Suunto 3 Fitness Newbie Questions

danman

Hi there,

I apologize beforehand for a very long post but I hope that nevertheless any of the more experienced guys will read through it and offer some advice.

I just got a new Suunto 3 Fitness this week.
I specifically opted for the older Fitness model as I like the design better than the newer Suunto 3. Specifically I wanted to get a black/ copper version which seems to be the rarest colour combination but I managed to find a retailer who still had a new one on stock.
Design was not the main reason for choosing the Suunto 3. though. I chose it because I wanted an affordable sportswatch with the following features:

wrist based hr but ability to connect to a hr belt as well
heart rate zone training
customisable heart rate zones
intervall training
displaying most data right on the watch rather than having to sync to the app all the time
not too bulky because I have rather small wrists
basic activity tracking like step count
buttons instead of touchscreen (I find touchscreen annoying to use during sports)
yes and finally design, I wanted a watch that I could wear to work every day without looking like a typical sportswatch

The Suunto 3/ Suunto 3 Fitness was really the only watch that matched all these requirements. The fact that I can display sunrise and sunset times is an additional bonus that really no other watch in this price range offers.

So in theory the Suunto 3/ Suunto 3 Fitness is the perfect sportswatch for me. However after having used it now for almost a week I have encountered some problems or have some questions respectively that I hope the more experienced Suunto users in the forum can help me with:

I noticed that the wrist based HR tracking is extremely inaccurate. I have a very low resting heart rate, i.e. below 50 ppm. Suunto shows me above 60 ppm most of the time while sitting still and shoots up to above 80 or even 90 bpm with the slightest movement like raising an arm or so. I have followed the tips on the Suunto website for improving wrist based HR tracking accuracy but nothing worked. Now I know that wrist based HR monitoring is inherently inaccurate but none of the other wrist based devices with HR tracking that I have owned in the past (several Garmin and Fitbit device, Basis B1 etc.) was as inaccurate as the Suunto.
I also notice that sometimes the HR tracking of the Suunto seems to be “stuck”, i.e. it shows the exact same HR even during movement and when going back to the main screen pressing the button for HR once again it is still “stuck” and showing the same HR, while other times HR is dynamically adjusted.

Ressources are supposed to be updated every 30 minutes. However in my watch they are sometimes not updated for several hours. During daytime I had instances when they were not updated for 2 hours. During sleep, when waking up in the morning it would sometimes show me “last updated 4 hours ago”.
Sleep tracking while not important to me, because I use an Oura ring for that anyway, is also not working properly. Last night for example sleep tracking stopped after 6 hours. Yes I did go to the bathroom at that time but only very briefly and went straight to bed again and fell asleep and I was still several hours within the sleep period that I had specified in the watch.
So what I wan to ask is the folllowing:
Have others here on the forum experienced similar problems?
If others have experienced similar problems are there any known fixes?
If others have not experienced similar problems do you think the watch is defect and should be returned?
According to one forum post there should be a “secret” option to unlock 24 hour HR recording in the Suunto app. I have searched through all the app settings but was unable to find this feature. Can someone direct me to where I can find it in the app, please? This would give me a clearer picture of what the watch is continuously recording throughout the day and enable me to compare to other devices.

The obvious thing to do first for the above mentioned problems would be to check for a firmware update and update the watch if available in order to see if that improves some of the problems. However I have been hesitant to do that because I found that my watch unexpectedly had a feature that according to the Suunot website it should not have - sunrise and sunset alarm, i.e. it does not only display sunrise and sunset time in one of the watchfaces but you can actually set a customisable alarm to remind you some time ahead of sunset and sunrise. According to the Suunto website the Suunto 3 Fitness should only be able to display the times but not have alarms. Only the Suunto 5 should have this. So I speculate that this is something that was removed from the Suunto 3 Fitness with a Firmware update when the Suunto 5 came out. Therefore I do not want to do a firmware update if avoidable.

Again I apologise for the lengthy post and hope that some of you guys can help me out with your experience!

Many thanks in advance!
Daniel

@danman said in Suunto 3 Fitness Newbie Questions:

Have others here on the forum experienced similar problems?

Yes, Resources sometimes may not update often enough because updating them requires a proper lock on HR to get HRV, which is hard to accomplish given S3F daily heart rate isn’t continuous like Garmin, Fitbit, or Polar, and you might be moving around a lot. That is, do not expect Garmin’s Body Battery minute precision here. The opposite might be true as well: if you don’t move much, the watch doesn’t register events that would have changed you heart rate and doesn’t kick off the measurement.

How’s your daily HR looks on the watch?

Re: sleep, well… Sigh! Search the forums and you will see people complaining about sleep detection. For some people it works reasonably well, for others it’s a wash. What can I say? I’m using Polar for sleep/recovery tracking, and out of the last 8 days it went off the rails 3 times. That’s Polar, with their own algos they have been perfecting for many years now. Sleep tracking, and activity tracking in general, is more of an afterthought on Suunto devices. I doubt this will change.

You’ve got Oura – stick to it. There are very few other options that are as good or better. None of them are sports watch manufacturers.

