calculations of the algluckorithms I think (just like the OHR).
Finally the crashes, how to set off confidently on a 100 kilometers prepared for a whole year with this idea that it could crash at any time. This has never happened to me with my previous watches for 10 years (if I add up it must represent 15/16,000 km of running and maybe 70,000 km of cycling without counting the hikes).

It is for all these reasons that it is difficult to trust this Vertical. I tried a Fenix 7 PRO but I find it ugly now. This is why I am asking if the watch could be made more reliable by updating and will this be done…?

Luckily I sold my vertical before the price dropped in second hand market.

Swaddy61

@Fizzgig I am on my 8th Suunto watch - not because the previous 7 were unreliable (one was repaired out of warranty, one could not be repaired as was >7 years old and parts no longer available, so I was offered big discount on a new Ambit), but because over the many years that they spanned, more features were added and, eventually, I only needed one watch to do everything, instead of 2 (didn’t have sports and GPS on the same watch back in those days!).

The watches have been well supported, updates have been provided, sometimes quite a while after the watch has been superceded - my Ambit 3 is 10 years old, received several updates over the years (including increasing the accuracy of the step count…) battery life is still fantastic and it still works well, so I keep it as a back up.

I agree with @Tieutieu, the SV is the best Suunto watch I have ever owned, and the best all round sports watch I have owned. Is it perfect yet? No, but it is mighty close. There will always be the DOA ones or units that go faulty, which is unfortunate but a fact of electronic life, however, I would bet it is a very small number of the total sold (although we do not have those figures!). Even with faulty units, MOST of the people on the forum with an SV (or Race) are asking how to do things, what to expect etc, not having the repeated faults / crashes that a few people have had. Support has been very good historically, but it sounds like they may be having a few supply chain issues at present delaying their return speed.

I chose not to have a garmin - far too complex with >80% of the gizmos of no interest to me. Maybe I am an outlier in the market (possibly like many other SV or SR owners…) as I don’t want notifications, NFC payments, music etc on the watch - I have a phone for that!

How long before Suunto fixes the ‘problems’? I think genuine bugs will be dealt with soon enough, but you only have to read the forums to understand that a lot of the other issues aren’t bugs, but different people wanting the watch to be exactly how they want it. Would I like some other things? Yes, of course, and I have made my requests, but I have a watch that currently already does 99% of what I want - the rest is a bit of App tuning / small watch additions etc etc.

I read / watched every review of the watch I could find (and comparisons of others out there) before I purchased my Vertical, in preference to getting another Coros (my Apex Pro is now 4 years old - still a good watch, but theSuunto App is better than Coros, which it wasn’t when I changed to Coros - indeed, why I changed to Coros at the time! Oh, and the Apex Pro had 2 updates that addressed the Step Count - so clearly not an easy thing to get right!).

So if your watch is having lots of crashes etc, work with Suunto with sending logs, and send it in under warranty if they can’t fix it remotely.

I do hope you will soon have a reliable Suunto partner on your wrist, as most of the rest of us have (I have had no crashes …yet… *jinx mode off).

Have fun.

VaineRT

@Tieutieu and others -

have had a Race for a couple of months and have yet to see a crash. Got the SR because the big G likes disposable watches and has not so good battery life and also because of the form factor, better dispaly and UI, and styling.

Sent back a 5 much earlier in time because I found maps to be helpful and that heart rate was totally out of reason.

But the Race seems to be accurately 98% of the time (tracks my chest band pretty well on a trainer and real bike) and steps - pretty much OK. So far so good. I haven’t experienced the issues I see cropping up in thefora.

Brad_Olwin

@Swaddy61 Well said! My first Suunto was a Vector in 1998. I have several now but the one that stays on my wrist is the Vertical.

Todd Danielczyk

@Fizzgig I agree with your assessment on this one.

I can also say I am very confident in Suunto making the newer platform Peak Pro, Race and Vertical more stable with the upcoming updates. They are on different algorithms that are mostly in-house. A bit of a learning curve if you will.

I’ve had a few things crop up regarding stability and battery life but truly feel these will get worked out. If I didn’t feel they would I would have moved on. The Vertical has the features I use, the build quality is the best out there (to me) and the support is hands down the best out of the big companies. I know the issues will get resolved (Suunto has proven that to me in the past. The Baro had issues getting GPS track at first but was fixed in a subsequent update).

In summary, I may have annoyance time to time but I’m confident in them being resolved by the summer update. To me they are not deal breakers at this time. The fact the new platform is on in-house algorithms means tighter control of the fixes which I really appreciate!

Thank you all for these details. To get the best service from Suunto, is it better to buy the watch directly on the site or can you go through your usual retailer?

freeheeler

@Fizzgig
Suunto offers a service independently where purchased. you just need the receipt when requesting service