I am very lucky to have been given a Suunto Race S watch to review by the Ordnance Survey and Suunto, but despite it being a freebie I want to ensure I give a thorough and honest review for anyone looking to buy this sports watch.
Designed specifically for women who tend to have smaller wrists this watch has a sleeker design and a smaller face than the Race model. It’s marketed as a performance watch for racing and training. As a keen runner and hiker and already a Suunto fan, I was excited to see if this watch would provide everything I needed. Would it prove that all the additional features mean that I give up using my trusty Ambit 3?
First impressions
Straight out of the box the watch was easy to set up with my personal data – the menus were obvious and intuitive to use. I already use the Suunto app through having an Ambit 3 watch, and I found it quick to do an update from the app to get the watch firmware up to date. It was also very easy and quick to pair with my phone too.
My first impression – it’s immediately more attractive and comfier to wear than my old Ambit 3 – it’s less bulky, flatter to my wrist and a slick small watch face. It’s so sleek I wore it all day for a few days and it never felt like it was annoying or heavy to wear.
The display is bright, easy to read and straight forward to navigate – with the middle button activating the watch, the top button scrolling through activities to start tracking and the bottom button scrolling through other features such as heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, mapping and much more. It also has a touch screen.
Tracking activities
I initially trialled the Race S on a few local runs to get used to the menu and options whilst training. I then took it out on a full day run of the Gritstone Trail to see how the battery would cope with continuous tracking. I have in the past managed to completely flatten my Ambit3 whilst out on a 16 hour run, so wondered how the bright display and high quality GPS tracking would drain the battery.
The Race S had a fantastic battery life capability – it has lower battery settings which can reduce the quality of the GPS tracking accuracy and heart race monitoring in order to increase battery life up to a maximum of 120 hours.
I did the Gritstone Trail on ‘performance’ mode which has the highest GPS accuracy and uses heart rate tracking, and even after a 7 hour day the battery was only down to 60%.
It manages to do this by turning off the screen while the watch is in use so the display isn’t always on – raising your wrist to look at it wakes it, or you can push the middle button.
The display provides all the vital information at one glance – pace, distance achieved, time so far and heart rate. No need to scroll through screens which I think is perfect. –
One feature I particularly like is the pause function – when you press pause it starts a timer, displaying how long you’ve paused for – which is handy if you’re racing or on a long run to keep you on schedule.
As well as running and hiking I also tested the watch while outdoor swimming and found the accuracy and visibility of the watch data to be far superior when in water.
Having never had a watch which could provide sleep tracking, I slept in it one night out of interest. It tracked both my heart race and sleep pattern through the night and fed back the quality of sleep, both time and type. However, the heart rate monitor on the back of the watch has a green light and as a light sleeper I did find this distracting and it woke me a few times.
Suunto App
Already being a user of the Suunto app, I confess I am a fan of it.
I find it really easy to understand, all the data is easy to read in terms of understanding pace covered, per km intervals, altitude gained etc. It also provides information on quality of training, volume and suggested recovery required at a glance.
It is more straight forward than the major competitor apps such as Strava, and free compared to comparable apps such as Training Peaks. The app also pushes data to Strava and other apps so you don’t have to lose out on the social aspect these provide to your training.
I did notice when I did this in some of the optimal battery modes of ultra or tour, Strava struggled with the data it received. I think this is a data quality issue at Strava’s end, as the data within the Suunto app was still highly detailed and accurate. But it’s worth bearing in mind if you like the social aspect of Strava.
I had plotted the Gritstone Trail route in OS Maps and transferred this to the Suunto app to import into the watch. All of this was easy to do, and quick.
Would I recommend it?
Yes, definitely.
Having had the Suunto Ambit 3 Peak watch for over 6 years and been very happy with it, I didn’t expect to find a newer watch that much better. The Ambit 3 provides accurate tracking, is easy to use and robust.
However, I was hugely surprised by the Race S – it is so light and comfortable I didn’t find myself re-adjusting it during the day as my wrist got sweaty, and at no point did it bang against my wrist bone as I ran. I happily wore it all day and never notice it. It tracked my data fantastically, and I’m super excited to have a watch with such a powerful battery life.
I think this is a fantastic watch for women with small wrists, keen to not only track their sporting activity but also have high performance mapping available on their wrist in a device that fits properly.
At £325 rrp this is also not ridiculously expensive compared to competitor watches of the same quality. I can’t think what you’d really be getting for any more money if you bought anything else. So its definitely more affordable and worth the investment.