Was I too fast buying S9B Titanium?
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hello there. i am new onto this forum.
anyway few months ago i we decided to replace my spartan watch (spartan sport whrist baro HR) due to battery life which lets be honest at the brand new watch was a quite disappointment. and i was bettwen 9 baro and 9 peak, 9 peak pro was out of the question due to prices around 500€ while 9 Baro titanium was 350€, no other watch came anywhere near this one, no garmin or polar, nothing. 955 forerunner is like 500€, coros apex 2 was around 450€, etc.
after some debate with myself i went for 9 baro due to larger screen. in like 90 % of cases i am pretty happy with my watch till recently when i went into mountains with it. ok i addmit two things.
- i forgot to calibrate an alltitude at the start and it was like 100m off at the top of mountain with 2400m of height. at the top i stopped an activity to ajdust my alltitude to a proper level and all way downhil it was accurate like to 2m accurate =).
- my hike was inside a steep valley with mountains surrounding me soo nothing unexpected about lower gps signal. but oh boy i was amazed how far off watch would be. till the top it showed around 8,5km which seems like too low, way too low, for downhil 9,5km. it was crazy difference of an 1km and then i went to look how was road marked and it was pretty off. ok i can live with that, again it was inside quite steep walley surrounded by mountains (end of Trenta valley to Pogacnikov dom at Kriski Podi if any1 find this familiar). this way off is quite a downside for me
and few day ago this new update messed my watch quite big time. only at runnuing sport mode and nowhere else i get this blurry white screen bug. i reseted my watch (just soft reset) and after that i ve tested few modes and this occur me only on running mode, trail running or cycling is totally fine. but after this a gps did not want to connect for whole day. yesterday i did a 10km run and everything it seems fine.
anyway all those bugs put me into how to say, “panic mode” and for last two days i am all over forums and reading reviews and i am asking myself “why i did not w8 little bit longer”. i was not expecting new 9 peak pro on sales for 350€ for normal and 400€ for titanium model. and now i am kinda regreting my 9 baro purchase. dont get me wrong its amazing watch, still gettin updates, etc. but with gps accuraccy im pretty dissapointed. idk, its just me thats for sure and with ambit3 peak a 100m difference on exact same route in two days in a row it did not bother me but now it kinda does, specially after this dissapointmend in moutains.
now my main question is. is 9 peak pro this much better in gps accuraccy to be worth? i mean specially in mountains above 2000m? is it worth or i am just overreacting myself and in cases like i got few weeks ago even 9 peak pro or even new vertical or garmin fenix 7x would fail due to limited signal? how much more accurate is 9 peak pro?
any1 who can provide me a usesful answer is welcome here because i am kinda torn. ik that i ve spend 350€ for 9 baro and now selling for 150€ would be max i could ask for it and i would lost 200€. another thing is that 9 peak pro is kinda small and this was a major factor when decided to go for 9 baro instead of 9 peak which was similar priced watch!
thanks for any1 who re willing to help me here
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@bokiloki12f steep valleys are always difficult for GPS devices.
I recommend to switch on the GPS+GLONASS option to get the most out of S9B.
S9PP has the advantage of automatically selecting the best out of any GNSS satellite system in view. Still in deep valleys there are reflections that lead to mis calculations.I would not put my bets that S9PP will be so much better.
The only real step forward for your use case are dual frequency watches, like the Suunto Vertical, which excels in challenging conditions like yours.
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@bokiloki12f said in Was I too fast buying S9B Titanium?:
now my main question is. is 9 peak pro this much better in gps accuraccy to be worth? i mean specially in mountains above 2000m? is it worth or i am just overreacting myself and in cases like i got few weeks ago even 9 peak pro or even new vertical or garmin fenix 7x would fail due to limited signal? how much more accurate is 9 peak pro?
I bought a s9pp two weeks ago and that is my main question as well. I will be in the (bigger) mountains in september and will test it there. Had an a3p before, which was perfect in terms of altitude accuracy (a friend has a fenix 6 pro and it’s always 40-50m off).
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@marcrie Looking forward to your experience with the S9PP compared to the A3P out in the mountains
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@Umer-Javed I just came back from the swiss mountains. The s9pp did a great job, with 76% battery I’ve logged 25h with performance battery mode (only switched for the last 2h to tour mode because of the warning). Here are some altitude data from the watch vs the official data:
Tschierva hut 2581m (2573m official)
Piz Bianco 3985m (3995m official)
Piz Bernina 4051m (4049m official)
Marco e Rosa hut 3613m (3609m official)So overall I am really happy with the watch!
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FWIW Courtney Dauwalter has an S9PP and a Vertical, she seems to regularly alternate between the two but for her recent races/wins such as UTMB she seems to be favouring her S9PP. Obviously seems to work well for her over massive distances in the mountains which should instill a fair amount of confidence for us mere mortals
