Suunto Race S optical heart rate sensor accuracy
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@dariof
I was so depressed by the ugliness and cheap feel of my Garmin 265 that I purchased the Suunto race S and wore it in parallel for a month.Take-aways:
General- I am stuck in the Garmin eco-system… Would be great to export all activities including gear into Suunto. There are so many things i want to search in my history that Garmin keeps (actually - mostly gear is missing), and MASS import/export
Pro - Suunto
- much more asthetic and better built - I love it
- much nicer overall feel
- incredibly much better navigation and maps
Con - Suunto
1 not as good battery as Garmin - this was a surprise.
2 alarms are not by weekday (i get up different times different days in predictable pattern, my garmin handles that for wake-up alarms
3 eco-system issue
4 the HRM is crap when exercising (However, identical to Garmin when just going about, and very similar HRV for some reason.)- I still dont get a VO2max read out after a month of 24/7 wear?? (hence cant judge if it seems correct)
Overall - impossible choice. I might stick with garmin for ecosystem and some features I am used to. Painful as it is not to have the Suunto on my arm.
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@Tobias-Petrini hey
you could import all your past activities to suunto using RunGap app on iOS or syncmytrack on android Regarding vo2max I think there is a bug you should run 3 times with an hr belt and then it is unlocked if I remember well
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@Josaiplu I never used hr belt and I have vo2max
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@Gunnar with my Race vo2max never appear before I did 3 run with hr belt as far as I remember, if this is fixed it’s good news
thanks 
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@Josaiplu @Tobias-Petrini It took about 8 months running 3/4 times a week with hr belt for VO2 to show up on my Race(1)…
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@Tobias-Petrini regarding VO2Max, try the Cooper Test on Suunto App, after completing, you should get the value.
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I’ve had similar chronic issues with the heart rate on my Race S. Not registering an accurate heart rate until a mile or two into a ride or run, dropping heart rate during an activity, reading overly high during a ride or run. On some activities like cross training, I’ll never get a reasonable heart rate reading. I tried posting a review on Suunto’s website describing this and other issues I’ve had with the Race S and Suunto refused to publish the review saying my feedback “is not a common issue.” I contacted customer support hoping for some resolution since they apparently regard my experience as abnormal. Instead of a resolution, I got a bunch of excuses as to why I can’t really expect the watch to perform any better. All in all, my experience with this watch has been a disaster. I’ll never buy another Suunto product. Going back to Garmin.
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I want to share some data for my HR sensor is not good for even a simple walk. This week I did a couple of similar walks with my wife. Some with an Epix Pro and one with the Race S. Two of them are similar enough that I can easily compare them in intervals.icu. It’s always the same. A walk along the street, crossing a traffic light, walk a large round in the local park, cross the street again, back to the house where we rent a flat and walk up the stairs to the flat. So, it should be a fairly even HR recording apart from the climb of the stairs, where the HR should rise…
First graph is HR, second is elevation, below pace and then average HR. Educated guess on what the Suunto is and what the Garmin?
Combining it with the others that have been some minutes longer it looks like this:
Race S HR detection is not even reflecting the climb of stairs that all the other recordings do…
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I wonder if it’s gotten worse with updates. When I first got the watch I was impressed—the OHR was way better than my old Garmin 745. But the last few weeks/months it’s gotten really bad. 80bpm while sitting down tying my shoelaces (should be ~40bpm). Today on a short 20‑min easy run it spiked to 163bpm (my max HR is in the 150s).
At first it would shoot high for the first 10 minutes then settle, but now even long runs have random spikes mid‑run. I tried tightening the strap, but after a few runs I now have a rash on my arm from the watch!!!
Usually taking the watch off for 30 seconds helps, but lately even that doesn’t work—I have to repeat it multiple times. Today’s run it just kept spiking again. -
On my side I noticed it is worst when the outside temperature is low and that very regulary the HR is locked on the step frequency -> Please suunto implement a sw Countermeasure to reject it
