Buying a Vertical

elbee

From my experience with over 15 years of sportwatches.

The last revolutionary change was with my ambit 3, way way back. That had gps and made it possible to follow a gpx trail. Great for doing long runs, runs in unfamiliar surroundings and enter trail runs where only a gpx is provided for the route.

Gps accuracy has been fine on all my watches. Good enough, unless you freak out if your gps trail shows you running on the other side of the street on strava.

Other than that? Meh. Decent battery is nice (there mips is way better than amoled). Maps for a bit of context is slightly more convenient than only a breadcrumb to follow a route.

Other than that, there is nothing on newer watches that changed the way I train, run and bike

A 3 year old model for a nice price is just fine.

nseslija

@shampoo yes it’s old model, but is still great watch!

Brad_Olwin

@shampoo My favorite watch as well. I still use mine and if I was not a Suunto tester this would be the watch I would use. I prefer the screen to the AMOLED. The battery life is amazing and the features plenty for me. I hope Suunto will have one final update for this watch.

KSGravelJunkie

Question for those who own a relatively new vertical 1 (or race 1). What is your typical battery life? I have a race 1 and really miss the battery life before the updates over the last couple years. I used to get 12-14 days between charges and now only get five. It makes me really wish Suunto made a mips solar charge watch again. However, this post got me wondering, are my battery life issues a result of the updates and subpar processing power on my watch (which would be the case for vertical 1 watches as well) or are the battery issues because my watch is old and a brand new race 1 or vertical 1 would bring me back to normal battery life?

I may be tempted to get a vertical 1 during a sale if people say they have nameplate battery life with a new watch.

Miroslava

@KSGravelJunkie i have race 1 . Before actualization i had normally 11-12 days with gps acitvities. Now i have max 6-7 days

stromdiddily

@Brad_Olwin what’s on your wish list for it?

martintrail

My favorite hardware since 2023. I can’t stand wearing anything else on my wrist. A piece of art. I can’t recall any major issues. They just do what they’re supposed to, but don’t expect any smart lifestyle features. Love it.

thanasis

my favorite watch overall. It’s a pity that some relatively basic things are not fixed but I also hope it gets an update with some things (new climb thing, the alarms…) and a fix for some issues (battery instability for instance which is causing some drainage)

Jeffrey Tillack

The original Vertical is an awesome watch. Just used mine to track my route through Indonesia’s Mt Rinjani and the Torean Valley over 4 days and 3 nights. Never missed a beat on continuous tracking the whole time. Friends with Forerunners had to recharge their watches on the second day…

GPS and elevation was spot on (3726m) on the volcano and the tracks through the valley were excellent. Plus I prefer a MIPS screen to amoled.

It got bashed on volcanic scree and against rocks etc without a scratch.

Can’t go wrong really.

babychai

@KSGravelJunkie Have you tried calibrating the battery?

Mine only drops by around 4% per day. During the daytime, it drops about 1% over 7–8 hours, while overnight it drops around 2%.

I’ve also experienced it dropping only 1% over 10 hours when I was mostly staying indoors.

I keep my phone’s Bluetooth and watch notification turned off and manually sync my watch less than 10 times a day. Sleep tracking is turned on, and 24/7 wrist HR is also enabled.

VoiGAS

@Jeffrey-Tillack You did not recharge during a four day activity? What were your settings? Sound great for multi day hiking

Brad_Olwin

@stromdiddily said:

@Brad_Olwin what’s on your wish list for it?

Just contour lines at all zoom levels. The watch does everything I need.

Tieutieu

@Brad_Olwin for me last climb guidance enhancements of my SRs are missing on SV1 : when there is waypoints on route specifically.

KSGravelJunkie

@babychai By calibrating, you mean letting it run till empty and then fully charging it? If so, yes, I’ve done that a couple times.

I could try turning off Bluetooth to see what that does. It’s been a few months but I tried putting it in airplane mode overnight to see if it slowed battery drain, it did not.

Question, are the numbers above for a Vertical? My results are on a Race 1. I was curious if others are seeing good battery drain numbers on a vertical 1. If you are using a vertical, those numbers are good, about 25 days if my math is right? That’s pretty darn close to nameplate battery life of 30 days and makes it tempting to buy one on sale.

Jeffrey Tillack

@VoiGAS I had bluetooth turned off since there was no phone connection in that remote area. Used dual band gps all day plus navigation (climb guidance etc), then at night I switched to a non-gps activity. I had the display turned to low on each setting. So nothing really extraordinary.

I actually charged the watch on the prior Saturday (started the trek on the Monday morning) and despite being away from home for a week, the watch still had 31% battery left. I was very impressed given the terrain was ridiculously tough for GPS with giant rocks, a very steep sided valley, enclosed rainforests etc.

babychai

@KSGravelJunkie I’m speaking based on my own two time experience with both the SV1 Stainless Steel and SV1 Solar Titanium.

I let the battery drain completely to 0% (until screen off or seeing the battery symbol), then fully charged it to 100% and kept it charging for another 1 hour.

Based on my experience, starting the charge at 5%, 10%, or 20% and unplugging the charging cable immediately once it reaches 100% never worked as well for me.

Tami999

@babychai said:

@KSGravelJunkie I’m speaking based on my own two time experience with both the SV1 Stainless Steel and SV1 Solar Titanium.

I let the battery drain completely to 0% (until screen off or seeing the battery symbol), then fully charged it to 100% and kept it charging for another 1 hour.

Based on my experience, starting the charge at 5%, 10%, or 20% and unplugging the charging cable immediately once it reaches 100% never worked as well for me.

This. Many times this trick repaired my battery drain in all Suunto watches.

KSGravelJunkie

@babychai Thanks for the feedback, I’ll give this a try next go around. Although I have done this unintentionally a couple times over the last few months and it hasn’t gotten better on my Race V1. Fingers crossed.