Suunto 9 Baro vs Suunto 7: Field test
Past Dec. 27th I had my weekly trailrunning session. This time I wanted to test my lovely S9B vs the newest Suunto 7. Both running the latest firmware version.
The setup and session details was as follow:
Suunto 9: Maximun precission+ Polar OH1 + Stryd
Suunto 7: 10 second precission + wrist HR (textile strap in correct position and tight)
As you can see, Suunto 7 10" precission is awesome compared to Suunto 9. Both watches beeps every km and between one and other it only took about 15 seconds for the first 7km (high trees in this zone). Before this I could see a difference of about 250 meters between watches.
Altitude profile if almost the same. 1681 meters (s7) vs 1683 (s9b). At this point Suunto 7 showed 518 meters total ascent vs 512 meters for Suunto 9 Baro. Remember that Suunto 7 in this setup only recorded a point every 10 seconds and S9b is using a high precission podometer (Stryd). FusedAlti and FusedSpeed algorithms are pretty awesome and works like magic.
The highest point of the route was La Najarra (Madrid, Spain). The official height is 2120 meters over the sea level.
Both watches were so accurate and showed almost the same altitude.
Speaking about distance, less than 200 meters between them and only 10 meters of total ascent.
There is no doubt that following a track in a Suunto 7 is better than in a Suunto 9 ;-)
And what about battery? Suunto 7 started activity with 97% battery and Suunto 9 with 99%. I turned airplane mode in Suunto 7 to save battery because I didn’t need smartwach capabilities.
During the activity I checked for fun Suunto 7 maps a lot of times. The rest of the time I used battery saver screen which is gorgeous
At the end of the activity I had a big surprise becase both watches record the same distance and only 80 meters of total ascent
Now, lets take a closer look to gps data point recorded. You can check it out and download here (MyGPSFiles) and here (Quantified)
I was running in a forest with high trees until km 7 aprox where the “hard” ascent start. At this point I had visible sky with some clouds. It was a windy and cold day. The profile is the same but I think that the difference is due 10" recording in S7.
The biggest problem for me is the oHR in Suunto 7. Some days is good some days is way off. At the moment it is not possible to link an external bluetooth HR sensor.
So my final thoughts are that running with Suunto 7 is a pleasure. Screen visibility is incredible and map navigation is awesome.
With these numbers I am confident about to only carry my Suunto 7 to the trailrunning sessions and maybe some ultra races. I hope Suunto to get more and more developers to push Wear OS Suunto App in a higher level. They have a winner horse, just need to put money here ;-)
