Zone alerts on Spartan Sport
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The manual says that if you set a target HR zone, the watch will alert you if your HR strays outside the zone limits. But all I get is a warning message on the screen, which I’ll only see if I happen to be looking at the watch when it pops up. There’s no vibration (and vibration is so weak anyway that I sometimes don’t notice it for kilometre splits even when I’m waiting for it) and no tone.
Is this the way it’s supposed to be? If not, would someone be kind enough to walk me through the process of setting up a vibration or tone alert?
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If you want to have alerts with tone you have to set all alerts with tone and vibration.
In the manual manual explains this:
Tones and vibration
Tones and vibration alerts are used for notifications, alarms and other key events and actions. Both can be adjusted from the settings under General » Tones.
Under General » Tones and Vibration, you can select from the following options:
All on: all events trigger an alert
All off: no events trigger alerts
Buttons off: all events other than pushing buttons trigger alertsUnder Alarms, you can select from the following options:
Vibration: vibration alert
Tones: sound alert
Both: both vibration and sound alertI use Alarms both and Buttons off and works for me.
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@Bulkan Thanks very much. This seems to be a bit confusing. I prefer not to have my watch beeping at me (setting aside that you can’t hear the beeps anyway if there’s any kind of traffic noise going on), so I had tones set to all off and vibration set to all on. But apparently the vibration alert doesn’t kick in if tones are off?
I’ve now set tones to buttons off and alarm to both; we’ll see if this changes anything.
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@RiphRaph maybe the vibration is too prompt? Give it a try at home vs outdoors (test)
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@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos What do you mean by “prompt”? The vibration of the Spartan Sport is very faint in general; sometimes I miss the kilometre split warning even when I know it’s coming, but in the case of the zone alarm the watch absolutely wasn’t vibrating at all at the settings I’d chosen. I’ll give it another try with the current settings next time I run.
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@RiphRaph I meant short in time…
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Btw - does it alert me if I set a target pace zone and am too slow?
I remember seeing screens like “go faster” etc, but not in my S9.
Or is this S3 specific? -
@Egika
usually my S9 tells me to slow down, but it also notified me to speed up -
Hm. Last run it did not remember getting any of these…
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@Egika
maybe a new FW feature?
I’ll check tomorrow night -
@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos It certainly is very short no matter what it’s vibrating for, but in this case it really wasn’t vibrating at all.
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@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos OK, just tested it with the current settings. It’s beeping to tell me to speed up (I’m sitting at my desk but I’ve got a “Run” in progress) and there may or may not be a vibration going on at the same time; it’s so brief and so weak that it’s hard to tell. Unfortunately, the tone itself is so quiet that it wouldn’t take much ambient noise to drown it out completely! It wouldn’t stand a chance in traffic noise and even the slightest sound of wind in my ears outside would make it inaudible.
So for practical purposes trying to set target intensity zones on this watch is a complete waste of time.
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@RiphRaph said in Zone alerts on Spartan Sport:
So for practical purposes trying to set target intensity zones on this watch is a complete waste of time
I don’t think so because the watch still has a screen next to vibration and sound…
I agree, when I was cycling the other day I missed the beep and vibration, too. But for running it is noticable (assuming SSS has the same setup as S9?!).
If Suunto would make the beep louder you’ll get a nice tinnitus while running or getting notified in the office… unless you can set a volume
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@TELE-HO Oh good point – after all, we all run with our eyes glued to the watch display every second of the way, right?.
Apparently the SSS has a less efficient vibration than the S9, because it’s literally imperceptible in the case of zone alerts.I wonder what Suunto was thinking? The vibration for manual laps is nice and long, so one does feel it – but that’s the one case where any kind of alert is barely necessary because I already know it’s happening; after all, I’m pushing a button to set a manual lap in the first place. For all the cases where one will probably not be looking at the watch, they make it so short that it registers too faintly or not at all. (I’ve lost count of the number of times I haven’t felt a vibration at the start of an activity to signify HR and GPS lock, for example.)
Formerly Spartan Sport WHR, happy Coros Vertix user since Sept. 2020
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@RiphRaph perhaps ask for repair. The vib at least at start (GPS lock) for me it’s noticeable on SSS. Now of course different people etc. Not sure 100% if I am right.
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@RiphRaph in which sports do you use the watch and miss the vibration?
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@RiphRaph
it’s for sure not the best to run and only stare at the screen of course. that’s why I still need to get used to my 7 fields screen setup
But I do feel when I start taking it too easy, quick look at the dial indicator and I see that I’m getting out of a specific zone…
But we’ve discussed this vibration topic recently in other threads and I would generally ask for more customization of several things. In this case for a vibration pattern. The vibration is the same strength as for the lap but much much shorter and hence barely noticeable… I don’t even know if the motor gets to a constant speed or if acceleration and deceleration ramp are “connected”?! -
@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos I’m pretty sure I’ve seen criticism of the SSS’s faint vibration on at least one sports tech reviewer’s site, so I think this may not be a repair issue. I think the impulse is just so short that it barely has time to become discernible before it cuts off. @TELE-HO is probably onto something by saying it needs to be customisable.
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@Bulkan Running.
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@TELE-HO “it’s for sure not the best to run and only stare at the screen of course. that’s why I still need to get used to my 7 fields screen setup
But I do feel when I start taking it too easy, quick look at the dial indicator and I see that I’m getting out of a specific zone…”My issue is more at the other end of the spectrum; I often don’t notice when I’m going too hard and drifting into the next higher zone. By the time it occurs to me to check, I’ll be five beats over and have no way of telling how long I’ve been outside my target zone.
I think you’re right that it should be customisable. The motor likely isn’t as weak as it seems and if we could set all vibration signals to a longer duration everything would be fine. The manual lap signal, certainly, seems quite strong enough – but it’s also a lot longer than any of the automatic ones.
