Suunto Race
A solid offering from Suunto with a small price and big battery, but the Race lacks the technical chops of rivals
Although Suunto might be better known for its hard-working dive watches and infallible navigational instruments, it was also an early runner in the active smartwatch game. Suunto has been looking to turn things around, starting with its Suunto Vertical outdoors watch and now this… the Suunto Race running watch.
First things first, this isn’t the watch to plump for if you like things small and compact, especially on smaller wrists. At 49mm, the bezel is a bit of a beast, and it sits quite proud, thanks to its chunky casing and digital crown Suunto has fitted. It does mean you get a decent amount of screen real estate, with a 1.43-inch touchscreen available and 466 x 466 resolution to play with – all pumping out 1,000 nits of brightness.
Overall, the build quality feels solid, but the 13mm thickness means it lacks a little subtlety and doesn’t quite give off the same premium appeal as something like Garmin’s Fenix 7 or Epix models – although they are a lot pricier.
As with most modern fitness watches, the Suunto’s menu spans everything from classic strength training to kayaking and beyond. The activity you choose influences the way the workout screens are laid out and the sort of information you receive.
Something we should point out is that Suunto’s operating system is prone to some lagging, while it is easily muddled if you try to do too much too quickly. This is especially true when one of the workout profiles is activated, and the watch is otherwise engaged with reading heart rate, tracking GPS and more. It just gets a bit confused. In addition to this, we had a bit of trouble with the heart rate readings in the first few days with the watch. The real-time readings often spiked for no reason, and they weren’t accurate compared to the Garmin Fenix 7 and Apple Watch Ultra 2. Strangely, the wrist-based readings settled down after a few days and a few power on/power off cycles, but we’d still say they weren’t as accurate as some of its key rivals.
The Suunto Race offers a pretty sensational battery life. During normal use, with several workouts and runs thrown in, we managed to easily get a week from the battery, and that included using it as a nightly sleep tracker. Lasting up to 40 hours with GPS activated makes it a solid option for endurance athletes pushing their limits. Meanwhile this figure can be stretched to 120 hours in Tour mode, where the watch sacrifices heart rate monitoring and tracks GPS location less frequently.
Considering the price, Suunto offers a solid all-round training, workout and navigation partner in the Race. The screen is clear and bright, while the mixture of touchscreen and physical controls makes it easy to use on a daily basis. What’s more, the battery life is excellent. However, there is still plenty of room for improvement, and Suunto could offer more training plans, improved wrist-based heart rate sensing and a sharper user interface.