Suunto Race Design and Hardware

The Suunto Race GPS watch is a pleasure to wear – even for the smaller wrist. At only 83g in total weight – you can feel the quality that comes from the 49 x 49 stainless steel watch casing design which sits 13.3mm thick from the wrist.

The screen is a 1.43” AMOLED display – the glass is made from sapphire crystal.

I was impressed with the nightime blue matt finish to the watch design which matched the silicone straps for a sleek smartwatch feel to it. The straps come in a separate compartment – which doesn’t make much sense because there is only one option (it’s not like there are two sizes to pick from).

The straps, though silicone, have a softer, durable, higher quality feel to them compared to the likes of Fitbit and the Polar Vantage V3 (even though its the same material).

SUUNTO advertise that the Race edition (aka: “the performance watch) is “military tested” which indicates the equipment has to go through a series of 29 tests, testing shock, vibration, and other things that fully measure out its mechanism and capabilities and thus could handle the demands of military life today.

Suunto Race Navigating the Interface

The SUUNTO Race has two buttons and a crown, all located on the right side of the watch face. The top button accesses the exercise menu, the crown is used to scroll and select options and the bottom button is to return to the previous menu or access the widgets menu.

On the run however, pressing the crown changes the watch face, the top button pauses the workout and sets you into workout settings, while a short press on the bottom button ends the current lap or stage of workout you are on (very irritating) as you need to long press this button to access the lock function – many times I haven’t held the button long enough and have ended my warm-up phase etc. A big design flaw.

The Race watch is also operated by a touch screen and is super responsive. To access the sports profiles swipe down, and scroll. Otherwise, swipe up to access the Widgets. Swipe left-to-right to return to the previous menu and right-to-left to select that option.

Suunto Race On the Run

There are six watch faces on the run, a general view of elapsed time, heart rate zone, heart rate, distance and current pace, click the bezel to change to a simple lap breakdown table. The third watch face is an offline map. The next is heart rate and time in zone breakdown. The fifth is a set of coordinates and a pair of compass arrows, followed by music controls.

Whilst running you can alter your running session (if it is an unstructured, preset one) by adding set timed intervals, setting targets or duration, distance, intensity zone or heart rate zone with an option for audio feedback from the app (when you enter a new heart rate zone) all which can be set on the go! 10/10 for spontaneity.

The auto pause is impressively accurate too which is impressive, as is the navigation! This watch offers breadcrumb navigation but there are several options to get you to your destination. From a compass ‘Bearing’, ‘find back’ option, point of interest (you can set this pre-run for your home, or coordinates from your car etc) or select any uploaded routes to get you on track. If you are horribly lost, there is a details tab that gives you an ETA to your destination and how far away you are, coordinates and altitude information also should you need to provide this for a rescue service.
While all these options can assure your return home the navigation watch face will highlight where you have been so you can follow it home with ease on your own. I zoomed right in and saw I was running home, parallel to my route on the opposite sidewalk. Fantastic detail!!

If all else fails you can whip out your phone and create a route to get you home although there really is no need – the watch can do this effectively for you. The capability level of zooming in and out of the map is excellent and puts the Polar V3 to shame.

You do need to download the offline maps to utilise navigation but it’s very simple – all through the app – no need to get technical and download all sorts on your computer (like the Polar V3!)

The watch even managed to calibrate itself to get me home when worn on the inside of my wrist! Something the Garmin 265 seriously struggled with.

Also, if you have tattoos, the SUUNTO Race cannot read your heart rate through it HOWEVER a huge bonus is that the watch will connect to any brand chest strap with ease. I connected my Polar H10 to the watch and it worked seamlessly.

Suunto Race After the run: software and connectivity

Post-run details are on par with its competitors with power, cadence (average and max) steps, heart rate and graph, intensity zones, calories, ascent and decent.

Recovery time, “Peak Training Effect” (PTE) – which is the ‘Training effect’ for every other brand, SUUNTO use PTE rather exclusively.

And EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption) score, essentially how much extra oxygen the body requires while recovering from strenuous exercise.

The syncing of the SUUNTO app to the Race watch was automatic, seamless and speedy – very impressed.

Suunto Race Other activities

95+ sport profiles has you covered and some are the most bizarre, from motorsports to orienteering, jump rope, hunting to Mermaiding and paragliding!? You can personalise heart rate zones or power zones for running and cycling exclusively – the rest use the default (which you can edit!)

The scarce amount of training plans for free on training peaks – so you will have to purchase one that is suitable for you – at an extra cost, or import your own third-party training plan manually. There are multiple ‘partnerships’ with the SUUNTO brand however while you may have access to a discount, you still have to pay for the benefits.

