As a longtime Garmin user, it’s hard for me to feel impressed with another connected watch alternative. That changed a bit recently when Garmin announced it would start a premium software tier atop the already premium cost of entry with the company’s devices. This has created a flux of users looking for other fitness watches.
One of the most popular offerings is from a Finnish company named Suunto. I’d personally never heard of them, but the new Race S smartwatch had my interest piqued. Turns out they’ve been around for almost 100 years. Think Garmin, but in Finland.
I’ve been testing the Race S for over a month and compared it to the US gold standard.
Design
The Suunto Race S design is where the Suunto shines. The entire casing is built from cast aluminum and lends to a very premium feel on the wrist. I miss the days that the Garmins in this price range had similar materials. The metal construction gives the Race S a tick above in quality of most other $350 smartwatches.
The main portion of the watch is the 1.32-inch AMOLED display. This touchscreen gives the Race S a crisp and bright main interaction point. I found the screen to be very easy to see in all environments, and touch feedback was quick and responsive.
While you can navigate mostly using the touchscreen, there’s also three mechanical inputs on the right side of the Suunto Race S. The top and bottom are buttons that can be pressed in certain menu items. The middle crown is similar to the dial on a traditional watch and functions as a scroll wheel in the interface and selections can be made by pressing it down.
Other hardware includes the normal fitness features you’d expect. You have an optical heart rate sensor, GPS, and accelerometer for tracking various movements and biometrics. The Suunto Race S is a well-rounded fitness smartwatch out of the box.
Daily Use and a Few Bumps
Overall, the Suunto Race S checks all the boxes you’d want from a fitness device. I’ve found the watch comfortable to wear doing any task from daily activities to intense HIIT workouts. The included straps are also one of my favorite designs I’ve seen on a sports band. The traditional clasp paired with a push tab to hold the extra portion of the strap down is well done.
The same is true for the smartwatch functions. Notifications mirroring worked as expected during my testing, and you can triage apps with push notifications to the watch in the Suunto companion app. Music controls are also here, but no onboard music playback like Garmin. I found the smart options and interface intuitive and easy to navigate using either the touchscreen or the crown dial with the ancillary buttons.
Tracking of my workouts and daily biometrics has been… OK. For general tasks and even the workouts, the Suunto Race S did a good job of tallying the normal feedback of burned calories, heart rate, and even forms of intensity in the app. The app also has a pretty modern design, and it’s up to the beholder, but I’ve seen many feel it’s superior to Garmin’s in design.
The Resources sections does a decent scale of how your body should feel versus your recent activities. This metric takes in sleep and other meditations to increase the score, while a long run or sweaty workout will make it drop. It’s very akin to the Garmin Body Battery, but I found it didn’t do quite as good of a job taking in the metrics, either good or bad. It always seemed to hover around a score of 60-70, regardless of what I’d put my body through that day.
My other two gripes are the perimeter for step counting and the resting heart rate readings I’ve seen in my time testing the Suunto Race S. Let’s start with steps. I’ve consistently seen this calculation underscore any other device I’ve used. It tallies roughly ¾ of the actual steps I take in comparison to the Apple Watch, Garmin Forerunner, and my older Fitbit Sense.
This one is a bit subjective. I’ve always said find a device you like and let the baseline it creates be your baseline as well. However, the step counts were so far off that I noticed it based off my historical usage from other trackers. The average person walking a mile should accumulate around 2400–2600 steps, and the Race S consistently hit around 1800 in this same trek.
As I said, if you’ve never used anything else, this one is negligible. The one that concerned me or would concern you with its readout is the resting HR that would spike pretty much hourly to 130 beats per minute while sitting down at my workstation. Reading from a wrist monitor and my Garmin both showed I was well within the normal range of 60 BPM, but for some reason, only while sitting the Race S would spike on a regular basis.
Again, baselines are a point of perspective, but anyone with a general knowledge of heart or pulse could easily be spooked. Double your normal HR baseline is enough for concern to seek medical treatment for most people. Suunto has a history of regular updates from user feedback, and I hope they take a look at both the perimeter and the troubling heart rate detection.
With a premium aluminum build that feels exceptional on the wrist and a battery that impressively lasts up to 10 days, the Suunto Race S delivers a stylish and long-lasting experience. For those seeking a robust fitness smartwatch with a responsive interface, this Finnish contender offers a compelling alternative to established players.
Battery Life
One exceptional quality of the Suunto Race S that meets my Garmin standard is battery life. The watch allows for up to 10 days of battery, depending on the amount of time you choose to use the backlight. I had it set to only come on when motioning my wrist, and I had the Race S easily last a week per charge.
Charging is done via a round POGO pin adapter. It’s powered by USB-A. I’d love to see more manufacturers mimic the new adapters from OnePlus and Pebble with USB-C powered chargers without the cable being built in. This allows for you to at least carry the adapter and not have to worry about the cable being the main point of failure or forgotten part of the setup while traveling. From dead to one hundred percent takes around 40 minutes, so the once a week anchoring to a cable is minimal.
Final Thoughts
Awarded to products with an average rating of 3.75 stars or higher, the AndroidGuys Smart Pick recognizes a balance of quality, performance, and value.
Products with this distinction deserve to be on your short list of purchase candidates.
Suunto has a ton to like here with the Race S fitness smartwatch. The superb build, quick interface, and overall good activity tracking, the watch is a great alternative to many on the market. At $350, it’s a worthy competitor to the aging Fitbit lineup and Wear OS devices. It’s worth it for the battery life and better workout tracking alone over Wear in my opinion.
If you are coming from Garmin, I think you have to be willing to compromise on the mentioned shortcomings. There’s some polish in some of the software and algorithms to meet the gold standard. Even with that, the Suunto Race S is a fantastic option for someone looking to have a stylish smartwatch capable of also increasing their activity and health tracking.
You can purchase the stainless steel variant in our review in 7 colors from Suunto’s website. If you are looking for a step-up in durability, you can also snag the titanium edition in graphite or canary.
