Within the nice battle between two arch-rivals, (suppose Ford vs Holden, iOs vs Android or scrunch vs fold) the place there doesn’t seem like a lot between the 2 apart from model allegiance*, Finnish designed and made Suunto have launched their newest sports activities watch, the Suunto 9 Peak and in doing so, proceed to place the strain on their arch-rival Garmin. Let’s dive right into a gear evaluate from a bushwalkers POV.
My 2018 gear take a look at of the Peak’s large sister, the Suunto Spartan Baro HR, confirmed loads of issues to love and only one (not so tiny) bug bear for me – it’s dimension. I’m glad to say that with this 2021 mannequin, Suunto have smashed the bear and handled the bug, making the selection between a Suunto or Garmin much more tough, particularly for girls, folks with smaller forearms or those that choose to not put on a weapon on their wrist.
Don’t get me flawed, this 9 Peak remains to be a weapon – however this time – licenced to thrill with Suunto’s thinnest, smallest, hardest watch ever.
Should you’re on the lookout for the full-on geek-out fashion gear evaluate, you’ve come to the flawed place for that. Relatively, my evaluations are far more sensible than that, a few of the key options that I search for in a sports activities look ahead to my most popular actions being bushwalking/mountaineering (inc. off-track) and path operating.
Design and Consumer Expertise
The factor about these trendy Finns and their Skandi-esque methods is that they do design and person expertise rather well. I’m not saying that this watch is the love-child of Marimekko and Nokia (for these of us sufficiently old to recollect the 5110 and Snake), however they share an fulfilling, no-nonsense, expertise. This begins from the second you open the field (with a packaging straight from the cult of Apple), by to the ‘How was that?’ query and emoji face introduced to you on the finish of an exercise. Select how a lot of a smile you’ve left… if any.
Measurement and Weight
It’s just like the Suunto gods heard my name. At 52 grams, this watch is over a 3rd lighter and smaller than the one I examined in 2018. I’ve no worry of knocking myself out as I toss and switch in my sleep and it doesn’t scream, “Hey, I’m an excellent hard-core athlete”, when rocking it to the workplace… or Zoom conferences. The thinner strains and brushed stainless-steel (different fashions are available in grade 5 titanium) appears to be like trendy in addition to sporty. Nevertheless, if you happen to love the feel and appear of Thor’s hammer in your arm, you’ll be happy to know that they nonetheless have the Suunto 9 Baro mannequin to offer you all 5 cm of attention-grabbing width.
Battery Life
I used to be tremendous impressed with the Suunto Peak 9 battery life (14 days in time mode) from not solely it’s quick cost time (100% in 1 hour), however (in response to Suunto) as much as 7 days in Coaching Mode with GPS. That seems like one much less cost cable to have to hold on multi-day hikes!
Compass, GPS, navigation and altitude
From a digital compass to a 5 satellite tv for pc system GPS (GPS, GLONASS, GALILIEO, QZSS and BEIDOU), you may elect 4 totally different GPS recording charges (I name it the ping interval) from greatest, good, OK and low. A watch isn’t going to interchange my most popular navigation apps on a smartphone, however the Peak 9 consists of an enormous quantity of nav options together with waypoints, breadcrumb trails, maps, altitude profiles, heatmaps, factors of curiosity, observe evaluation and the must-have observe logging, viewing, sharing and integration with a load of apps corresponding to Strava… ‘cos what they are saying. Altitude is taken care of by each a Barometric and GPS altitude, in addition to a mixed strategy.
All of this monitoring and knowledge assortment provides as much as the flexibility to create some fairly good visible representations. By linking with the Suunto app in your telephone, you may share (or analyse to your coronary heart’s content material) your route and efficiency in a number of other ways, corresponding to this cool little take a look at certainly one of my native walks within the Blue Mountains – Furber Steps to Large Stairs.
Coaching
I’ve discovered actual advantages in utilizing good watches to measure and observe my health ranges, particularly if I’m coaching for a giant journey with a great deal of hills and technical terrain, while carrying a pack. This watch consists of heartrate monitoring, energy, peak coaching impact, restoration time (thanks!) and the tease that VO2max at all times is. Curiously, I discovered that the VO2max ranges on this watch didn’t match my standard watch (disappointingly so), nonetheless I imagine I simply wanted to do extra actions for it to ‘be taught’ my private ranges.
Color
Given the hit to the pockets, the varied shades of moody Skandi gray/black/white/darkish blue of the delicate silicone bands sends shivers up my backbone. If I used to be fortunate sufficient to personal certainly one of these puppies, I’d head straight to eBay and purchase a generic brighter watch band simply in case some significantly rigourous exercise despatched $1,000 into deep bracken fern, by no means to be seen once more.
Value
These kinds of watches should not those you need to lose within the bush. They’ll set you again round $1,000 AUD ($1,200 for the titanium).
Should you’re looking out for a brand new watch and wanting a visually interesting interface, loaded with options which are related to mountaineering/bushwalking and outside journey, then the Suunto Peak 9 is a stable providing.
Nb: I acquired a mortgage product for the needs of testing.
*besides scrunch, which is clearly superior.