Suunto Race Accuracy and battery life

Accuracy:

Sleep – The sleep tracking has been a bit hit-and-miss. Feb 17th night the SUUNTO said I achieved 3:12 hours of sleep in total – it failed to recognise me falling back to sleep after waking up at 2:35 am. In comparison, the WHOOP saw I woke up but also fell back asleep about an hour later for a total of 7:34 hours of sleep, from 23:06 to 08:01 the next morning.

On another night the watch tracked throughout – a total of 7:32 hours between 00:30 and 08:02. REM 1:58 hours, Light 3:36 hours, Deep sleep 1:59 hours which was rather accurate to the WHOOP findings – 7:10 hours of total sleep; REM 2:07 hours, Light 3:19 hours and Deep 1:44 hours.

Run compare to Polar:
Looking at a particular route the SUUNTO versus Polar H10 Chest strap and Polar Beat app compared:

SUUNTO: 8.2 km (5.09 miles) over 51:07 minutes. At a max pace of 4:27 min/km (6.4 minutes per mile) but marking an average pace of 6:13 min/km (9.6 minutes per mile). An average HR of 160 bpm, max HR 188 bpm, 334 calories.

Polar: 5.22 miles (8.4km) over 54:43 minutes. At a max pace of 8:03 min/miles average pace of 10:28 min/miles. The average HR was 153 bpm, the maximum was 168 bpm and burned 436 calories.

The above time and distance discrepancy would be due to the epically reactive auto pause on the SUUNTO which the Polar does not have – for crossing roads, tying laces etc. The max pace is two minutes out, the average pace is a minute out. The HRM is 20 bpm too high but the average wasn’t so bad at 7 bpm deviation. Overall though, the calories burned come at 100 more in the considered gold standard chest strap.

In general, though, there was a lot of discrepancy I found between the heart rate measures on the SUUNTO compared to what the Polar Beat app via the H10 chest strap was recording. This is a huge deal when it comes to heart rate-based sessions and training specifics for goals – on a threshold session I had to maintain an effort of 6 minutes in zone 4-5 but the SUUNTO was saying I was only in zone 3 … turned out to a be a rather painful experience!

HRV – has been off the mark compared to the gold-standard WHOOP 4.0 – the SUUNTO has estimated my HRV a score of 72ms for the majority of nights in a row, thus giving me an average score of 72 however the WHOOP has my average range of 80-85.

Battery life:
I was super impressed with the SUUNTO battery life capabilities – from 77% battery out of the box, I managed 11 days before getting to 18% (and yet still had 7 hours of battery life in training GPS mode!) to note, wore the watch day and night but with notifications turned off and always on display disabled.

The watch is very quick to charge – no more than 2 hours but the connection from the charger to the watch is a bit loose so make sure you see the charging graphic on the watch before leaving it to charge – twice mine wasn’t quite connected.

Suunto Race Other interesting functions

‘Resources’ – from what I gather on the app, this is akin to Garmin’s stress score. It measures your HR throughout the day and has indications of inactivity, stress, activity and so forth but there is zero explanation on the watch – and no real understanding on the app so a little pointless IMO, especially if you have a tattoo and it can’t really read your HR anyway.

Steps and calories – didn’t record any steps some days when I wore the watch, walked around my local town, shopped and walked my dog twice that day. It just seems a bit hit-and-miss.

Recovery – The recovery widget is a dial and a score, you do have to be familiar with the lingo (TSB) that training peaks use. But even instantly after a 5-mile threshold run I did one morning, the recovery said ‘ready for more’ (and so did the app) but I can assure you, I wasn’t. Post run or workout it gives you how long (in hours) it will take to recover and after this specific run it had 19 hours. So why does the watch tell me I’m ready to go?

Progress widget – I like this type of information, offering your personal Lactate threshold level is a great feature for serious runners, however, I’m not sure how accurate it is considering how hit-and-miss the heart rate readings have been.

On the performance front, after logging several outdoor runs (even the GPS shows that) the watch persists in telling me to record one outdoor run to get insights… eh? Scroll down the same widget for running estimate times to distances which is on par with most competitor watches dedicated to runners.

TSS – training peak users will be familiar with (and will help with that 3rd party integration)- training stress score which shows how much stress on the body that workout had.

Suunto Race Conclusions

The SUUNTO Race sports watch is a fantastic piece of kit, if you can give it a bit of help with connecting a chest strap and partnering it with a Training Peaks subscription then I have no doubt this watch will get you through any adventure or race you can think of.