To Many issues with the Sunto 9 peak thoughts
-
@duffman19 said in To Many issues with the Sunto 9 peak thoughts:
My main issue is with distance accuracy on trail runs. A run early this week had the 945 at 9.23 Km and the S9P at 9.68 Km, a 4.7% difference. That’s pretty big. After mapping the run on a few other services, it seems the 945 is more correct
My experience is that mapping services are always too short on trails - perhaps 2-3% short. I remember that Suunto Ambit 3 Peak always had a longer distance after finishing a route that was mapped in advance. But I also knew from a few certified wheel measured races that even A3P was short on trails. So between FR945 and S9P I wouldn’t be so sure which one is more correct. The only way to tell is to use both on a certified trail race course. I did notice looking at activities of some friends who have S9B that distances seem a bit long. Assuming S9P has a similar algorithm, I think the true distance should be somewhere in the middle between FR945 and S9P and perhaps closer to S9P than to FR945.
-
@patrick-löffler I was wondering if you also tend to have very low resources on your S9P at all times.
Specifically, I use a garmin vivoactive 4 and Suunto 9P and I noticed that
Vivoactive gives me always tendentially high resources (body battery); especially in the morning I am always at 100% regardless of the quality of my sleep. Not very accurate, but at least I can see the pace at which resources are depleting over the day.S9P gives me 0 resources most of the time. Every single day I am at 0% resources in the early afternoon; hence I am at 0% most of the day. I am always around 50-60% right after I woke up.
Having an indicator of resources at 0% most of the time, in my view, is not all that useful. It defeats the purpose of having such a reading as I cannot base training decisions on it, which I understand is the aim of resources. Additionally, I cannot even see the pace at which resources are consumed over the day.
-
@giacomo-laffranchini said in To Many issues with the Sunto 9 peak thoughts:
@patrick-löffler I was wondering if you also tend to have very low resources on your S9P at all times.
Specifically, I use a garmin vivoactive 4 and Suunto 9P and I noticed that
Vivoactive gives me always tendentially high resources (body battery); especially in the morning I am always at 100% regardless of the quality of my sleep. Not very accurate, but at least I can see the pace at which resources are depleting over the day.S9P gives me 0 resources most of the time. Every single day I am at 0% resources in the early afternoon; hence I am at 0% most of the day. I am always around 50-60% right after I woke up.
Having an indicator of resources at 0% most of the time, in my view, is not all that useful. It defeats the purpose of having such a reading as I cannot base training decisions on it, which I understand is the aim of resources. Additionally, I cannot even see the pace at which resources are consumed over the day.
Already reported by some.
-
@andré-faria Thank you, hopefully this will be taken care of with a FW update in a not too distant future
-
@giacomo-laffranchini said in To Many issues with the Sunto 9 peak thoughts:
@andré-faria Thank you, hopefully this will be taken care of with a FW update in a not too distant future
Yes, I think suunto is well aware of it, so it is a matter of time
-
@isazi You read my mind. I ran my “1.4” mile trail loop 3 times (2 forward and one reverse) last night with the S9P on Basic Run and the 945 on my usual Trail Run settings. And…
It was better. That is, the two were much closer in distance than when running with the S9P on Trail Run. The S9P recorded lap distances of 1.42, 1.49, and 1.43 miles. The 945 had them at 1.40, 1.37, and 1.40 miles.
As @sky-runner and others have said, I can’t know for certain which is more accurate as this trail has not been wheel measured. Further, this is a fairly rooted, rocky trail under thick deciduous forest that goes down and up a north facing hill, so GNSS reception is always a challenge. However, when using Trail Run, the S9P consistently recorded the route between 1.55 - 1.65 miles. These results suggest that Suunto is indeed using some sort of 3D calculation for distance when recording a Trail Run activity.
Interestingly, the shortest recorded laps from both devices were recorded while running with the watch on the inside wrist relative to the trail loop. And, they both recorded near identical distances when running the same forward direction (laps 1 and 3).
This all aligns with what I’ve heard others say, that Garmin tends to underestimate distance and Suunto overestimates by a small margin.
Also, this is an example of what I both like and dislike about my experience with Suunto. I like the paired down simplicity of the UI/UX when compared to the complicated submenus found on other brands. But, I dislike not being able to change a setting when I find something that doesn’t fit my purpose. Or, simply not knowing what those settings are. Nit-picky stuff, indeed, but perhaps enough to keep me from switching over.
-
@duffman19 said in To Many issues with the Sunto 9 peak thoughts:
or certain which is more accurate as this trail has not been wheel measured. Further, this is a fairly rooted, rocky trail under thick deciduous forest that goes down and up
Just to give my thoughts on this too
I have both F6x and S9b. Used the F6x to trail run near my house in what the fenix always showed was a bit less than 10km. Then I put on both the watches and ran the same trail route (loop) - I’ve done this many, many times. F6x showed 9.3km and S9b showed 10.5km. The difference was 1.2km, what I noticed on the F6x is that the instant pace was all over the place although I was running mostly in my easy running pace and keeping it constantly (5:30 - 5:45 km/min). At some point, even though I was increasing pace just to check both watches the Fenix showed 7:00 km/min pace and Suunto was at 5:05 which felt much more close to the pace. Then I used: garmin explore, strava and snap to route (the greatest feature I suggest you try with the Suunto app) to confirm that the real distance of the trail loop is 10.45km. So Garmin undercuts by huge margin when trail running (this is all over the forum at Garmin and people constantly complain of undercutting and incorrect pace especially in trail). Again this is comparing two different watches to the ones you have but from the same ecosystem and I expect both forerunner to have better accuracy than the fenix and the peak better than the baro. In the open both watches are almost similar with fenix losing 20 - 100m and suunto adding 20 - 100m (depends on the total distance) but in trail my experience with garmin was abysmal: I even tested the fenix with gpsmap 66 and hike and while the suunto showed 300m more than the gpsmap on a 26km hiking the fenix showed 23.4km (WTF). -
@hristijan-petreski Thanks for your reply and sharing your experiences. I agree 100% about pace. Garmins are completely unreliable in this regards. And not just during an activity, but graphed out afterwards, pace and speed look more like a crazy elevation chart than anything else.
I haven’t tried the snap to route feature yet. Unfortunately, the mapping of the trails in my area is iffy at best. Many of the switchbacks and short curves are cut through on the maps I’ve seen, so I’m not sure it’d be helpful in this case. In fact, one of the reasons I’m even interested in accuracy is that I’ve been attempting to better map my trails on Open Street Maps.
What I’m still stump over is the fact that the GNSS plots for both watches look pretty good to me. So the distance discrepancy must come from each brand’s algorithms. And that’s where my understanding of these thing ends.
I would be interested in hearing from someone at Suunto about their handling of distance in Trail versus Basic Run. Are there similar differences between other activities, say a Walk versus a Hike?
-
I have the 9 Baro, and it’s (darned near) perfect for my needs a trail runner and hiker. It has the best GPS accuracy of any watch I’ve used before, but as noted by someone earlier, it does typically undercount the elevation gain/loss on hills because of the algorithm Suunto uses for its calculations (this is a known issue they are reportedly working on and which they believe has already been fixed in the 9 Peak).
I love the build quality and durability most of all in the 9 Baro (no cheap polymer/plastics in the body, sapphire glass as standard, and great styling). The 9 Baro has a big face with a relatively small bezel, which means lots of visibility on the screen, especially on trails where you’re being jostled around by the terrain.
-
@alex-bitman If the altitude algorithm for S9P can be improved, S9B will surely be on the list to follow with this improvement
