Heads up! The big Garmin annual spring sale has started, with $200 off the Fenix 8 (first sale to date!), $100 off the Edge 1050, Forerunner 965 at $499, the Forerunner 265, the new Instinct 3, and countless other Garmin products including inReach Mini 2. Plus the Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium is on sale, and some Suunto & Wahoo product deals too. Full list & thoughts here!
I’m DC RAINMAKER…
I swim, bike and run. Then, I come here and write about my adventures. It’s as simple as that. Most of the time. If you’re new around these parts, here’s the long version of my story.
You'll support the site, and get ad-free DCR! Plus, you'll be more awesome. Click above for all the details. Oh, and you can sign-up for the newsletter here!
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
You can also pick-up tons of gear at REI via these links, which is a long-time supporter as well:Alternatively, for everything else on the planet, simply buy your goods from Amazon via the link below and I get a tiny bit back as an Amazon Associate. No cost to you, easy as pie!
You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.While I don't partner with many companies, there's a few that I love, and support the site. Full details!
Want to compare the features of each product, down to the nitty-gritty? No problem, the product comparison data is constantly updated with new products and new features added to old products!
Wanna create comparison chart graphs just like I do for GPS, heart rate, power meters and more? No problem, here's the platform I use - you can too!
Think my written reviews are deep? You should check out my videos. I take things to a whole new level of interactive depth!
Smart Trainers Buyers Guide: Looking at a smart trainer this winter? I cover all the units to buy (and avoid) for indoor training. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
-
Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
Get all your awesome DC Rainmaker gear here!
FAQ’s
I have built an extensive list of my most frequently asked questions. Below are the most popular.
- Do you have a privacy policy posted?
- Why haven’t you yet released a review for XYZ product you mentioned months ago?
- Will you test our product before release?
- Are you willing to review or test beta products?
- Which trainer should I buy?
- Which GPS watch should I buy?
- I’m headed to Paris – what do you recommend for training or sightseeing?
- I’m headed to Washington DC – what do you recommend for training?
- I’m from out of the country and will be visiting the US, what’s the best triathlon shop in city XYZ?
- What kind of camera do you use?
-
5 Easy Steps To The Site
In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
Read My Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2024 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Wonder if the Suunto 9 hardware is strong enough to bring this feature to this watch too. Would be a great thing!!!
I did some testing a the other day to update the review and I did get out and back on route notifications, but not always.
I did not see a clear pattern as to when it would show it, because it’s true that when I wanted to take a picture of it and went off route on purpose the notification did not came up.
But at least I can confirm that it’s there.
Good to hear you got alerts now and again.
And also good to hear you didn’t sometimes too…less Suunto think I’m crazy. ;)
When I chatted with them about it afterwards, they noted that the Suunto 7 implementation is a bit more lenient than some, but did agree that by 100m off-course it definitely should have alerted.
Is there a difference between the mapping from suunto 7 and garmin fenix 6 wich is better to read and can you already zoom out more than 300mtr in de fenix before it gets hard to read
The main difference (aside from prettiness factors), is that the Fenix 6 mapping is routable, meaning it has data on it, and you can on the fly specify a new destination, re-route if off course, etc…
And with that comes the other main difference: Turn by tun navigation/directions, so it’ll tell you when to turn left/right/etc…
Thanks do you still think that the garmin is the best outdoor watch out there even that the coros and suunto 9 have new updates thinking about buy a new watch and the garmin really nice
While Ray did answer on functionality he skipped on readability.
Check out Suunto 7 screens. The underlying map data is awesome in terms of readability. You can have the heat map style or the topographic one with contour lines (Plus some other I don’t use).
Cheers
Did they noticeable improve the Suunto 7 since your review?
There’s been some minor improvements. But I think some of the things I’m most interested in haven’t quite happened yet.
So they haven’t updated the battery yet? :’P
Joking, of course … that and the lack of customizability of the screens is still keeping me from switching from the forgotten Spartan Ultra.
I guess we have to wait for the new Snapdragon SOC devices to hit the market and hope Suunto gets the SW side up to snuff on the watches.
You can customize the screens now. Noticed it for the first time this past weekend and set up a custom trail running mode.
Thanks for this hands-on, really clear (and gosh, that screen!)
A quick question about this:
” I wouldn’t have been able to mid-ride/run tell it to simply route me somewhere random, that has to be done via the app with a pre-defined course.”
You can’t search for a location on the app, create a route from where you are and send it to the watch (and use it) if you’ve already stared an activity (think Wahoo Elemnt sync “on the go”)?
Funny, I was actually going to try that – but alas, when I was trying to create the test routes in the app, it wouldn’t let me create any routes. Will circle back again this weekend and see if that works.
>> On my Fenix 6 I had ClimbPro enabled, and being able to see each of the four major climbs
>> and how much distance/ascent I had remaining for each is by far one of my favorite features.
