SUUNTO Race GPS smartwatch review – track all the things!

REVIEW – Smartwatches have come a long way from novelty, and can do so much more than tell time.  SUUNTO has released the Race as a new option in the mid-tier price point, and it is feature packed for athletes looking to get the most out of their training.

What is it?

The Race is the newest training focused watch by Finnish brand SUUNTO, which has a rich history of developing cutting edge navigation products going back to 1936.

Packed with tech, this watch along with its companion app can help you reach your training goals with in depth analytics and coaching.  SUUNTO offers the Race in both stainless steel and titanium (as reviewed) with several color options.  The differentiators between the stainless steel and titanium version is weight, with the latter carrying a higher price tag while offering a lighter weight and more onboard storage capacity.

What’s included?

• SUUNTO Race smartwatch
• Charger
• Documentation

Tech specs

Design and features

SUUNTO has a reputation for making solid hardware, and the Race is no exception.  In the Race we have a familiar round touchscreen watch face with two dedicated buttons and a rotary/button crown on the right side.  The bezel is fixed, though does have a decorative knurling detail.  The included wrist strap has near infinite adjustment, and after a month with it I’ve had zero issues with comfort.

Assembly, Installation, Setup

To get the most out of the SUUNTO Race, you’ll need to pair it with the companion app on your phone.  With the app installed you’ll need to create a SUUNTO account if you don’t have one, then accept the terms and allow permissions/notifications.  Some of these you can skip, though doing so may limit some of the features of the watch.

Once you answer a few more questions, it’ll put you into the pairing workflow.  Continue following the prompts, and everything will connect automagically.

After getting connected, the app will walk you through some of the basic functions of the watch – and that’s it!

Performance

There is a lot this watch can do when paired with the SUUNTO app, and it would be impossible to cover every use case here.  I used this watch as my daily driver for the last thirty days, and brought it along for each bike ride and weight training session.  I expect I’ll still be finding new things this watch can do into the foreseeable future, and as SUUNTO continues to roll out updates.

General

In day-to-day use, the Race is a great water resistant (100m) smartwatch that covers all the bases.  The 1.43″, 466×466 resolution AMOLED display is bright and clear.  I do wish the screen was just slightly bigger (or the case slightly smaller) as there is a bit of a deadzone between the display and bezel.

All the usual functions of a smartwatch are here, and executed well.  You can interact with notifications from your phone, track steps/sleep/heart rate, daily calories burned, etc.

SUUNTO’s app does a really good job of data visualization, as referenced here by one of the daily summary views.

Within the app, SUUNTO has a ‘Coach’ program in beta which will offer insights into your training readiness and progress.  This references all the available data points captured by the watch to suggest an emphasis on different areas of training and recovery.  The call outs in the below screen shot are spot on – the week prior saw me travelling for work where my training and sleep absolutely suffered as a result.

I mentioned before the ability to interact with notifications, though an honorable shout out is the ability to respond to MFA push notification requests from my wrist.  Absolute. Game. Changer.  I know other watches can do this, but I’d be devastated if the Race could not.

Navigating the watch interface with either the touch screen or crown works pretty well, with minor stutters on occasion when moving quickly through workout data or rapidly scrolling the myriad of menu/control panel items.

With power saving mode off, always on display turned on, DND enabled (screen off) from 9pm-5:30am, I’m getting about a week between charges.  This is while tracking around 30-60 min of activity a day, whether cycling or weight training.

Cycling

In the hierarchy of fitness activities that are important to me, cycling is easily at the top – though I’m not training to beat the record set by Mark Cavendish in this years Tour de France for most all-time stage wins.  I weight train to be a better cyclist, and my approach to cycling is generally in the vein of long-slow-distance as I gravitate to bike tours as my happy place.

The Race can connect to Strava and Komoot to aggregate your training stats, though I found it was (understandably) far less friendly to anything Garmin.  Without the ability to use the watch to broadcast heart rate, I was unable to connect it to my Garmin Edge 830 bike computer for those stats.  In comparison to my bike computer, the SUUNTO Race was very spot on when compared side by side for a 22 mile ride.

Perhaps my favorite post-ride (or any GPS tracked activity) feature is the ability to see a path summary against your performance data.  The below video shows the data from the same bike ride, where you can see altitude, heart rate, and speed as a backdrop to where I was on the trail.  This data was captured entirely from the SUUNTO Race.

I did find that my heart rate with the SUUNTO Race seems to trend higher than what I would have expected.  Usually, I’m at a 140bpm average for that same ride.  Seeing some of the heart rate stats actually drop as I’m getting through climbs suggests that something is a little off with how the Race is measuring this, as I’d expect the opposite to happen.  Smartwatches aren’t known for great accuracy in this regard, and this has all but reaffirmed my thoughts that I should probably just get a chest strap at some point for these readings.

The Komoot integration means that rides I’ve planned in the Komoot app carry over easily, though the route planner in the SUUNTO app is no slouch.

Weight training

If I were disappointed with anything in the Race, it would be the lack of ability to properly track reps and sets in the app.  I tried creating a custom workout plan just for weight training, but it seems the best you can do at the moment is time how long each set takes.  I know this isn’t a particularly strong point of any smartwatch, but having the ability to go back into the app to create a log of the workout would be great.  Then the app could provide some data points like 1RM, etc.  As it is now, all I really get is a timer, heart rate, and calories burned.

What I like about the SUUNTO Race smartwatch

• Wonderful aesthetics and build quality
• Data points are well meshed with visualization in both the watch and app
• Good range of customization in watch faces and widgets (these features were also updated mid-review by SUUNTO to enable even more customization here)

What needs to be improved?

• Heart rate stats are suspect, and missing the ability to broadcast heart rate to other devices
• Proprietary charging cradle that costs $50 to replace
• Ability to log weight training in a meaningful way

Final thoughts

In a word, the SUUNTO Race watch is excellent.  The analytics provided by the app are detailed and valuable, with an emphasis on training performance over socials.  While not perfect, SUUNTO has demonstrated their commitment to improving on their product through updates to both the app and Race.  This is the sort of fitness tracker and app experience that motivates through analytics, and it succeeds in doing so.  I’m looking forward to many more rides with the Race.

Price: $449 Stainless / $549 Titanium
Where to buy: SUUNTO and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by SUUNTO. SUUNTO did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.