Athlete Greta Truscott puts the Suunto 9 Peak smart watch through its paces
The Suunto 9 Peak sports watch is the brand’s latest flagship model, with features such as blood oxygen measurement, 80-plus sport modes and customisable screens. Slimmer, lighter and better looking than most pro-level smart watches, it provides up to 170 hours of GPS recording capacity in Tour mode and can be fully charged in one hour.
We figured the best way to find out the pros and cons of the Suunto 9 Peak was to turn to someone with superb athletic cred who uses the watch in a wide variety of situations – Suunto ambassador Greta Truscott, the founder of Rejoov runners and an endurance runner, triathlete, coach and massage therapist.
Greta was recently one of several runners who used the 9 Peak in some of the harshest conditions by some of Australia’s top endurance runners as part of the ultra race 1000 Miles to Light. Led by Pat Farmer – best known as the only man who has run continuously from the North Pole to the South Pole – the athletes used the smart watch to record a range of accurate metrics and data vital to their performance while covering 1000 miles (1600km) in just 10 days.
G&T: In a general sense, how do you use the Suunto 9 Peak when training and running in races and events?
GT: With the 1000 Miles to Light running event, I found that for the 400km (80x5km stints across all various terrain) the watch distance was extremely accurate. I use the Suunto 9 Peak to record time, distance and average pace as the main three fields of interest when training and racing. I love the Suunto app’s connectivity with Strava to share data with hundreds of fellow runners. This is very motivating to see what each other is doing and I also use this data to plot future sessions and goal race times for myself and clients.
I enjoy trying to improve on various segments and get the fastest “crowns” where I can, such as the O’Sullivan Road mile in Sydney’s Rose Bay and Malabar headland trail 5.6km. I’m currently chasing the infamous 440 Bronte (10 hills/7.3km) segment, where I worked my way from 11th into 2nd recently. Segments are everywhere and are really handy challenges to target with your watch, especially through COVID when many events were cancelled.
I also find that road time trialling with your watch for regular distances, such as 5k, 10k, half marathon and marathon, worked well using the 9 Peak (instead of an event’s measured course for the events that had to go virtual due to COVID).
G&T: More specifically, which features of the watch are most useful to you?
GT: The running features of the watch which are most useful to me are:
- GPS, which is fast to load and very accurate to measure running distance
- Average pace function – useful for staying on track throughout a run
- Stop watch function for coaching running clients through our club, Rejoov Runners
- Auto km to show us kilometre splits
- Lap split function to show splits for lap courses
- Route maps – always such a buzz to look back on where you have ventured
- Altitude – how hilly the route is if you’re in the trail running mode
- Heart rate data across all the runs to cross reference with perceived effort
- Stride length
- Efficiency factor – pace\average heath rate
- Waterproof because I do a lot of ocean swimming and swim running/biathlons
- I highly value the daily steps to help gauge how active my days have been and also the notifications of messages or incoming calls.
- The sleep data, with both the duration of sleep and how much “deep sleep” I’m getting, is very helpful.
- The battery life and quickness to charge is outstanding!!
G&T: How easy do you find the 9 Peak to use? What’s the learning curve like?
GT: I found the 9 Peak pretty quick and easy to use, as I could head straight into the exercise function and the GPS connects very quickly, and starting a run is effortless to do. I could scroll through and find what I needed. The tutorials helped us learn all the various new fantastic functions. There are some functions that we needed to ask for help on via online forums, such as enabling the touchscreen toggle to see the time of day while exercising. This feature does not work very well in the wet/rain.
The screen itself could be brighter. If you enable the backlight, the battery depletes faster. In the wet or early morning/evening, the screen face is sometimes harder to read, but turning the backlight on and off again is handy for that.
G&T: What’s the design like, and is it comfortable to wear?
GT: I find the watch very stylish with the watch face and white band so I also wear it out as well as for training. I find I can wear it 24/7 easily, which is ideal for consistent data. It is lightweight and very comfortable to wear with a silky, refined type feel. It’s strong and tough and doesn’t scratch, unlike all my other watches, as my lifestyle is very active with running through trails and trees, swimming on and off rocks, bouldering at the gym and just general day-to-day activity.
G&T: How does it compare to other sports watches you’ve used?
GT: The Suunto 9 Peak is by far the most beautiful training watch I’ve found and has so much more to offer all round than the other sports watches I’ve used! In terms of running training, the 9 Peak is a real contender when you measure it up against the Garmin 735, etc. A couple of little tweaks on the next generation will ensure it can establish itself as a market leader with the running community. For instance, the two things that I think will help a lot are, firstly, for the data fields to be bolder and clearer to read while running, and, secondly, for more variation of the interval training feature. I find the interval training feature super handy for speed work to measure out duration or distance, but I noticed that we only have access to choose one specific interval distance, such as 8x400m, rather than a variation set up of 4x400m, 2x200m, 4x100m, as an example. So it’d be great to have the variation as well, which the Garmin has via ‘create a workout’ on the Garmin app.
G&T: Besides running, do you use the 9 Peak for any other activities? And how does it perform with those?
GT: I use the Suunto 9 Peak for open-water swimming and bike riding, although I haven’t tried the cheerleading mode as yet.
With open-water swimming, if you stop and tread water to chat and stop the watch, when you restart, the GPS doesn’t always pick up again and as such it doesn’t always accurately reflect the distance swum. I’d be really keen to work out how to improve on this or maybe I have to hold the watch above the water until it reconnects with GPS then continue on … or just not stop the watch.
It has awesome hardiness while indoor bouldering and outdoor climbing rocks.
Suunto 9 Peak price
All Black and Moss Gray: RRP $999.99
Granite Blue Titanium and Birch White Titanium: RRP $1199.99
Available from Harvey Norman, Find Your Feet, Wild Earth and other specialty retailers.