Hi Ray. I use ClimbPro a lot on my Fenix 6 too but I’ve never been able to browse the full list of climbs during an activity – it just shows the upcoming one, but there’s no way to scroll through and look at the rest. Am I missing something obvious? Thanks, David
Interestingly, I was wondering the same thing. Above I was referring to being able to see each climb as I do it. But on the Edge series you can actually see them all ahead of time.
I’ll ask Garmin, as I couldn’t figure it out either.
@ reviewers: No comment/thoughts on the other changes like always on tracking screen details, fused tracking option?
Did notice that it will notify of route. Notifications are too quick so sometimes miss. Also seen to be tied into waypoints – the more you have the quicker off route notification as I think the route is tighter. Also notifies once back on route.
I didn’t use always-on or fused tracking, so can’t quite say there. Was mostly just focused on the routing bits.
On the notifications, even when purposefully going off-route to see if it would trigger, nothing did. Sounds like at least one other person has had it, so my guess is there’s an edge-case bug that’s causing it.
Very nice footage Ray. I have run the Jungfrau Marathon last year, but it was totally foggy, with less than 50 meters view…. Didn’t see any mountains. Just felt them in my legs.
Bummer, but congrats on the race! It’s such an awesome route.
That battery life. Ouch. That’s the unfortunate consequence of Qualcomm supplying the same WearOS SoC for six years — an ancient quad-core A7 on 28 nm design.
Qualcomm recently updated their watch platform to quad A53s on 12 nm, which should extend battery life. I wonder if Suunto will at some point (realistically next spring or summer) release a new 7 using it.
Somewhere back a few months ago Suunto was quoted in their PR bits from Qualcomm talking about it. So I presume something is in the works.
With this update Suunto also brought their famous FusedAlti, that bumps up battery life big time ??
I’ve had a worst battery lire After The software update, but once i made a reset on The watch everything was liké before : i finish a day without training with 60% battery (from approx 7am til 10pm) which is not that Bad.
I’ve noticed that the instant speed information while running was not stable at all though my speed was constant at 5:30. It jumped from 4:30 to 6:30 all The Time. Maybe because i set the gps accuracy to good instead of best?
Came for cow pictures. Left happy.
They really have to work on the battery life. On one hand, 4 hours is pretty good for that display, but 4 hours isn’t enough for a good hike – 8-10 would be great as you said.
So…many…cows.
Even more cows yesterday riding. But that’s a different video for a different day. And a different post.
The way you point to that tram track near the end suggests you can see yourself in a front facing screen… GoPro 9 ????
Totally 100% iPhone.
Mostly cause I was super-lazy. I wanted to be able to Airdrop 100% of the footage from iPhone to Mac, and lazily edit it quickly. You can see the stabilization of the iPhone isn’t quite as good as you’d get from a GoPro.
The other reason I used the iPhone was that it works far better for watch-shots. A GoPro has too far a focusing distance to use for video while moving on watch faces. You can kinda get away with it for photos, but even that can be tricky.
‘The Suunto 7 is both the best smartwatch they’ve ever made, while concurrently being the worst sport watch they’ve ever made.’
Still the case, or have the updates brought the sports functionality up to scratch?
The inclusion of routing helps, but lack of customization of sports modes and such is still a challenge.
Do you think Suunto will (ever) introduce native, external sensor support in the S7? I’m guessing no.
What would you change in the custom sports mode?
I’d also be interested to know the interplay between setting brightness down to a minimum and using the always-on-sports display. eg would setting device brightness to the lowest have any impact on battery life when using sports display (I’m guessing not)
Sport customization is out now quite some months. Maybe you missed it
Yup, complete brain fart after a long day on the sport mode customization. Definitely there.
As for sensor support – I think long term if Suunto wants this to compete with a mid-lower end Polar or Garmin, they’ll need to add it.
No worries Ray. Keep up the good posts.
21,7%/hr battery drain? Really. Compared with a Garmin wearable with mapping, that is really a poor value, isn’t it?
It’s not ideal. But it’s also got more in the app realm with Wear OS for folks that aren’t super sports focused.
I gave up.my garmin for this watch. I’m not an athlete but I’m more of someone who is interested in health and wanted a wear os that worked well. So far this has fit the bill and I’m looking forward to seeing what this partnership might bring in the future.
The Apple Watch Series 5 with the compass built in really makes this watch look terrible. For about a year I used the Series 5 with view ranger or WorkOutDoors and got great metrics. A valid optical heart rate sensor, when paired to iPhone I got 8 hours or more of battery life because it used the iPhone GPS (I was okay with less than stellar performance this way), and offline maps with view ranger were easy to side load. I since have switched to a Fenix 6 because of Edge 530 integration and First Beat metrics. I can’t, however, not say I don’t miss the Apple Watch for a day hike. The fenix 6 gives horrible HR accuracy on day hikes and I have to use my H10 strap for hours to get decent HR data instead. For the day hikers, Apple makes a great choice for much cheaper than this offering. I hope to see the platform improve. I had a Casio WSD-F20 for a few months and loved that thing even though the experience was rough. This really is Wear OS’s best option right now. Maybe snapdragon 4100 will breath some new life into this segment.
