The best Suunto watches you can buy

Suunto is a big name in the world of sports watches but not so much in the smartwatch world. The Finnish company produces wearables chiefly for outdoor enthusiasts and sports professionals looking for performance monitoring and onboard GPS smarts with lengthy battery life. Suunto watches are also known for their build quality.

Buying the right Suunto watch for your needs

All Suunto watches focus on fitness and sports tracking above smart features. In this respect, you can’t really go wrong with any if you’re seeking a training companion. A heart rate sensor can be found on every watch listed below. They all feature water resistance to some degree, too, and each uses Suunto’s mobile health, training, and planning app. Fitness tracking for a dizzying number of activities, from fishing to skiing, is also a common trait. While battery life will differ between these devices, all feature battery-saving modes for use with GPS.

However, the models do differ in some key areas. As with any product, finding the right Suunto device is about weighing up the features you need against the device’s value. We break down the key differences below to help you find the best Suunto watch for your needs.

See also: The best fitness trackers you can buy right now

The best Suunto watches

• The Suunto 9 Peak is the best Suunto watch you can buy. It crams the best of the Baro’s features into a slimmer body and then some. It’s also the best-looking Suunto you can buy for the boardroom but will serve a hiker or mountain climber just as well.
• The Suunto 9 Baro is the best Suunto for multisports enthusiasts. It crams a kitchen sink’s worth of features into a stocky, hardy outdoor multisports watch.
• The Suunto 7 is the best Suunto smartwatch. Powered by Wear OS, this is the best option for those wanting a more familiar smartwatch experience with the usual Google services.
• The Suunto 5 is the best Suunto for most people. It includes all the core smarts of the Baro and Peak but ditches some specifics and pricier features.
• The Suunto 3 is the cheapest Suunto watch on this list. It sheds several features but makes up for it at a lower price. It’s the best gateway Suunto you can buy.

The Suunto 9 Peak is the firm’s new flagship wearable. It’s essentially an upgraded Baro (below) in a slimmer 10.6mm thick body, which should make for a more comfortable fit when out and about. It’s also considerably lighter and smaller than its Baro counterpart, weighing 62 grams with a 43mm diameter face. The Peak doesn’t slim down on build quality, though. It arrives with a sapphire glass lens melded into a polyamide/stainless steel shell.

Suunto also touts a usual battery life of two weeks but can also last for 170 hours in GPS tour mode, or 25 hours with high-accuracy GPS tracking. Paired with offline turn-by-turn navigation, this makes it ideal for weekend treks or mountain climbing adventures. The Peak also includes an optical heart rate sensor and an SpO2 sensor meant for blood oxygen tracking at high altitudes. You’re also getting the ability to update firmware over the air, which is an oddly novel feature for Suunto.

That said, the Peak lacks a few creature comforts common on other smartwatches, including no wireless payments support and no onboard music storage or control smarts.

Suunto 9 Baro: The best Suunto watch for multisports

The Suunto 9 Baro, like the Peak, packs a laundry list of features. For one, it’s tough and bulky. It uses a glass fiber reinforced polyamide body surrounded by a stainless steel bezel. The package is water-resistant up to 100 meters. In total, it weighs in at 81 grams. The 50mm face is also coated in sapphire glass.

Suunto also claims the same battery life numbers for the Baro as the Peak, and the company’s usual GPS battery saving modes also feature. An altimeter and barometer inform onboard weather forecasts, offline navigation also features, while activity tracking covering a wealth of activities (more than 80) is also baked in. A heart rate monitor adds to its utility as a fitness tracker.

Despite all of this, the Suunto 9 Baro is expensive for what it lacks. Like the Peak, you won’t get additional health tracking add-ons found on other smartwatches, like an ECG or BIA sensor. There’s also no NFC and no wireless payments system available. You also miss out on the Peak’s SpO2 sensor and OTA updates.

The Suunto 7 is the company’s only genuine smartwatch running Google’s Wear OS as a software base. This probably makes it the most adept device for Android users seeking a balance between sports tracking and smartwatch features. It includes sleep tracking, body resource measurements, and continuous heart rate tracking. The Suunto 7 also tracks more than 70 sports, features support for Google Pay, Google Assistant, and the app benefits of Wear OS.

Wear OS’s presence might be a blessing and a curse, though. The OS has its fair share of problems, even if it does play nicer with Android devices. It seems unlikely that the Suunto 7 will be bumped up to Wear OS 3, too. The watch also doesn’t last as long between charges as its counterparts. Beyond this, the Suunto 7 doesn’t pack support for external heart rate monitors, but this might not be something buyers of this particular device overtly requires.

Divers and swimmers may want to look elsewhere, too. The Suunto 7 features 50m water resistance and lacks the weather alert systems of its pricier siblings.

Check out our full review to learn more about the Suunto 7.

The Suunto 5 is one of the firm’s older offerings. It features a stocky bezel and a 46mm mineral crystal glass face. This does help keep the costs down somewhat but may impact durability versus its sapphire-toting siblings.

It’s also the middle child in Suunto’s range but still packs some features of the more expensive watches. This includes training modes that extend the device’s life while using GPS, albeit a little less than the Peak and Baro. Tracking for more than 80 sports, a host of fitness metrics and workout recovery information, and a heart rate monitor are also lumped in.

However, it suffers from a tiny, blotchy display that might push people towards an equivalent Garmin or running watch alternative. Nevertheless, the Suunto 5 is the Goldilocks Suunto device if you can look past these flaws.

The Suunto 3 is the lightest and smallest watch in the range. It looks like a mini Suunto 9 Baro, weighs in at just 30 grams, and packs five days of battery life. It also includes tracking for various sport modes, heart rate monitoring, and compatibility with several tracking services.

Where the Suunto 3 falls short is its lack of built-in GPS. It’s the only Suunto on this list that will require a companion phone to track your runs. This omission, and a few others, does bring its price down by a fair bit, so the trade-off makes sense for those less serious about their training regimes. However, if you do need a GPS watch, we’d recommend fishing above the Suunto 3. But as a gateway Suunto watch, the 3 does just fine.

Honorable mentions

That’s it for our list of the best Suunto watches you can buy, but it’s only a taste of what’s out there. We also want to give an honorable mention to these products:

• Suunto 9: Even though it’s a little long in the tooth, there’s still plenty going for the original Suunto 9. It lacks the integrated weather features included with the Baro and Peak, but it still packs 100m water resistance, a tough shell, and a claimed week’s worth of battery life with GPS training modes. Thanks to its age, it’s also fairly affordable.