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amazon Suunto 5 reviews
Suunto is known for its rugged outdoor watches that can lick and keep ticking. The company’s latest GPS watch, the Suunto 5, is no exception. It’s a rugged multisport watch that you can wear with confidence while mountain biking, scrambling, or trail running.
The Suunto 5 falls in the middle of the Finnish company’s lineup between the flagship Suunto 9 and the entry-level Suunto 3 Fitness. It offers everything from stress monitoring to premium features like smart battery management and adaptive training. But it’s not all rainbows and unicorns, as there are a few significant flaws that detract from this otherwise capable GPS watch.
Durable but imperfect design
The Suunto 5 falls into the multisport category, so it’s bigger than most casual fitness watches like the Fitbit Versa and heavier than your light running watches like the Garmin Forerunner 245. It measures 46mm on the face, put it in the big position, but not clear big category.
At 66 grams, it’s heavy, especially when compared to similarly-sized watches like the Forerunner 245 38.5 grams or the Garmin Instinct 55 grams. Despite its femininity, I still comfortably wear the Suunto 5 when exercising outside or at the gym. I wore it 24/7 for testing purposes, and I feel the urge to take it off at the office or out-of-town events. It’s a watch you’ll only want to wear while exercising.
Like most Suunto watches, the Suunto 5 screams durability. Stainless steel frame and sturdy fiberglass-reinforced polycarbonate shell. I never worried about glancing at a tree while running or mountain biking because I knew the case and bezel could handle the impact – and it did. The buttons are also well made: even when covered in dirt, mud, and sweat, they never jam and are easy to press.
On the underside of the case is a heart rate monitor that sits almost flush with the case. The charging port is located along the perimeter of the case next to the heart rate monitor. That is not an ideal location as it quickly becomes contaminated with sweat and dirt.
The Suunto doesn’t skimp on the case and bezel; the Finnish company has cut corners with the display on the Suunto 5. The screen cover glass is prone to scratches; After a few weeks of wearing the watch around the watch, I had a few minor scratches on the screen, although I never fell hard or bumped to cause them.
Like most Suunto watches, the Suunto 5 screams durability.
Another disappointment is the 218 x 218 resolution screen. It suffers from a dim backlight that makes it almost impossible to read in bright sunlight. It is also small at 1.2 inches compared to the size of the watch (1.8 inches). The display is terrible, and I recommend you test the Suunto 5 in person before shelling out $329 for it.
The Suunto 5 is equipped with a one-size-fits-all silicone band. The band is held in place by a metal clip and has two sliders to hold the loose tip in place. It feels secure on my wrist, and I never worry about it breaking or unexpectedly falling off. The band has hard lugs that connect the strap to the case, and while they’re curved, these hard pieces are inflexible and never fit comfortably on my wrist. They cause the watch to slip awkwardly and get in the way of sleep. On more than one occasion, I woke up in the middle of the night when the band was painfully digging into my wrist.
The Suunto 5 comes in various colors, including a black band with black trim, a white band with silver trim, a burgundy band with copper trim, and my personal favorite – graphite band with copper trim. The latter two colors are a nice change from the standard black and white watches. They have a professional look that doesn’t scream over the rugged fitness watch on your wristwatch.
While this is undeniably a rugged watch, the poor display, poor quality glass, and uncomfortable fit ruined my experience wearing the Suunto 5.
The interface is not intuitive.
Even though Suunto added a touchscreen to the Suunto 9, the company stuck with the traditional five-button layout for the Suunto 5. Each button has a dedicated function that lets you view notifications, access key menus, and more, browse through your daily stats, and more.
Sadly, the watch controls are not intuitive, and there are no labels on the bezel to indicate their function. I eventually got used to the interface, but there’s a big learning curve, especially if you’re switching from another device brand. As you learn the functions of each respective button, using the watch becomes a lot easier.
Heart rate monitoring is too sophisticated.
Beneath the Suunto 5’s rugged exterior lies a powerful fitness tracker with features borrowed from the Suunto 3 fitness watch and the Suunto 9 adventure watch. It’s a multisport watch with support for more than 80 different sports modes. You can add up to eight sports on your watch and customize each with the data fields you want.
More than just handling the activities on the ground, the Suunto 5 is also water-resistant down to 50 meters so that you can use it for both laps and open water swimming. Like most GPS watches, open water swimming is obstructed by water, interfering with the GPS signal.
Suunto’s adaptive training plan is perfect for those looking to maintain their fitness.
Suunto 5 is equipped with an optical heart rate sensor which is sometimes difficult. Like most wrist-based optical heart rate monitors, the Suunto 5 takes a few minutes to normalize when you start an activity and is a bit slower than your current heart rate as you vary your effort. While average heart rate during an activity is accurate, maximum heart rate during exercise and heart rate zones tend to be higher than other devices like the Forerunner 245 and Polar Ignite.
24/7 heart rate monitoring also jumps when you move your arm, up 20 points over other fitness watches I tested. Part of this inaccuracy may result from a mismatched band, making it difficult to get a comfortable and snug fit.
Fitness to meet your needs
One of the best fitness features in the Suunto 5 is the personalized and adaptive workout plans. The watch allows you to choose whether you want to maintain your fitness programs, enhance your fitness improvement and create 7-day workout plans. The plan combines hard and easy days, so you never overdo it, and each session is assigned a time and intensity level.