If others have experienced similar problems are there any known fixes?

Not really. It is what it is.

If others have not experienced similar problems do you think the watch is defect and should be returned?

It’s not a defect, more like a persistent but hard to reproduce bug nobody is going to fix, because a very small group of users actually complains about it.

According to one forum post there should be a “secret” option to unlock 24 hour HR recording in the Suunto app.

If I remember correctly, the secret screen was only available in the iOS version of the app, only in beta builds, and it might not be around anymore. There are tons of posts written about 24/7 HR recording as you probably saw, and it has been semi-officially coming since at least May last year. I wouldn’t hold my breath at this point. If you really require 24/7 measurement, your only workable option in Suunto world would be Suunto 7 and HR it saves via Google Fit. Accidentally, when combined with Oura, you get your world class sleep tracking and 24/7 HR.

This would give me a clearer picture of what the watch is continuously recording throughout the day and enable me to compare to other devices.

You can take Oura’s night time recording and compare it to S3F on the watch. I’m fairly certain they would be well aligned. Not sure how much benefit having daily HR is, given how noisy it is.

So I speculate that this is something that was removed from the Suunto 3 Fitness with a Firmware update when the Suunto 5 came out. Therefore I do not want to do a firmware update if avoidable.

According to Suunto web site, S3F doesn’t support running power. And yet, you can pair Stryd with it and have power displayed when you run. Not only that, but from intensity targets in options, you can get to power zones and configure them even though the screen is removed from the official settings. My point is: take all the web fluff with a grain of salt. What matters is what you have on your wrist. And please, always update firmware. Unlike Garmin, Suunto isn’t known for removing features from production units, Movescount fiasco notwithstanding. And if you report any problems, the first question people would ask is what firmware you are running on.

danman

@NickK said in Suunto 3 Fitness Newbie Questions:

@danman said in Suunto 3 Fitness Newbie Questions:

Have others here on the forum experienced similar problems?

Yes, Resources sometimes may not update often enough because updating them requires a proper lock on HR to get HRV, which is hard to accomplish given S3F daily heart rate isn’t continuous like Garmin, Fitbit, or Polar, and you might be moving around a lot. That is, do not expect Garmin’s Body Battery minute precision here. The opposite might be true as well: if you don’t move much, the watch doesn’t register events that would have changed you heart rate and doesn’t kick off the measurement.

How’s your daily HR looks on the watch?

Re: sleep, well… Sigh! Search the forums and you will see people complaining about sleep detection. For some people it works reasonably well, for others it’s a wash. What can I say? I’m using Polar for sleep/recovery tracking, and out of the last 8 days it went off the rails 3 times. That’s Polar, with their own algos they have been perfecting for many years now. Sleep tracking, and activity tracking in general, is more of an afterthought on Suunto devices. I doubt this will change.

You’ve got Oura – stick to it. There are very few other options that are as good or better. None of them are sports watch manufacturers.

If others have experienced similar problems are there any known fixes?

Not really. It is what it is.

If others have not experienced similar problems do you think the watch is defect and should be returned?

It’s not a defect, more like a persistent but hard to reproduce bug nobody is going to fix, because a very small group of users actually complains about it.

According to one forum post there should be a “secret” option to unlock 24 hour HR recording in the Suunto app.

If I remember correctly, the secret screen was only available in the iOS version of the app, only in beta builds, and it might not be around anymore. There are tons of posts written about 24/7 HR recording as you probably saw, and it has been semi-officially coming since at least May last year. I wouldn’t hold my breath at this point. If you really require 24/7 measurement, your only workable option in Suunto world would be Suunto 7 and HR it saves via Google Fit. Accidentally, when combined with Oura, you get your world class sleep tracking and 24/7 HR.

This would give me a clearer picture of what the watch is continuously recording throughout the day and enable me to compare to other devices.

You can take Oura’s night time recording and compare it to S3F on the watch. I’m fairly certain they would be well aligned. Not sure how much benefit having daily HR is, given how noisy it is.

So I speculate that this is something that was removed from the Suunto 3 Fitness with a Firmware update when the Suunto 5 came out. Therefore I do not want to do a firmware update if avoidable.

According to Suunto web site, S3F doesn’t support running power. And yet, you can pair Stryd with it and have power displayed when you run. Not only that, but from intensity targets in options, you can get to power zones and configure them even though the screen is removed from the official settings. My point is: take all the web fluff with a grain of salt. What matters is what you have on your wrist. And please, always update firmware. Unlike Garmin, Suunto isn’t known for removing features from production units, Movescount fiasco notwithstanding. And if you report any problems, the first question people would ask is what firmware you are running on.

Thank you so much for responding in such detail, Nick! This is super helpful.
I wan’t actually aware S3F does not have continuous 24/7 HR recording. This does explain a lot of things like the infrequent updating of resources and showing me a high heart rate while I am resting for example.
Thanks again for your help!

@danman Sure! Basically like Apple Watch, outside activity, S3F (and other Suunto watches to be sure) measure your heart rate from time to time. Valencell sensor used is not an always on, continuous type of sensor.