Suunto 9 Peak Pro smart watch

Call it serendipity. No sooner had I decided to begin open-water swimming than David Wolf of Closer Communications suggested I review the new Suunto 9 Peak Pro – the Finnish brand’s flagship smart watch.

The 9 Peak Pro is a sports watch that is not only powerful and tough but great-looking as well. And, having been a big fan of the brand since buying one of their dive watches in the early 2000s, and writing a Suunto 7 review back in 2020, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity.

It has a crazy amount of tech on board, including GPS, compass, altimeter and barometer, and completes the ecosystem by syncing with the Suunto smartphone app for things like data and progress charts. You can also connect to over 200 partner apps, such as Strava, Komoot and TrainingPeaks.

All this tech lets you plan and track just about any sport you can do (see below) and also keep tabs on daily activities such as steps, kilojoules burned and sleep patterns.

Suunto 9 Peak Pro setup

Even if you’re a complete tech novice, this Suunto sports watch is very easy to set up and use.

When you first turn it on, it takes you through a basic configuration process, setting language, gender, birth year, unit system (metric or imperial), time format and weight.

You then download the Suunto smartphone app, which adds a whole heap of functionality. This includes the ability to analyse your data, see route maps, plan your routes and workouts and connect to third-party sports services such as Strava.

On the road (or in the water)

After using the watch for swimming, snorkelling and walking for a couple of months, here are some of my favourite features and my thoughts on using them:

Huge number of sports modes

Whatever sport you do, it’s probably on here. I was pleased to see it offered different modes for pool and open-water swimming, as it does for other activities such as running (basic, trail running basic, trail running mountain) and cycling (basic, indoor, mountain biking, gravel). And the list goes on, from paragliding to roller skating, martial arts and dancing. There are 97 all up, with the ability to create custom modes as well.

Accurate GPS

For greater accuracy, the Suunto 9 Peak Pro can connect with up to 32 individual satellites simultaneously, via up to four satellite systems. When I started using it I didn’t wait for the GPS to get a fix on a satellite before heading off, so my maps and distances were a bit out. But give it 30 seconds or so after choosing your sports mode and all’s good. While swimming offshore, I checked the watch’s accuracy against my wife’s Fitbit and the two aligned perfectly.

Long battery life

You get a huge 21 days’ use out of the watch in daily use, and up to 40 hours when using the best GPS mode. I drained the battery a bit because one of the things I really like about this watch is being able to set the face to be on and bright most of the time. It meant I needed to charge it a little more often, but, with a long-lasting battery like this, that was a tradeoff I could live with. It’s also fast charging – one hour will get it back to 100 per cent, and 10 minutes will give you 10 hours of training time.

Made for the water

Suunto has leveraged its long history of making dive watches to make the 9 Peak Pro waterproof to 100 metres, and add a dedicated snorkelling mode that gives you data on depth, distance, heart rate and dive time down to 10 metres.

Design and build

Like all of Suunto’s products, this is a great-looking watch. It’s very slim, at 10.8mm thick, and I found the 43mm-diameter dial was the perfect size for both screen clarity and looking sharp on your wrist. That said, my wife really liked the look of the 9 Peak Pro but found it just too big for her smaller wrist.

We reviewed the All Black model, which has a black stainless-steel bezel and a black silicone strap. Other popular colours are Ocean Blue, Pearl Gold and Forest Green. There are also Slate and Sand models with titanium bezels. If you order your watch from the Suunto website you can customise it by choosing from a number of straps – 16 silicone, three microfibre and three leather. You can also have the back engraved.

The build quality is excellent, and you get the feeling this watch will survive any number of knocks. In fact, Suunto says it was tested according to the MIL-STD 810G US military-grade standard, which includes tests for temperature, pressure, humidity, shock, drop, sand and dust.

Class-leading interface

This, I think is one of Suunto’s great strengths. The redesigned interface is now highly intuitive, with the functions able to be controlled by the touchscreen or a combination of three buttons – necessary when you can’t use the touchscreen due to gloves or wet fingers. In the past, I’ve used a number of smartwatches which left me stumped and having to check out the instruction manual time after time – including the Suunto 7 from two years ago. No such problems here. And the 9 Peak Pro is very fast and responsive as well.

The bottom line

The Suunto 9 Peak Pro is simply a great sports watch. It looks great, it feels good on the wrist and it has all the features you need to track and enjoy just about any activity you can think of. The Suunto interface is the best around and should be used by other manufacturers as a lesson in usability.

Suunto’s commitment to sustainability and lessening its environmental impact is also among the best. The 9 Peak Pro is made in Finland using 100 per cent renewable energy, is both long-lasting and repairable, and the CO2 emissions created by each watch are compensated for using Verified Carbon Units.

Suunto 9 Peak Pro price

RRP $959.99 (titanium)

RRP $759.99 (stainless steel)

Available through the Suunto Online Store, Bing Lee, The Good Guys and Find Your Feet.

suunto.com/en-au