When you start an activity, you can complete the workout plan or skip it and do your own thing. If you follow the plan, the watch will track your intensity and provide real-time guidance to help you exercise at the correct pace.
I see workout plans geared towards improving your fitness at an entry-level rather than pushing you hard. After not running for several weeks due to surgery, the training plan was perfect for getting back to work. It detects me inactive and adjusts the training to make it easier for me to run again. After a few weeks of practice, I’m back to running 5-6 miles regularly.
Besides performance tracking, the Suunto 5 is packed with FirstBeat-style metrics like stress, body resources, and fitness level (VO2Max). Like Garmin’s body battery, body resources measure your physical activity, stress levels, sleep, and recovery. It combines all of those metrics and generates a percentage estimate of your current power reserve. Not all of these metrics are available on the flagship Suunto 9, positioning the Suunto 5 for athletes looking to track all aspects of their health.
Sleep tracking could be better.
Suunto keeps it simple with sleep tracking, which provides a sleep score based on the quantity and quality of your sleep. You can use this easy-to-understand value to track your sleep over time, like your running pace or VO2Max. Sleep scores are also used in other metrics such as body resources and recovery time.
Sleep data is sent each morning to the Suunto app, but the analysis is limited compared to Fitbit and Garmin. You can only view total sleep time, wake time, deep sleep time, overnight heart rate, and sleep score. There is no hourly chart of your sleep nor any further breaks in your REM or light sleep.
The Suunto 5 measured when I was asleep but sometimes struggled to detect when I woke up. Sometimes it thinks I’m awake when I just rolled over to hit the snooze button. The watch ended my sleep most of the time when I got out of bed and greeted me with “Good Morning” as I stepped out of the bedroom. But the watch didn’t catch moments like when a dog barked or an unexpected warning woke me up and disrupted my sleep.
GPS goes beyond activity tracking
The Suunto 5 has built-in GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, and QZSS satellite support that can be used for activity tracking and navigation. It records activity in progress and stores that GPS data to compare your performance the next time you run or cycle in that area. Accurate GPS is spot on, even in the forest.
The watch also supports GPS navigation, allowing you to travel to the point of interest (POI) or follow a route you’ve added to the watch. There’s no barometric altimeter, but the watch calculates altitude and provides elevation profiles, both of which are generated using GPS data.
Smartphone notifications
The Suunto 5 connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth LE, sending fitness data to the Suunto app. It supports smartphone notifications so you can see incoming alerts on your phone. Like most fitness trackers — sans Apple Watch — you can’t respond to alerts. Each alert provides enough snippets to decide if you need to pull out your phone or ignore it until later. A do not disturb mode Rated mode allows you to turn off all alerts when you need to silence the radio.
My only hold is connectivity. When I leave my phone and come back, the watch reconnects and reloads all the notifications on my phone. The constant beeping of these notifications is annoying at home and disruptive in public.
Flexible battery life
Battery life is a big selling point that sets the Suunto 5 apart from the competition. Suunto’s secret sauce is a trio of power-saving battery modes – Performance, Endurance, and Ultra – all of which debuted on the Suunto 9. Each power mode adjusts settings by turning features off to remove the required battery. The watch always monitors battery level, reminding you to charge it before a workout or prompting you to change battery modes mid-workout so you can continue to track your performance.
These smart battery modes come in handy as the Suunto 5 burns through the battery with 24/7 heart rate monitoring enabled. Instead of the promised 14-day battery life, I averaged around 7-8 days with heart rate monitoring, and notifications enabled. I get a lot of notifications, so your mileage may change.
When I went hiking with GPS tracking and full heart rate monitoring, the battery lasted about 15 hours. When I used Endurance mode to dial in the GPS tracker and heart rate monitor, I hit 35 hours, not more than the promised 40 hours, but still better than most other smartwatches.
Suunto Flow App: Messy, But Improved
Suunto’s app ecosystem is still a hot mess. The company is slowly moving away from the Movescount platform and migrating all its devices to the new Suunto app platform. Don’t expect to use Movescount with the Suunto 5, as the watch only syncs with the new Suunto app. Existing Suunto owners will have to transfer all their Movescount data to the new Suunto app or start with their new Suunto 5 app.
The good news is that the new Suunto app is steadily improving. It has a clean interface that is thoughtfully organized and easy to use. You can view your steps, calories burned, and sleep with daily, weekly, monthly and yearly breakdowns.
This app stores a lot of information geared towards athletes in training who want to track their performance. It’s not as powerful as Garmin’s Connect platform, with better data analytics and digital crunch.
The Suunto app can sync its data with the Sports Tracker web app, which replaces Movescount. Sports Tracker works for casual athletes, but performance hounds looking to dive into the metrics will be disappointed.
If you prefer to use a third-party service, you can export your training and health data to apps like Strava, Peak Training, Apple Health, and more.
where can you get a Suunto 5 online
Suunto 5 Lightweight GPS Sports Watch, All Black: Buy it now
Suunto 5, Lightweight and Compact GPS Sports Watch with 24/7, Activity Tracking and Wrist-Based Heart Rate – All Black (Renewed): Buy it now