And…. still no HR Chest Strap pairing? Despite them shutting you down on the idea previously I was secretly hoping they would cave and allow it – that makes it a dead-end for me unfortunately.
And I know it may be in the full review, but did Suunto include ANY FirstBeat analytics with the 7? Resources, PTE, EPOC, Recovery Time, Load?
Garmin bought first beat so I think a lot of companies will be losing those metrics in the future unfortunately. At least that would be the best business decision on Garmin’s part to fight off competition.
Garmin says they’ll continue to offer those to companies as part of their licensing strategy. Whether or not they do long term…that’s what matters.
But realistically, Suunto selected that path of not using FirstBeat on the Suunto 7 long before Garmin bought them (which only happened recently).
Agreed – this watch is not based at the ultra runner crowd – when they are ultra running.
It’s aimed at someone who wants the wear os capabilities with payments and easy general life helpers like alarms and timers – but is probably active – either a casual runner, triathlete or ultra runner.
Someone who goes out to run for a couple of hours regularly and wants to keep track – and maybe travels for work or leisure and wants to plot and follow a route in an unfamiliar area easily. Maybe on city routes where mapping with names really pays off.
As a new dad living in London with contactless travel – this ticks a lot of boxes in making life more convenient. Then equally when I visit the Brecons – I can go run up pen-y-fan and trial a new plotted route with no issues using the familiar Suunto app.
Would I use it on a 100 miler or really focused HR focused training – clearly not – I have a Suunto9 and a chest strap for that.
Do I use the Suunto7 day in and day out as a watch for life and fun – yes.
DCR:
Excellent update. Much needed one.
I have a iPhone X and wanted to get the Suunto 7.
Couple of questions:
I really wanted the ability to pair to a external HR sensor. Read that I can use SportyGo app. Wondering if I can just use this app for the pairing and then while it is running in the background, can I use the Suunto Wear OS app to start a exercise using the external HR sensor that I paired with the SportyGo app? Also, will this work in a iPhone X setup?
Also, confusing to understand whether I need to use the Google Wear OS app or the Suunto Wear OS app for any activity and which is better when paired to a iPhone X?
DCR or anybody:
Can you please reply?
Your answer would help me in my buying decision.
Thanks.
No, the Suunto app won’t pull in that external sensor. Just the 3rd party app.
On an iPhone, you’ll need two apps installed:
A) Wear OS App
B) Suunto App
The Wear OS app is what talks to your watch and does the initial phone/app pairing
The Suunto app is what talks to Suunto platform, and then funnels data to the Wear OS app and onwards to your watch.
You can also do the Google Fit app as well for activity tracking there.
The maps on the watch look really good. However, what this review has done is encourage me to revisit those parts of Switzerland that I haven’t seen for over 30 years!
Now to convince the wife and kids :-)
What happened to Android 11 for Wear OS? The Suunto update is still based on Android 9. Also, on 9to5 Google they said the update doesn’t have to promised features of the fall update. It’s confusing….maybe there’s another update coming soon?
My old G-Shock just died, and I am wanting to upgrade to a smart watch for working out, and hiking. I am a day hiker / beer afterwards crowd. Wondering if I should get the Suunto 7 or Garmin?
The batterylife is really pooor. I mean to go from 88% to 12% for 3,5 h is not very promising for future hike adventures. Still I do not know how a Garmin Fenix would have performed in mapmode. I mean if it run out in like 5 h that is not what I would like….either. When I hike I do it all day, not only before lunch. I have had problems with my Spartan which gives up after 5-6 h with all communicatiions on (Bluetooth notifications etc…). Maybe the Suunto 9 is the only watch for me. Considering the options. Garmin provides a considerable set up with so many watches. But let’s be honest they are at double the price for a good Suunto. Maybe that is because I am in Sweden and not the US. But double price is a bit too much for me.
Hi DC,
It’s been a couple of months since this update, has there been an other update whitch makes the sports usability any better?
I still use the ambit 3 peak and looking for a follow up! But the in depth revieuw does not makt me want a Suunt 7 now..
I think at least in spring Suunto will bring a new smartwatch with the new Qualcomm processor which will improve battery life and functionality dramatically. Suunto 7 was only a half-ready product to bridge the gap. Hopefully not only Qualcomm has done their homework for the new smartwatch but also Suunto otherwise I think they are dead.
How Suunto still hasn’t fixed the Bluetooth accessory issue (especially heart in regards to heart rate straps) is beyond me. If they had just taken their regular sunnto watch app and placed it onto the Suunto 7 I think they would have an amazing hit on their hands. It was such a simple task and they completely botched it (to say nothing of not having the Suuntoplus features and not having the ability to add intervals or a standalone timer to each workout profile).
I’ve had mine for a few weeks hoping they would allow for a chest strap to the Suunto app but I guess it’s not going to happen so sadly the watch is going back.
That screen is amazing! Are the color transreflective/non-AMOLED displays as readable as this one in the sunlight (e.g. Suunto 5)?
the watch is pretty good. indeed tough competition for apple and xiaomi is here to make smart watches.
however suunto is one of the better choices.