Suunto 9 - the instant pace is often too fast
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My observation over multiple faster paced runs is that the instant pace shown by Suunto 9 is often too optimistic. What that means that is that the watch makes you believe that you are running faster than you actually are. For example, I may be watching my pace and it would show something like 7:15 - 7:30/mile most of the time, but then the mile spit comes in, and it would show 7:36/mile. I’ve noticed that multiple times when I was actually paying attention to my pace and the pace was reasonably stable. I also remember someone reporting the same when running on a track. Perhaps the fused speed algorithm is to blame. Or perhaps there is an issue in how the instant pace is calculated. I believe this is something Suunto should investigate.
Here is a screenshot from Movescount that demonstrates this issue. Sorry, Suunto App is not adequate for an analysis like that:
What this screenshot shows is the instant pace as reported by the watch over two minutes, and the average pace, shown as the dotted line, over the same interval. The instant pace varies between 3 values in this example - 7:15/mile most of the time, 7:27/mile and 7:40/mile small amount of time. The 7:36/mile average pace is calculated from the actual distance and the actual time, so it is accurate. Obviously the instant pace is too optimistic. I find the instant pace to be on the fast side far more often than on the slow side.
To verify that I’ve wrote a script and averages the instant pace accurately, considering the time deltas between points, over an entire activity, and compares that to the actual average page. In a few runs that I’ve looked at the averaged instant pace is too fast by 10-15 sec/mile. For example in the run which fragment is shown above, over the entire run the averaged instant pace was 8:22/mile and the actual average pace was 8:30/mile.
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I ll ask Suunto for a reply on this . Thanks.
Just a few things here , the MC has a more smoothed chart . Just saying…
Also if you use scripts etc. Please try to use the FIT files that do not have merged points as GPX and TCX have
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Unfortunately this cannot be improved much more. @silentvoyager
This is due to GPS and the same is with A3P and a plethora of other watches.
I got a reply with the chart comparisons of A3P, S9, SSU , COROS , Vantage etc.
Not trying to praise Suunto here, but with all honest from what I have seen the Suunto has the more consistent instant pace over the ones tested and mentioned above.
I don’t know how much more to help here
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@silentvoyager If you need highly accurate pace, my suggestion is to purchase a Stryd. I think many find its pace is very good. I am not aware of any GPS-based watch that can provide highly accurate pacing. Fellrnr agrees.
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@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos, thank you for checking with the engineering team on this! This isn’t a huge issue for as it is fairly rare for me to rely on the instant pace. This might be more of an issue for road runners, for example when trying to keep steady marathon pace.
Overall the instant pace is reasonably accurate. I just wish it wasn’t biased towards being too optimistic.
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@silentvoyager there is for sure room for improvement. I created an issue for this btw. I don’t leave these stuff undocumented.
