Hi guys, Sunnto sent me their Suunto 5 watch back in January so I’ve had 3 months to gather my thoughts and give you an accurate review of this watch.
Oh yeah I must say that Suunto gave me the watch to give them a shoutout on Instagram, they never told me to do a full review. But since I have it, I might as well do a review on it and perhaps help you decide if this is the right watch for you.
First thing I would tell you is that the watch is not for most people. It may look nice and pretty, it’s got aluminium bezels and a sharp screen, but switching over from a Garmin 935 revealed what I really missed in the Garmin. It took quite a while to get used to having the Suunto as my daily driver, but now, I am still using it and I enjoy using it.
So let me tell you all the quirks and features of the watch starting with its quirks. And there are lots of them.
Firstly, you cannot set the data fields in the watch, only through the app. That’s something I missed in the Garmin but that’s okay, the app connects and syncs well.
The biggest gripe about setting your data fields is that there are too many similar fields. So for example there’s lap distance and interval distance. What’s the difference?! But anyway I love the fact that you can have up to 7 fields on each screen with the Suunto. Something Garmin does not have. Although I don’t think you would want your text to be so small that you have to squint your eyes while running.
That leads me to my next point is that the screen is dim in harsh lighting conditions. Maybe it’s not contrasty enough but the display only shows up at certain angles in bright light. It’s quite annoying but I do my workouts in the morning or evening when the sun is down or at home so it does not really matter to me. But I feel the screen is so dim that it will be a deal breaker for those who often exercise outdoors.
Moving on, still on the same subject of display, the data fields do not have labels on them. Only icons. And the icons are too small and vague to understand.
So when I glance at my watch and if I see the huge number 5:00, I need to guess is it the time or my pace. The texts definitely have to be bigger and the data can be a little smaller. I wouldn’t mind that.
Another small quirk about the data fields is that when you pause your activity, the pause screen does not have your data fields. It only shows time of day, duration and distance.
If I’m doing intervals with my Garmin I’ll usually press lap and pause my watch at the same time because I don’t want my recovery in between sets to count towards the workout time. And with the Suunto, if I wanna see my last interval time or pace, I need to press lap without pausing it, so that I can see my interval time. It was uncomfortable to change but now at least I know exactly what my recovery times are.
But that’s not the case with pool swimming though. If I press lap, the watch will continue running but the recovery time won’t be counted to the total time. It will only count if it measures at least one length of the pool. That’s where the Suunto shines.
The watch tracks pool swimming very well. It’s quite rare for the watch to under track or over track the distance sometimes my 25m sprint can become 50m but that problem is the same with the Garmin as well.
I love the pool clock feature in swim mode. The red mark shows where you stopped and the red arrow is the time you’ve been resting since. That’s something Garmin doesn’t have but it’s also not a feature everyone needs.
A huge issue I have with the watch is that it does not have multi sport modes. It has a triathlon mode but no aquathlon, duathlon mode and you can’t change the sport activities within the triathlon mode. So it means if you are doing a Bike Run brick and need to transition fast, you gotta save that Bike activity before going through the menus to the Run again. That’s what I did during my duathlon race last month. It was quite a pain.
Next we gotta talk about the useless optical heart rate sensor on the watch. The problem is that for the first 3k or so, your heart rate readings will be abnormally high. I was reading some reviews online and that was consistent with their reviews too.
What’s worse is that every time you pause the watch, the next 3k will have weird readings again. For example, you may need to pause when you hit a traffic light or having a break.
A solution is to get yourself a Magene Bluetooth heart rate strap. I’ll have a link here. It’s one of the best value heart rate monitors for the price. And that would solve that weird 3k heart rate spike issue.
Talking about the connectivity of the watch, there is only Bluetooth connectivity. There is no ANT+ on the watch. How terrible! My old power meter and cadence sensor is still running on ANT+. Unless you have upgraded to a bluetooth power meter, the Suunto 5 will not record your power readings.
So that’s why I’m still using my Garmin 810 for my bike rides. I need a bike computer anyway.
Now let’s talk about the GPS connectivity. I think it’s more accurate but it’s slower to respond than my Garmin 935. For example a 1km run on the 400m track my Garmin may show 1.25km but the Suunto will be 1.02km. That’s what Suuntos are great for. Distance accuracy. Not a big deal for me though. As long as I know that I actually ran 1km on the track then I’m good.
I found that besides the initial connection when leaving my house for runs/ rides to be pretty fast. But when I’m at the lights, the watch takes significantly longer to pause the ride than the Garmin. Again, not a big deal for me, it just means I get more activity duration.
I also like the way they executed eco mode of the watch. You get green icons on normal performance mode and orange icons in eco mode. You can tell when it’s performance and eco mode simply by looking at the remaining time left. There was one run I started at 16% battery. It showed 2 hours left of battery in performance mode, but 9 hours in eco mode.
However, it isn’t a good idea to use eco mode on a track because the intervals which it reads GPS data is longer and so you get wacky readings on the track.
Alright, another small quirk is that the watch doesn’t switch off. You can’t power off and save the battery. The only way to switch off is to drain the battery. This brings me on to the next strong point of the watch, the battery lasts really long.
The Suunto 5 claims 40hours of battery life, but since I’m not wearing when I’m at home, the watch sleeps to save battery and I get 3 to 4 days between charges. The battery is amazing.
Conclusion
I feel that this is a watch hard to recommend to most people. Especially when there are so many other great options out there. The Suunto comes at quite a steep price and with the same amount of money or even less, you can buy the older Garmin 935 and do everything you can do on the Suunto.
The Garmin is not as accurate as the Suunto but for most athletes, I feel that I don’t mind that trade off. Especially when having the GPS unit outside the watch (of the Suunto) prevents it from not laying flat on a table.
All these flaws aren’t a deal breaker for me and since I got it for free, I’m still using it and I love it.
So yeah that’s my personal review of the Suunto 5. Leave in the comments below what features do you need in a watch. Thank you guys for reading my review and I will talk to you guys again.
Aaroiseverything 