Suunto 9 After 3 Months: Review

The Suunto Baro 9 isn’t for everybody. It isn’t trying to beat Apple or Samsung or trying to replace your Fitbit. The smartwatch has a specific audience in mind – ultra athletes and those who need a reliable smartwatch when all else fails. The Suunto Baro 9 is the success of the Spartan and many considers it the Spartan V2. If you’re an athlete, an ultra-marathon runner, or an avid adventurer seeking a feature-rich smartwatch with insane battery performance and built like a tank, then continue reading.

What’s in the box?

The Suunto 9 comes in an all black paper box. It’s no frills packaging gets the job done and lets you access the watch without too much unpacking. Inside you’ll find the watch itself, a magnetic charging cable, sticker sheet, and a comprehensive manual covering multiple languages.

Overall, we appreciate the smaller footprint packaging. It is 2021 after all, and we’re glad brands are ditching cumbersome packaging to inflate the value of what’s inside.

Size & Weight

This is beefy watch without a doubt. Coming in at 50mm in diameter and 7mm deep, the size is noticeable especially on average to smaller wrists. The case and bezel are made of stainless steel and a composite materials. The watch feels sturdy and reliable in your hands. The weight is evenly distributed along all the surfaces making the overall feel of the watch actually light.

The Screen

The Suunto 9 sports a 320×300 pixel resolution touchscreen. The face is covered by sapphire glass making it resistant to scratches and normal wear and tear. The 3 buttons on the side lets you do all of the adjustments along with the touchscreen display. The display is a bit on the basic side. There aren’t many flash animations or even transitions. The background is black, I suspect that’s mainly to optimize for battery life.

Navigating the different features and functions of the watch is fairly easy and intuitive. Manual isn’t necessary so long as you put a bit of time into learning the different menus.

Navigation

One of the core selling features of the Suunto 9 is its accurate GPS that uses the United State’s GPS, Russian’s GLONASS, and the Japan’s QZSS satellites. Being capable of using all 3 makes this watch far more accurate and reliable than other smartwatches that can only use the United State’s GPS satellites.

The watch also comes with Fusedtrack, a proprietary feature developed by Suunto’s engineers to optimize performance by combining GPS signal and motion sensor data to give reading on your current location. This help reduce battery strain and keeps the GPS function running even when you have limited signals.

Battery Life

Battery life is where the Suunto 9 outshines many of it’s competition. The Suunto 9 is built on the promise that this watch will be with you for the whole journey. Many of the built-in apps offer 3 different performance modes you can select from, letting you know roughly how much you can squeeze out of the battery.

Performance mode with everything turned on will get between 20 – 25 hours. Endurance mode will give you about 40 hours. Meanwhile, Ultra mode can go as far as 120 hours on a single charge. That’s impressive battery life.

During our testing, we had a hard time getting the watch down to 50 percent through our daily activities. Even on Performance mode with GPS on and screen brightness at 80%, the Suunto 9 easily survived 2-3 days on a single charge. This is easily one of the best battery life we’d ever tested in a smartwatch.

Final Verdict

We felt like we cheated on the review a bit. Testing the Suunto 9 during a pandemic lockdown while logging average workout activities seemed a bit underwhelming. It’s like reviewing a Ferrari while driving the 25mph speed limit.

However, even with our limited activities to test, the Suunto was impressive in everything that mattered. This is a high performance, accurate, and reliable smart watch built for the ultra athletes. The Fusedtrack technology can also be a lifesaver if you’re a runner who often explore areas with sketchy signals.

The Suunto 9 is an easy smartwatch to recommend to athletes given it’s capabilities, build quality, and extreme battery life. For the average consumer who’s afraid of the wild, $600 can be a tougher sell.