After using an apple watch (series 3), skagen halster 2 (terrible name) and a fossil hybrid smartwatch, I have let a Suunto Baro 9 enter into my life. A few weeks of use has proven this sticky. Here are my thoughts.
This is a Finnish design. And I am a fan of Finnish things. It’s often a contrarian view of the world from Finland. They love salt licorice. I have grown to love this stuff. They like this malty bread that probably translates to malt bread in Finland that I bought at this sublime food court building in Helsinki that looks like this old building where you would hope there would be dozens of food stalls with artisanal Finnish food and there is in fact what you imagine on the inside to be. And a desert which is cheesy stuff that’s creamy and a bit savoury with something like lingonberries on top. And super-cool design mixed with Soviet brutalist architecture throughout their capital. But back to the watch, in a world which is about super customizations on smartwatches where there is an app for your watch. These Finns at Suunto they have more or less decided that the watch will be as they see a fitness tracker to be for you. Yes you can pick and choose what your default types of exercise is and create your own custom exercise and view, but that’s more a configuration-esque thing. You have to buy into the features and priorities of this thing. And unlike the Suunto 5 with wearOS where it’s the equivalent to the android idea where the ‘software is the thing’ here it’s Suunto’s own software and hardware (which is built in this case in Finland, which is cool that they can make that work). So what to all that? For me I buy into the watch’s philosophy. Which is to spur you to exercise and track it and do it very well first, smartwatch stuff second.
Notifications are okay, I can’t read the damn emails on the small font because I’m getting old, but I know they came and sort of know whether I should check my email or texts. I seem to be able to control music but big whoop there.
About app integration. The Suunto app has transitioned from something called movescout to just a suunto app. On android it works well, I’ll get around to doing something on my ipad for larger real estate. The sync is reasonably quick and reasonably reliable, but seems to be manually triggered. Or I’m impatient. There’s a bit of history on their app strategy hinted at the above. I’m not some longtime user who was wedded to the previous apps features, so I don’t know what I’m missing, but I’m good with the current app. There’s also integrations available to such services as Strava that I’ve used before and Training Peaks that I hadn’t heard of before. I’m not a triathlete, so maybe that shows with that comment. But there seem to be interesting and apparently deep analytics behind the metrics.
I almost returned the thing the first day because the screen is quite frankly dim. It’s not an AMOLED display like the skagen is and obviously not physical watch like the fossil hybrid (which is just perfect for a step counter and a regular watch, by the way). However the Suunto strength is in daylight (TFT display?) that’s reflective and also the killer feature is battery life and gps accuracy. Yes it’s a trade off of gps vs battery life, but you can control it which is key. I find I have to charge every 3-4 days, and a ‘top up’ every couple of days works well.
This last point about battery is a game changer to having charged an apple watch overnight regularly or forgetting to charge and then it’s a spiral downhill of lost utility.
I have been using the watch to sleep and track sleep and consciously get sleep as a result. This is a big watch but the band is the single most comfortable watch band I have ever worn. So though the watch is the biggest watch I have ever worn (including a 44mm watch), I have no issues sleeping with it.
Back to the core interesting things for me and to wrap up what was supposed to be a brief review - tracking things like fatigue, recovery time, HR variability, and also having real time barometric pressure tracking and alerts go from nearly absolutely essential, ‘how did I not think to measure how I’m feeling during recovery’ (for HR and fatigue based metrics) to the ‘this is super cool and I hope this saves me from getting wet someday’ possibly useful for the baro pressure. I really like the fact that this is fairly self contained and not requiring a phone for its utility. And finally I wished I had this for my Cabot Trail bike trip.
I’ll report back in a while to comment on how this has affected my fitness. But so far, I’ve got the motivation kicked in to measure what I’m doing consistently which is something that I’ve not done with any other technology. It’s a clunky analogy, but having skin skis for me ‘unlocked’ consistent and sustained year over year XC skiing because not waxing reduced friction. Battery life and spot-on features that focus on purpose seem to be doing the same for me for a fitness tracker.