Suunto 9 Baro GPS sports watch with long battery life

Not quite the sum of its parts, but a powerful watch with some great data analysis on the backend.
***UPDATED REVIEW – PLEASE SEE THE END**

This is a really nice watch, with lots and lots of functions. It’s also extremely expensive, so my review has one eye on the price to benefit ratio.

I really can’t decide if Suunto are going for the fashion end of the sports market, or the hardcore athlete end. The marketing blurb definitely suggests the hardcore end of things, but as a training tool there are many odd design choices here. Everything works, sort-of, but it’s just not quite there for using as a serious tool. At the same time, this isn’t a subtle watch – it’s very big and makes a statement on the wrist.

The best example is the speed meter on the GPS. If you come to a complete halt the speed readout lags a solid five seconds behind until it read zero I used this watch to try and get a live feedback on my kayak sprint stroke, making small differences in technique to see how it affected my speed, but I couldn’t be sure if what I was seeing on the screen was my speed right now, or five seconds ago. This is using the high accuracy mode. The data when I downloaded to my PC was spot on, and the GPS track is super-accurate, but that’s no good to me in the water.

The pulse meter is another odd one – it seems to work fine when you’re working, but for checking resting pulse or low-level intensity work it just doesn’t work properly, and only shows whatever you’ve programmed your resting pulse to be. To get the best from this, you really need to use a HR chest belt, which leads to another odd choice in that only bluetooth devices are supported, not ANT+. For cyclists especially, power meters and HR belts use this and it’s almost a defacto standard interface. I don’t understand why a high end gadget like this watch doesn’t support it. If you’re using a lot of ANT+ kit, look elsewhere.

The auto-lap function is odd too, as you can only have it working by distance, or time and not by position. If I’m open-water swimming between two buoys, I want the watch to know I’ve done a lap when I pass through the same point geographically, but with this watch I have to measure a lap, stop, program the watch, and then carry on. It’s just not as usable as it could be.

I could go on, as there are lots of silly details Suunto seem to have overlooked. – the compass is useful and accurate, but constantly asks for calibration. It gives a bearing for the direction its facing, but there is nothing on the watch to indicate which way the watch thinks that is – presumably it’s 12 o’clock, but nothing really shows you. It’s handy as a backup and impressively matched my expensive magnetic compass (also a Suunto!) but I certainly wouldn’t trust it for even casual navigation when it constantly asks to be calibrated.

Anyway, enough of the poor bits, none of which can’t be fixed by software updates, and none of which are really deal-breakers.. This is a very expensive watch, and I’m therefore holding it to very high standards, but taking a step back from that for a moment, here some of the good bits.

GPS accuracy is extremely good, especially on the highest setting. This uses battery faster, but you still get 30-odd hours of use at this level so for most people, most of the time, this is what you’ll be using. You can tweak the settings to give you up to 120 hours of use, but this reduces the GPS ping rate, and so accuracy. The watch attempts to ‘fill in the gaps’ using its motion sensor on this setting, and this works well if you’re doing something with a lot of movement, like running. A long, smooth, sweeping descent on a bike, for example, will fool it, and while the results will be perfectly usable it won’t be super-accurate. You can use the watch to navigate, and set waypoints, but you can’t offset these on the watch – you need to be at that location to mark it as a waypoint. The watch can then give you a bearing and ETA, but this is not turn-by-turn navigation, and is no substitute for a traditional map and compass. Any movement with the GPS on gives a breadcrumb trail to follow. Again, a nice backup, but not for serious work in the country side. What is very good though is that you can change the coordinate system and being able to get a OS BNG position is very useful as a cross check, or in emergencies.

Data fields and recording are excellent. I’ve used similar devices as this and had nothing but frustration getting the data into my PC, but this works beautifully. The data cable is a magentic snap-on cable that is quick and easy, and the data is quickly uploaded to the Suunto app. Within this app you can customise all sorts of things for your watch, including which data fields are shown when you are training, which activities you want to do and even make your own up, and analyse all sorts of things. It plays nicely with Strava of course. The Suunto software isn’t the most straightforward to use, but on the other hand there is no dumbing down here. You can really dive deep into your exercise data. That said, I couldn’t get the mobile app to work, as it would not recognise my watch. Suunto support has been great here, and is looking into the problem.

The altimeter and barometer are first class. It’s not often a watch altimeter actually works well enough to be useful, as it gets thrown out by changes in air pressure. This watch uses a combination of the movement sensors and air pressure to give an excellent level of accuracy, which is useful for both training and for navigation. A ‘storm alarm’ warns you if the air pressure drops suddenly.

Using the watch during sport is hit and miss – the touch screen is useful, but doesn’t work when wet. The buttons are nice and big and easy to use with gloves on, but the strap is a bit too short to get over a wetsuit or a jacket if you have larger wrists. The user interface is a bit odd, and takes some getting used to. Some things require a long press and it’s not always that intuitive to use, especially when you’re tired and under stress. Most of the time you’ll set it up how you like it, press ‘Start’ and then not touch it..
The watch is very big, and sits high above the wrist, but the screen is very tough and has taken some bashing without seeming to come to harm.

I’ve written enough I think, but I think you get the idea. If you’re an elite level athlete this might not quite have the fine detail you need in real-time, but for mere mortals it really covers everything you could need. It also looks cool and smart without being too ‘look at me, I like to exercise’ but is definitely noticeable on the wrist.
As seems to be usual for high-end devices these days, it doesn’t come with any real instructions so you will be spending a lot of time on the Suunto website to get the best from this, but if you can overlook it’s many nearly-there shortcomings, this is a really good watch.

**UPDATE AFTER SIX MONTHS** OK, so while I stand by my comments above, I have to say I have come to love this watch. The thing is, it does an awful lot more than the marketing says, and is let down by the lack of a manual. For a start, I had no idea this thing has smart watch features. If your phone is bluetoothed to this, then the watch will show messages, and vibrate when your phone rings. Really useful when you’re out training and don’t want to stop to see who’s phoning. The battery life is actually pretty incredible, and it’s a tough watch. I’m a beach lifeguard and swear by my G-Shock watch for dealing with abuse, but this Suunto shrugs it off too. It’s now sneakily become my daily wear watch. The limitatiions I mention above are still valid, but in real-life use they are of little consequence. This is a very , very good watch and I’m upping my review a star to the full five.