Suunto Race Review

If you are looking for an upgraded Suunto GPS watch, the Suunto Race is a great option. We've praised their designs for many years, but their UI and feature set often fall short. Luckily, the new AMOLED display and internal hardware run the menu systems much more smoothly than they did in the past. A new UI also makes the model more straightforward and allows quicker access to on/off features. Also, we love that the cost is competitive, especially with an AMOLED display. With a touch screen, physical buttons, and a rolling crown, there are many ways to interact with this model, which is well suited for the many activity types that the Suunto Race supports.

Performance Comparison

Features

The latest Suunto models strive for simplicity and focus on the most valuable components of a GPS watch. The Race's barometer and compass are accurate and dependable. Daily health tracking records and estimates sleep, provides training trends, and gives insight into your training load. New features found on this model are items like Find My Phone, HRV tracking, do-not-disturb, and Suunto coach integration. There are also more customizable widgets that help tailor easy-to-access information.

Not found on this model are features like music storage, contactless payment, and pairing multiple Bluetooth sensors. This may not be a dealbreaker for some users, but others may find it discouraging. While the screen is beautiful, it often compromises both battery life and performance, with the screen frequently throttling back to reduce power consumption. If you are searching for a user-friendly interface and high-end design, look no further. For buyers who are more feature-focused, this may not be the pick for you.

Battery Life

We tested the Suunto Race under a wide range of conditions and activities, and we recorded 50 hours of GPS single-band tracking. Daily GPS and 24/7 health tracking gave us roughly 5-10 days. The most significant drain of the battery will be the AMOLED display. Luckily, this watch provides enough battery to last, which we prefer in a daily wearable. This model does a good job at providing multi-day life without breaking the bank. Ultra-athletes will feel confident about the performance of this watch, and daily users will be able to forgo needing to charge the model, leading to less loss of health tracking.

The AMOLED display, however, does have some downsides. To provide better battery life, it minimizes the clock display when not using the watch. Even using the always-on mode does not maintain your selected watch face. It displays once your wrist flips or button input is detected. While not a huge dealbreaker, it's nice to visually see your desired watch face even when not interacting with the watch. Additionally, the wrist movement is not customizable to sleep time. This often means that your watch inadvertently brightens when starting sleep. From a performance standpoint, an MIP display is is preferable. Still, if you are after an AMOLED display with great battery life, the Suunto Race is a great option.

Ease of Use

Suunto has adapted the UI of the Race, which makes it quite impressive. The UI includes new features like a control center with easy on/off switches to access valuable items like do not disturb, flashlight, alarms, find my phone, etc. The speed at which you can use the menu systems is also improved, making utilizing the model pleasant. We appreciate the multitude of sports modes and the ability to quickly adjust the data fields and settings within the sports page. The Suunto App is also well-featured and easy to use, offering a well-designed data section, training log, and route creation suggestion page.

Accuracy

Thanks to its dual-frequency GPS chipset, the Suunto Race is accurate in technical terrain and urban environments. For our usage, single-band mode was sufficient for most of our activities, so we generally opted for this mode to save battery life. This mode saves roughly 10 hours of battery life. We ran the model without interacting with the device, lasting 24 days. With only notifications and health tracking, you can expect roughly ten days. The amount of GPS tracking during the day will impact this time greatly as the AMOLED screen is constantly refreshing, which uses the most battery life.

We found the Suunto Race fit great on our wrist, so we are confident in the ability of the heart rate monitor, but it was often off a few BPM in high heart rate zones. We found that the watch was most accurate in daily use between resting HR and 150 BPMs. Our control of the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro we used to compare was often +/- 5-10 BPM in these scenarios. We recommend a chest strap HR monitor for the most accurate HR data. One downside of this unit is that only one Bluetooth device type can be paired at a time, so if you have multiple HR monitors or power meters, you may consider a different model.

Design

The Suunto Race sports a 49mm case and a scroll wheel to navigate through the menu systems. We wonder if this was done because the software can finally accommodate speedier menu systems and interaction. You still need to be deliberate with your button presses and scrolls on this model, but it's much improved.

We are fans of the AMOLED display, but as mentioned before, it often has drawbacks in other areas outside the screen display. Mainly battery life and throttling of the watch face to a more minimal design even when set to always on. The external quality is excellent, with spotless machining and a solid feel. Without a doubt, Suunto continues to lead in build quality.

Should You Buy the Suunto Race?

The Suunto Race is an excellent option for an AMOLED display with multi-day battery life. The Race has great build quality, which is to be expected from Suunto. If you value design and aesthetics, this could be a great option. For those who are focused most on performance and feature sets, there are better options out there.

What Other GPS Watches Should You Consider?

If you are geared toward a more high-performance watch, check out the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Solar. While it is more expensive, it has a great feature set, including multi-Bluetooth pairing. For users looking for a better battery life at a similar price point, we'd recommend the Coros Apex Pro 2. If you desire an ultra-bright high-resolution screen and are less concerned with battery life, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is a great option.