Suunto race new owner - after 3 weeks - with bad ending
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Hi,
So I come from wearing an Ambit 3S for about 9 years - still working, never let me down, using it with a HR belt. But I decided it is time to switch to something more modern and also had in mind that having a wrist HR will make me ditch the belt, which sometimes needs battery, sometimes I forget etc. I didn’t check other brands, went to Suunto directly and chose the race watch so here we are.
First feeling was great - it looks and feels good. I was very happy, needless to say. But I was on a vacation with the kids so I only really tested it on 2 light hikes, where it performed great. Still, some “holes” appeared: for example the weather widget.
But whatever, main reason for taking it was not that - even though it’s agreat perch to have.
My main sport is crossfit - I go about 4-5 times per week at a gym. That is where the watch became a complete dissapointment and failure. Recorded 5 workouts, and the HR was coreect for about 2 minutes IN TOTAL! Thus, obviously, all other data that is being extracted from this information is crap. I went online, only to find out that even on Suunto website it says the for crossfit I should wear a belt, also read (very) many reports of it not recording HR correctly.
To make it more frustrating, I was talking about this with ppl at the gym, for example those with Apple watch have almost perfect readings. So the technology exists and it works, how is it possible that Suunto can’t use it? I don’t care if it’s a 5-10% error, but it just shows I am having a light walk while I spit my guts on the floor.
Therefore, unfortunately, it will go back, which it actually hurts since I really wanted it to work. -
@Ionut-Andarachi Optical HR is not perfect for everyone.
My wife has an Apple Watch and it is poor for her, she has to use a belt. It is not the technology as some get excellent results with Suunto OHR, I do not. I used an Apple Watch Ultra 1 for nearly a year. It was fine for easy runs but did not accurately record higher intensity runs, my Suunto belt connected to either a Suunto watch or the Apple Watch was much better.Crossfit would be very difficult for any watch and if me, I would wear a belt. My Suunto belt does a great job. But, just because Apple works for some does not mean it works for all.
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@Ionut Hello. Many of us have the same problem. Just follow the instructions that suunto gives. The watch must be 2 fingers away from the bone. I’ve posted a link some days before from suunto, but i cant find it to repost it. When our skin is getting wet thw watch it moves up and down. So you have to fasten the watch hard to your arm. That is the problem not the watch.
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@Νίκος-Σουρμελίδης said in Suunto race new owner - after 3 weeks - with bad ending:
That is the problem not the watch.
If it would be only that simple… for many OHR isn’t working correctly during sport activities (while fine for 24x7). Regardless how I wear it, high/low on the wrist, tight/loose, warm/cold warm it isn’t correct, that is a fact!
Cheap belts do a much better job, they actually work.
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@Ionut optical heart rate sensors are very hit or miss. On every type of device I’ve heard about, some people have great experiences and some people don’t. I don’t care who made it, how highly rated it is, how good the marketing is or how highly advanced it’s supposed to be. I never trust any optical heart rate sensor fully. I use the one on my Suunto race day to day, it’s pretty good, but if I do a fitness test, race, or anything else where I need solid data, I use a strap.
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@Ionut first, love seeing someone with an Ambit. A hero device from the golden age of technology.
Second, taking this back from Suunto, the wrist is known - for all brands - to be a challenging place to measure HR from with movement (eg running). If you add in wrist flexion - gripping, twisting, common to swimming, climbing, cycling and CF - it becomes significantly harder to measure accurately.
I always use a HR monitor away from my wrist, either a Polar Verity, or something on my chest, as the data is so unreliable otherwise.
I suspect that your CF fellows with Apple Watches have more accurate feeling data as the AW discards data more aggressively, which reduces the amount of data captured, but can increase accuracy of the data.
Finally, it can be really disheartening when, as you say, you work really hard and your watch doesn’t agree with you! Gaslamped by our technology.
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In the end I did not return this watch - I thought about it a bit and decided to stay with it, I still hope I will never buy a Garmin but then again, Suunto keeps pushing me there.
The reason I’m writing this? Just a feedback after 2 months.
Knowing what I know now would I buy this watch? IN NO WAY!Let me summarise:
- I do crossfit 5-6 times a week - 80% of the time completely useless (using OHR)
- I go hiking 2-3 times a months, maybe more: GPS accuracy great, OHR is again wrong, but this time maybe just 20% of the time
- weather and all the other info that derive (like sunset/sunrise) need constant sync with the phone (c’mon, how stupid is that in 2024?!)
