I just recently discovered Suunto around six months ago. Since then, the company has been seeing a ton of growth as an alternative for US stalwarts like Garmin. I reviewed the Suunto Race S recently to get a feel for just how well these devices are made. I came away so impressed that it’s become my daily driver over my Garmin Forerunner 165.
You may wonder why it’s called the Race S and it’s a good question. The Race S was a smaller iteration of the original Race series released back in 2023. It brought a more sleek design in a 45mm form factor over the Suunto Race 49mm. Now it’s time for the Race to get a true successor in the Race 2, and we find out how it stacks up in this full review.
Design
As mentioned, Suunto already has a mini Race 2 in a sense with the Race S. The two share a ton of DNA when you look at the industrial design. You have two options of 49mm casing: either titanium, or our reviewing model, black stainless steel. The new screen has a decrease in bezels that allows the usable space to grow from 1.43-inches to 1.50-inches of real estate.
It’s also a much brighter AMOLED panel, more than doubling the previous 600 nits to a whopping 2000 nits. I’ve never used the OG Race, but this is a huge jump and makes for one of the most crisp displays on a watch. I’ve had zero issue in even super bright sunlight using the Race 2. It keeps the same 466×466 resolution and Sapphire glass materials for durability.
Rounding out the physical specs are the water resistance rating of up to 100 meters, Bluetooth music controls, and finally, an updated optical heart rate sensor. Overall, if you need it, this Suunto Race 2 fitness watch has it covered.
Software
Much like the overall design, the Race 2 is almost identical in many areas to the Race S. You can navigate the system via the same touch UI or the familiar three button layouts on the right side of the watch. The middle button doubles as a digital crown to effortlessly navigate up and down menus, with a press making selections.
When it comes to exercises, you have over 115 sport profiles to make sure you rarely get left out of recording those metrics. There’s even a new Chores option for all those things inside the house you hate doing. Suunto has one of the best fitness first watch operating systems with the Race 2 in my opinion. You have intuitive menus from scrolling down from the main screen to easily manage workouts, while all your notifications and widgets live on the scroll up from the home.
A long-press of the crown will always take you home from layered options. You can map shortcuts to each of the three physical button, as well as your most used widgets. I have the single press of the crown set to my notifications, the top for music controls, and the bottom for timers.
This all syncs with the effortlessly through the Suunto companion app. This recently received a much-needed makeover as well. When I reviewed the Race S, I found it just was way too busy and many of the home screen widgets would dump you into overlapping menu options shared amongst many of the data points.
Thankfully, the software team has taken a step back and really streamlined both the main home of the app and all the deep dive tabs. There’s even a new training coach and plan powered by AI. Surprisingly, they are currently free and pretty good for a first go at adding some large language powered training.
One challenge I’d lay out for future Suunto updates to the app is more simplification around some of the advance training load and recovery terminology. Using acronyms like TSS, CTL, and TSB to quantify training load and fitness scores works for seasoned athletes and runners, but it’s completely foreign to the average consumer.
I do think the new redesign of the companion app is heading in that direction. The Resources widget gives you a quick metric of how you should feel that day based on the previous day’s activities and sleep HRV. A hard workout followed by not great sleep will tank your score, versus lighter gym sessions and good sleep get you closer to 100 percent.
I also really like the general fitness Progress widget. The widget offers you a few options to snapshot your current exertion into a general fitness level. Designations includes Losing Fitness/Recovery, Keeping Fit, Productive Training, and Going too Hard. This uses a combination of HRV, heart rate zones, and training loads to tag you into one of the categories based on the week’s training.
Suunto’s evolution from the Race S to the Race 2 proves they are serious about creating fantastic hardware matched with smooth, intuitive software—a watch so good, it’s become my new daily driver.
Performance
Daily use of the Suunto Race 2 has been fantastic. The new internal chipset lends to a snappy interface and smooth transitions. I had little complaints about the Race S, but you can see a slight bump in performance on the Race 2.
The same is true on my main gripe about the Race S and the heart rate sensor. While it wasn’t atrocious by any means, it did have spikes and unusual readings that I just don’t see in other devices. Specifically in my resting heart rate and the first few minutes of a workout saw drastic variances. My resting heart rate would consistently spike for no reason while sitting in an office chair, and that first few minutes of activities would drop significantly to resting levels instead.
Thankfully, the new layout and algorithms on the Race 2 has solved this for me. I found it to be more consistent in all environments. I’ve tested it side by side with my Garmin and the AmazFit Helio strap and found it well within comparable ranges (a recent update has made this better for the Race S as well).
The same is true for all the other sensors on the Suunto Race 2. The GPS while walking and running is very accurate when compared to others in Strava. I have no complaints about that or the altimeter for hiking or running stairs.
Battery Life
One big selling point for the Race 2 over the Race S might be battery life. The physically larger device allows for a jump in endurance away from the charger. Suunto rates the battery at over 55 hours in full multi-band GPS activities and around 18 days in smartwatch mode.
I’ve not done any activities long enough to capture that 55 hours of GPS, but I’ve tracked over two weeks with the Suunto Race 2 in smartwatch mode. I’ve found the 18 days to be fairly accurate. With some mixed GPS walking sessions mixed in, I got 16 days between charges. That’s very impressive and up from my already good 14 days with the Suunto Race S.
When you do need to top off the Race 2 battery, I do like the newly designed magnetic charger. It’s got the best magnets layout of the three Suunto offerings I’ve tested and has a USB-C port for charging. But Suunto, for the love of eco-friendliness, and general streamlining of SKUs, let this be the same mechanism for all future watches.
I mentioned it in my Run review, but one of the best thing that competitors like Garmin and AmazFit offer is charger compatibility across most or all device lineups. It makes it easy to have users upgrade and acquire not only a spare charger, but not readily discard the previous one as waste. Logistically, it makes sense as well for Suunto. Why would you want seven separate manufacturing and ecommerce part numbers for seven watches when you can just have a single option?
Final Thoughts
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I have been nothing but impress with the Suunto Race 2 and Suunto overall. The company has gone from not on my radar recently to being one of my favorites. The evolution of the Race S into the Race 2 shows they are serious about creating fantastic hardware matched with smooth, intuitive software.
Suunto has a bit of a more premium feel with the Race 2 and the price reflects this a bit as well. The watch starts at $499 for the stainless steel casing, and you’ll need another $100 for the titanium. Both are competitive with alternatives, and I’d consider it well worth it. This watch stands toe-to-toe with anything on the market from Garmin or Coros at the moment.
You can snag the Suunto in multiple countries from their website or through Amazon if that’s your jam.
Purchase the Suunto Race 2 from Suunto
Purchase the Suunto Race 2 from Amazon
