Race 3S & Race 3 rumours

GratefulDeadpan

Let’s get speculating!

Rumours starting to pop up regarding Race 3S & 3:

https://gadgetsandwearables.com/2026/07/26/suunto-race-3-s-ai-coach-leak/

HonzaS

I don’t want any paywall functions. It was one of the reasons to leave Garmin .

elbee

Most likely not interested enough to replace my current watch (I dare to say without looking at any speculative specs)

elbee

@HonzaS

Leave garmin for a paywall that contains nothing of any interest?

My reason was their focus on voice. Forced voiceover of tbt alerts that couldn’t be turned of and given that their newer watches also have mics and speaker it will be terrible on trailruns where garmin users constantly talk to their watch and their watch talking back. Horror!!

matram

I think the watches are more held back by software than hardware. I do not see what could be a compelling HW feature for a Race 3?

I am currently using Claude as a AI coach and I am impressed with how that works. Would be interesting to see what Suunto can come up with.

GratefulDeadpan

@HonzaS said:

I don’t want any paywall functions. It was one of the reasons to leave Garmin .

If they stick an AI coach behind a paywall I myself couldn’t care less. As long as they don’t restrict other software features. But it is a slippery slope for sure.

Steven Hambleton

@matram I’m interested in how that works for you!

matram

@steven-hambleton
Happy to share a bit. As background I am an old runner (70+) now more prone to injuries, overtraining and with poor recovery.

Some of the things I have done with Claude are …

Analyse runs over a period of time to detect an aerobic collaps due to overtraining, identify baseline capacity and develop a training program to recover
Analyse behaviour of the aerobic system during runs, HR recovery, efficiency and decoupling - dialling back duration and intensity much more than I would do myself
Identify “abort” signals - when to stop a run because it is doing more harm than good
Find the “weak link” - I have excellent VO2max and anaerobic threshold for my age, but poor efficiency; so pace targets by an AI (Garmin or Suunto) will be too hard, leading to crash - with Claude I have been able to set more accurate targets
Analyse GCT, cadence data and footpath curves (from Stryd) to identify the efficiency issue - from Claude: High pre-strike dorsiflexion → heel-lead landing → long rotation to forefoot → delayed push-off → long ground contact → reduced elastic return → lower efficiency at slow paces
Developing a strength training program prior to correcting the heel strike - last time I tried a correction I injured my hamstrings

I guess you have to have a certain amount of knowledge to ask the right questions. Sometimes the anserws are “off”, you need to detect that, feed back and correct.

For me, simpler AI systems tend to give wrong advice (Garmin Coach for instance) as they do not take proper account of my age, and they are too mechanistic in their suggestions. Claude is more like a human coach which I can discuss with.

thanasis

If the platform is solid , I would definitely go for a subscription.

HonzaS

@elbee One of the reasons… Reboots on each ride, poor battery life (half of declared), tons of bugs and yes, phone speaking all the time :-).

elbee

@HonzaS said:

@elbee One of the reasons… Reboots on each ride, poor battery life (half of declared), tons of bugs and yes, phone speaking all the time :-).

Yeh, I also had poor battery life with my garmin 965. The sportgadgetblogger dcrainmaker claimed that satiq (which autoselects gnss settings based in reception) gives good batterylife. Well, when I looked in the fit file, the watch changed gnns like crazy, and I live in the Netherlands which isn’t challenging for gnss. Resulting in 10% battery loss per hour. My race s uses 5% in highest setting.

And bugs. Lots of bugs. My wife noticed I don’t complain as much about my suunto than I did about the garmin.

matram

@elbee
I was a beta tester during my two years with a FR965. What irritated me the most was that a lot of the bugs were actually reported during beta testing, but rarely fixed.

It seemed the focus was always on new features, never making sure they worked correctly.

elbee

@matram said:

@elbee
I was a beta tester during my two years with a FR965. What irritated me the most was that a lot of the bugs were actually reported during beta testing, but rarely fixed.

It seemed the focus was always on new features, never making sure they worked correctly.

I was a betatester too!

Garmin support always asked if the bug was introduced in the latest version of the beta. If not, they refused to look into it.
They also found a way the discourage people by demanding a movieclip that showed the bug. And if you said that was not possible or didn’t add anything they would say if I wasn’t willing to help, garmin support could do nothing.

Super frustrating.

But you managed for 2 years. I sold mine after about a year.

ggrego

Hello I don’t find it very serious race 2 came out 1 year ago and displays the real distance for only 2 weeks it still has a lot of small bugs not to mention the complete restart and there we announce a race 3 we would already like to have a stable race 2 that works properly thank you

aiv4r

@matram i am happy that works for you, but trusting AI to stay injury free is a bold move, same as trusting your friend that is kind of into running if you are not statistical outlier or unique it might work for you, but I would suggest talking to a real coach or physio.

aiv4r

@GratefulDeadpan same, since I assume AI coach is a software thing, so might be pushed to Suunto app for everyone. My only hope is that it will be unnoticeable like it is now and if one does not need it, cannot even find it

GratefulDeadpan

@aiv4r said:

@GratefulDeadpan same, since I assume AI coach is a software thing, so might be pushed to Suunto app for everyone. My only hope is that it will be unnoticeable like it is now and if one does not need it, cannot even find it

Agredd 100% — I do notice it now though. Would be nice if Suunto Coach was just an on demand thing, like an expandable option for any metric you’re looking at. If Suunto is actually building this I really hope they take note from Google/Fitbit here as their approach with Google Coach is just plain annoying.

matram

@aiv4r
Thanks, good advice!

I am not blindly trusting AI. I have consulted a physiotherapist. Her advice and Claude had considerable overlap. Claude recommended a few more hamstring-related exercises and training one leg at a time to fix a left / right imbalance. Feels like good advice so far.

My impression is that AI coaches (e.g. Garmin) are not good enough, they may actually be dangerous. An LLM trained on all the data out there and with access to your personal data may be more useful if you use it in the right way.

Personally I hate subscriptions but I am willing to pay if they are truly useful. But my Claude Pro subscription is about 20 Euro and provides value apart from training. I would not be willing to pay a similar amount for an additional AI service that provides much less value.