- altimeter is also bad (though on treks it showed quite accurate data) meaning that while I am at home I can see different readings
- blood oxygen is a joke - I had 80% at one time, most of the time though I am under 95%! I also have one of those medical devices that you put on a finger, it never shows less than 96%-97% which is normal
On top of all that recently I think they had an update (I am not sure, I did not see any announcement) and they messed with the watch faces. To be more accurate, in my chosen watch face I could “click” on an info and go through other readings - for example: press on date -> show steps -> show moon phase -> show sunset -> show date again.
Now, on the same watch face, I CANNOT DO THAT ANYMORE. I can just fix one info and that’s all! Really, Suunto? What is the reason for that? Battery saving? I just cannot think of a sane reason for doing that.In conclusion, 2 and half months later, I just have a fancy watch that looks good but is annoying. The thing is that if I were to buy a watch for the things that work here - not the rest - I would probably pay 1/4 of the price.
Anyway, maybe I’ll make this my (complaining) journal. When I bought this I decided to pay this much money believing all those nice perks that are advertised. In truth it’s just a frustrating experience. Luckily it shows the time right…
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@Ionut Just a brief feedback from a fellow user that owns all brands of watches:
- crossfit and you rely on OHR? Get a band like Polar OH1 or Verity sense. No matter how tight you put any watch you’ll never get accurate data (My AWU2 is grey indicating cannot read HR,My FR965 shows strange numbers too depending on the blood flow it registers same as the Race)
- OHR while hiking is 99.9% similar to the other brands (I’ve done multiple hikes with different watches and the avg HR was within 1,2 beats)
- Stupid in 2024 to fetch data. How stupid is that in 2024 the weather on the iOS shows sun and outside is raining? And it is constantly connected to the net. How can the watch gets the weather if you don’t connect it (it does not have LTE). For your info the weather widget on FR965 goes blanc after 2h or less of no connectivity to mobile.
- Altimeter is the best out of the 2 other brands I stated.
- I agree on the blood oxygen, very low when you manually initiate it, quite good (at least for me) while I sleep (96-100). To be honest my FR965 also is a bit on the lower end 90-96, Apple too (90-100) while my med is always 99-100%. But this is to be expected since oxygen is supposed to be measured at the tip of the finger not on the wrist.
- The update of the watch faces was based on feedback by users that they want to change how and what is shown on the watch face - same as the other brands.
Pay this much money is a weird statement since the Race is the cheapest of all comparable devices (FR965: 649 eu, AWU2 849 eu for me and the Race 399 eu)
Suunto watches: Ocean, Race, Vertical (Titanium Solar Sand), 9 Baro (Ambassador Edition), Spartan Ultra (Copper Edition), Ambit 2, S6
Suunto Wing -
@EzioAuditore said in Suunto race new owner - after 3 weeks - with bad ending:
@Ionut Just a brief feedback from a fellow user that owns all brands of watches:
- …crossfit and you rely on OHR? Get a band like Polar OH1 or Verity sense. No matter how tight you put any watch you’ll never get accurate data …
I will confirm that any wrist flex while reading wrist HR can wildly throw the numbers off. When rowing, sandbag training, pull ups, dead lifts or boxing I always wear a chest strap to get more consistent data. All of these exercises involve wrist movements that would potentially depreciate the signal.
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@Ionut I highly recommend and arm or chest strap. I use an arm strap that I paid 20€ (coospo HW9) with my vertical and it’s more accurate than any wrist HR of any watch. I can highly recommend It and you don’t even notice it’s there. If you look further you’ll notice there are very good reviews about that cheap strap, with a very similar accuracy as the Verity Sense.
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@Todd-Danielczyk Yes agreed. If you are serious in any sport that involves reaching Max HR you should not rely on OHR. I only use OHR when casually walking (if I track it and want to have it in the app), yoga, bike commuting and some pilates core without much arm movement. All other I use plethora of bands (be it Sense, H10, Karoo’s HR while biking)
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Yeah, chest strap or arm strap. The wrist is ok for 24x7 hr, but with certain activities (running, cycling and gym work) you’re going to hit issues like cadence lock etc.
I have a Scosche R2, a Verity sense, a H9 and a HRM PRO+. Havent used wrist hr for activities for a long while.
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- The update of the watch faces was based on feedback by users that they want to change how and what is shown on the watch face - same as the other brands.
Wow, what a surprise, hard to believe that users asked for such UX en masse
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I personally like the design and UX of the new watch faces a lot better than previous version - so I guess I would have been one of those users who gave it a thumbs up.
@false said in Suunto race new owner - after 3 weeks - with bad ending:
- The update of the watch faces was based on feedback by users that they want to change how and what is shown on the watch face - same as the other brands.
