Suunto Run Review

Introduction

The Suunto Run is a sports watch designed primarily for runners who also want a smartwatch on their wrist for less than much of the competition.

The AMOLED-toting Run seems to have all the key bases covered. It features the latest GPS technology, promises almost two weeks of battery life, and offers bucketloads of training insights, along with Suunto-first features like a music player to keep you company without a smartphone.

After a relatively bleak period, Suunto has made a comeback over the last few years, giving the likes of Garmin and Polar a better run for their money. It also aims to provide you with an experience that rivals some of the best smartwatches, such as the Apple Watch, in terms of tracking your workout time.

Design and screen

• Available in four colours
• 1.32-inch AMOLED screen
• Removable nylon strap

The Run is the kind of sports watch you grab if you prefer your watches to be light and compact. While it has a larger-than-average 46mm case, it weighs just 36g. Suunto uses a standard polymer for the case and pairs it with a comfortable, high-quality nylon strap to keep it securely around your wrist.

There’s your pick of yellow, black, coral orange or grey colours, so whether you want something understated or loud, you’ve got options.

Suunto features a stainless steel bezel around a 1.32-inch, 466 x 466 resolution AMOLED touchscreen, protected from scratches with Gorilla Glass. It’s a good-quality AMOLED panel in terms of colours and visibility, although not as bright as rival watches.

More of an issue is the slightly laggy response you get from swiping through screens on it. This is something I experienced on the Suunto Race and Race S, and is an aspect that separates Suunto’s watches – but not in a good way.

On the rugged front, it can operate at extreme temperatures, spanning both ends of the scale. That’s a range of -20° C to +55° C.

It’s a watch you can take swimming, as the Run offers a 5 ATM waterproof rating, making it safe to be submerged in water up to a depth of 50 metres. While it’s a watch primarily built for running, there are also pool and open-water swimming modes to tap into.

Around the back, you’ll find the Run’s optical sensor that’s capable of tracking your heart rate and blood oxygen levels. It’s also your sign that you’re dealing with a proprietary charging cable, which is actually a slightly different one to the charger included with Suunto’s Race and Race S watches.

Performance and software

• Includes a music player 
• View notifications and weather forecasts
• Can sync data to major third-party fitness apps

Like Suunto’s other AMOLED sports watches, the Run is compatible with both Android phones and iPhones. I’ve been using it across both platforms, and the experience of setting up, syncing and adjusting settings has been problem-free. I still find Suunto’s companion app a bit stuck in the past, both in-app and on the web, but it has been optimised.

While you can sync data to third-party apps like Strava, TrainingPeaks and Adidas Running, you don’t get full access to Suunto’s entire SuuntoPlus app ecosystem that can enhance the powers of Suunto’s watches. 

The software experience on the watch is fine, but I do think when compared to the user interfaces on rival watches, there’s still some work to be done. The decision over where features live and your journey to access them doesn’t always seem the most intuitive, and coupled with screen lag, this is where the Run lags behind the competition.

When you’re not in tracking mode, Suunto offers some, but not all, of the typical features you’d expect to find on a smartwatch.

You can view phone notifications, and there’s a 4GB music player you can drag and drop your audio files onto when you plug the Run into a laptop. Doing that can be a bit slow going, and while the controls work well on the watch, you’ll need access to plenty of your own audio files to make the best use of the feature.

Tracking and features

• Different heart rate sensor from Race and Race S
• 34 sports modes
• Dual-band GPS included

The Run, as the name suggests, is made for runners first, but it also has the capability to track a host of other sports. The other core modes are cycling and swimming, and it can be used for multi-sport events like triathlons, letting you change modes during events.

For runners, you’ve got Suunto’s latest dual-band GPS mode, promising and delivering strong accuracy tracking outdoor runs, even when near tall buildings and deeply wooded areas. I’ve been using it against one of Garmin’s dual-band watches, and the distance data as well as the GPS tracks have been nicely in line. 

Additional running-centric features include the ability to set up and get guidance during interval training workouts. A ghost runner mode lets you race against a particular pace.

On both the watches, there’s a host of training insights and metrics you can pore over as well. These include a training stress score (TSS), which evaluates the intensity of your workout. PTE is one that assesses the impact of a workout on your aerobic fitness. There are also more familiar metrics like VO2 Max estimates.

Suunto needs to refine the presentation and delivery of these insights, as I can imagine that beginner runners will find them a bit daunting.

I’ve also used the Run for pool swims, indoor bike rides and general gym workouts, and the performance has very much been in keeping with Suunto’s other watches. It’s absolutely a watch that has the capability of reliably tracking sports outside of running.

Suunto says it has introduced a new optical sensor to track heart rate and blood oxygen levels. The heart rate tracking for continuous monitoring and for most workouts in general has been generally good, matching up well with a heart rate monitor strap for exercise and Garmin’s own continuous heart rate monitoring.

In terms of other notable features, you can use the Run to explore new routes and places with an altimeter sensor on board for additional outdoor metrics. You don’t, however, get the full mapping support you do get on Suunto’s pricier watches. Instead, you have to make do with simpler breadcrumb-style trails to follow on-screen. 

You can use it like a fitness and sleep tracker, though these don’t feel like features Suunto has massively prioritised based on my experience. Daily step counts seemed a bit off from two other fitness trackers I wore alongside it, for starters.

Sleep tracking isn’t the finest I’ve experienced on a sports watch either. It breaks down sleep stages and records sleep duration, but there isn’t a clear effort to correlate sleep data with exercise and other metrics that the Run can capture.

Battery life

• Up to 12 days of battery life
• Up to 40 hours of GPS battery life
• Uses a new proprietary charging cable

It’s safe to say you won’t need to charge the Suunto Run every few days. However, with the AMOLED display illuminated at all times, the promised battery numbers drop much more quickly.

Suunto says you should be able to enjoy up to 12 days when using it as a smartwatch, and it maxes out at up to 40 hours on GPS battery life. If you opt for its most accurate GPS mode, that 40 hours becomes 20 hours. It doesn’t state, however, what the battery life is like if you opt to enable the always-on display mode.

In my testing, the daily drop with the screen on 24/7 got me a maximum of four days. That is with tracking workouts and using core smartwatch features as well. If you can live without the screen on at all times, you will absolutely push through a week of battery life.

If you compare performance to other sports watches that sit around the price of the Suunto Run, the Garmin Forerunner 165 promises similar numbers with or without the screen on. Meanwhile, the excellent Coros Pace 3, which doesn’t include an AMOLED screen, can last up to 15 days. So it’s very much in keeping with the competition.

When it’s time to charge, you’ll need to use the proprietary charging cable, and annoyingly, it’s a slightly different one from the one used on other new Suunto watches. It’s also a little flimsy in terms of how well it holds onto the back of the watch case, making it easy to knock out of place.

Should you buy it?

FAQs