Suunto Race and openwater swimming
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@Egika thank you so much!!
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@mlakis Polar Optical HR armband works brilliantly with Suunto Race in pool and open water swimming. I use it for running, cycling and swimming.
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@freddubai I didn’t expect that.
Have you tried the arm band with a wetsuit? It is always said that bluetooth does not work well underwater (light pulsed HR is not good with water and the signal transmision does not work well too). That’s why the cheststrap is usually needed for swimming and you need a cheststrap that can save in memory the data to transmit that data after the swims. -
@dreamer_ I have not used it with a wetsuit, but the Polar is highly reliable. Polar also provides a holder that fits onto your goggle strap so that the sensor touches your temple - this is actually recommended when you need a wetsuit.
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@freddubai the thing is that I have the H10 and the HRM Tri. Both have built-in memory for the swims but the first one only syncs inside Polar Flow and the other only syncs with your Garmin watch after the swim. I like the idea of the arm band if it works (I have a Coospo HW9 but that band is only IP67).
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Just to respond on this…
I did some tests (across 14 GPS watches) the week of April 20th. There haven’t been any GNSS updates to the watch since then.
Here’s the first test, where the Suunto Race was pitted against the Garmin Forerunner 265: https://analyze.dcrainmaker.com/#/public/8992e4ba-6881-4a6f-6a42-34a8f974725e
You can see it struggled quite a bit, compared to the reference track (swim buoy), and the Forerunner 265.
Then, after all 14 watches were done, I had a second round, the ‘Failboat Finale’, giving the two worst-performing watches a second chance at things. This was the Suunto Race vs the COROS Vertix 2S. (Note: The Suunto Vertical did OK, not as great as others, but enough to not end up in the bottom two).
Results: https://analyze.dcrainmaker.com/#/public/9e25ec07-ec0f-4919-6485-08d4179607da
It somehow managed to perform even worse on that test, despite being an easier test. It got things wrong before it even got to the usual brief treading water test (which, any GPS watch should be able to do just fine, and recover from 15-30 seconds of treading water, as if waiting for someone to catch-up, waiting for a boat to pass, etc…).
Again, I’m not aware of any changes in the GNSS side of things since that test, and I know Suunto engineering did see the data as part of my COROS Vertix 2S review.
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@dcrainmaker A 14 watch test with the Race performing so bad, seems important enough to understand there’s something here that Suunto should look at.
Thank you so much for taking your time to post here and for your fantastic work Ray.
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Just to note the new firmware of the Race seems to have GNSS accuracy fixes. Has anybody tested it on openwater?
Despite I have the Vertical, I’m thinking in the Race S as an smaller watch but then it seems both Race models have the same price for a few days here and there’s the doubt. Openwater is the only thing I remember the Race was not doing ok, but I don’t know now if that issue has been finally fixed.
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Any updates on what @dreamer_ had mentioned?
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Vertical, Race and Race S have slightly different antennas.
Tests show, that the SNR is not consistently better of worse for one or the other model.
As you can see from my above activities, I have never had any problem with all Suunto models and got perfect tracks and distances.
It maybe is a personal swimming style issue as well…Next FW update will also contain GNSS improvements again - just for me myself there is not much to be improved