Wow, what a surprise, hard to believe that users asked for such UX en masse
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@EzioAuditore said in Suunto race new owner - after 3 weeks - with bad ending:
@Ionut Just a brief feedback from a fellow user that owns all brands of watches:
- crossfit and you rely on OHR? Get a band like Polar OH1 or Verity sense. No matter how tight you put any watch you’ll never get accurate data (My AWU2 is grey indicating cannot read HR,My FR965 shows strange numbers too depending on the blood flow it registers same as the Race)
I would probably ignore this issues, but fellows crossfitters who own an Apple Watch for example have very accurate readings. Anyway, it’s been debated few posts up.
- The update of the watch faces was based on feedback by users that they want to change how and what is shown on the watch face - same as the other brands.
This is just nonsense. Pure nonsense. Anyone who wanted a certain info to see could just scroll to whatever they desire and leave it as is. Now I have just 2 options, for everything else I have to go in the menu. Simply put, it’s stupid.
In order to summarize (and come back again in 3 months time), without throwing out hate, the watch is like this: you have quite a lot features that draw information based on an OHR which is bad. Therefore, when you pay, you pay for all these features. But they let you down because, well, their engine is crap. So, why pay extra? As I said in the beginning I moved to this from Ambit 3S that I used with a belt. After 9 years I decided to ditch it - though still working very well (I must say I am amazed that its battery still holds 7-8+ days) - in order to have something good and reliable. Simply put, it’s anything but reliable.
Maybe my expectations were too high…And just one more thing: if by any chance I will run into someone who does crossfit and uses OHR with great accuracy (except Apple Watch) I will be utterly pissed.
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@Ionut What stop you from using your Race with belt ?
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@Ionut said in Suunto race new owner - after 3 weeks - with bad ending:
@EzioAuditore said in Suunto race new owner - after 3 weeks - with bad ending:
@Ionut Just a brief feedback from a fellow user that owns all brands of watches:
- crossfit and you rely on OHR? Get a band like Polar OH1 or Verity sense. No matter how tight you put any watch you’ll never get accurate data (My AWU2 is grey indicating cannot read HR,My FR965 shows strange numbers too depending on the blood flow it registers same as the Race)
I would probably ignore this issues, but fellows crossfitters who own an Apple Watch for example have very accurate readings. Anyway, it’s been debated few posts up.
I was doing CrossFit with AWU2 and my OHR half of the time is undetectable so there’s that. A friend of mine is also in the same boat even with the lighter AW8. So let’s agree to disagree.
- The update of the watch faces was based on feedback by users that they want to change how and what is shown on the watch face - same as the other brands.
This is just nonsense. Pure nonsense. Anyone who wanted a certain info to see could just scroll to whatever they desire and leave it as is. Now I have just 2 options, for everything else I have to go in the menu. Simply put, it’s stupid.
So… when you want to see something you were pressing on the PREDEFINED complication and were able to see something that Suunto decided to show on the certain watch face. But you had no problem of scrolling to the widgets. Now that you can choose what you want to see (dependant on the watch face up to 5 options) it’s limitation? Oh and you are unable to scroll anymore and see what you want? Or long press the complication and see details?
I believe Suunto bases their decisions of the survey feedback which if they are 80+% for customisable than that’s what people prefer (same like voting
).In order to summarize (and come back again in 3 months time), without throwing out hate, the watch is like this: you have quite a lot features that draw information based on an OHR which is bad. Therefore, when you pay, you pay for all these features. But they let you down because, well, their engine is crap. So, why pay extra? As I said in the beginning I moved to this from Ambit 3S that I used with a belt. After 9 years I decided to ditch it - though still working very well (I must say I am amazed that its battery still holds 7-8+ days) - in order to have something good and reliable. Simply put, it’s anything but reliable.
Maybe my expectations were too high…Anybody that is serious in training with HR will never use OHR, no matter how good certain OHRs are they are nowhere near good as belts.
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@raceaddict I used to go running more than anything else. Sometimes you forget it, sometimes the battery runs out etc. Also the techonology for OHR is available for many years so I just decided it is time for a new gadget. I went once with it to crossfit and it also broke - after so many years of sweat and salt it is normal.
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@Ionut In this case the choice of a suunto for ohr wasn’t vey wise. It isn’t a secret, as highlighted in every review, of all the contenders on the sportwatch market, Suunto is the worst for ohr. It is doing a lot of things right but ohr isn’t one of them.
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@raceaddict I also heard such reviews about ohr. I used to wear suunto 5 for running and sensor was really bad then I switched to 9pp and it worked pretty nice for me, at least I forgot about HR belt for easy and some tempo runs. So I think it’s pretty individual. For short intervals wrist ohr is useless - true
