Suunto Race review

With the launch of the new Suunto Race, it’s fair to say that the AMOLED war has well and truly begun.

This crisp, vivid display technology is now the preserve of sports watch manufacturers looking to impart a hint of luxury into a triathlete’s performance.

The Polar Vantage 3, Apple Watch Ultra 2, Garmin Forerunner 965 and now Suunto’s new Race all feature this high-definition resolution.

• Best triathlon watches reviewed

Suunto Race pricing and usability

But you could argue that Suunto’s stolen a march on them all as the Race’s RRP is £479 for the titanium version on test here, but £90 cheaper for the stainless steel.

That £389 compares incredibly favourably to the Vantage 3 (£519), the Garmin Forerunner 965 (£599.99) and Apple Ultra 2 (£799.99).

The Race is also incredibly usable, as you can scroll through the feature list via the touchscreen or the authoritative digital crown, which is complemented by a button either side. Both are effective even with mid-winter gloves on.

Standout features

As for that feature list, a standout is heart rate variability (HRV) tracking that’s not seen on its slightly older sibling, the Vertical.

As a reminder, HRV tracks the timing intervals between heartbeats to measure the activity of the autonomous nervous system.

It uses this to determine how stressed, fresh, ready or prepared you are for a session. This information steers many further data points including sleep quality.

Like many, this seems accurate enough in terms of sleep and awake time but, in general, when it comes to analysing specific phases of sleep, it’s about 80% accurate. Which isn’t sufficient for any great learnings.

Many of the other features are rather impressive. Myriad training metrics monitor the progressive, or not, nature of your daily and weekly sessions, and include Training Stress Balance (TSB), Training Stress Score (TSS) and Chronic Training Load (CTL).

If you’re a Training Peaks (TP) user, this’ll be familiar as Suunto’s licenced them. It means this detail should complement your current TP account.

Suunto race mapping

A further big sell of the Race is its in-built mapping. If you’re married to maps, this is where you might choose the titanium over the stainless-steel version as it has 32GB storage compared to 16GB, though the latter’s fine for most.

To access maps – which you do via region – you download over WiFi from the usable and comprehensive Suunto app.

It’s a neat, practical feature with the only frustration from the inability to zoom out more than a 500m radius.

Activity tracking

Naturally for a top-end watch, it comes with a wealth of swim, bike and run metrics including pool and open-water data, power-meter support and running power.

There are also preconfigured multisport modes. The only moot point here is that it only syncs to one sensor at the time, which isn’t great if you’re looking to connect to, say, a power meter and Zwift at the same time.

In our experience, heart-rate accuracy was pretty good for an optical sensor.

Everyday features and battery life

There are a host of daily features, like controlling the music on your phone, to suit most palates. It’s impressive.

But arguably the most impressive aspect is its battery life, which is Coros-like in its longevity with 40hrs in full-on GPS.

That’s even enough for ultra-triathletes. All in all, this is one fine watch.

Suunto Race specs

Price:	£389/$449 (stainless steel version), £479/$549 (titanium version)
Weight:	83g (stainless steel), 69g (titanium)
Battery life:	Up to 16 days smartwatch mode, up to 50 hours with multi-band GPS
GPS:	GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS, BEIDOU
Maps?	Full mapping, plus 16GB (stainless steel) or 32GB storage (titanium)

See more of our triathlon watch reviews here, or if you need more fitness tech take a look at our list of the best heart rate monitors for running and triathlon.