SpielByWeb

[maxxwell]

Suunto, a Finnish company known for making some of the finest sports watches you can buy, has just announced its very first Wear OS watch, the Suunto 7. It is expensive, but has the most upscale features that you can expect any Wear OS watch right now.

Before asking, yes, Suunto 7 is powered by SoC Snapdragon Wear 3100 and has 1 GB of RAM. That's roughly the bare minimum we expect from Wear OS watches in order to run the software smoothly - nothing less means poor performance. Elsewhere, you get ~ 4.5 GB of user-accessible storage for music and apps, as well as Google Pay support. No LTE model is available. You will therefore have to rely on a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection to access your phone.

However, this may not be a problem. The biggest selling point of the Suunto 7 is its sporty nature, and Suunto has really packed this watch full of outdoor features. It has a built-in GPS with support for offline offline maps, as well as support for Suunto thermal maps - the routes frequently taken by Suunto users - through 15 different activities. A barometric altimeter and an optical heart rate sensor complete its sensors.

Don't miss the basics of AA: the best running gear, the best running watches, and more. But sometimes it's hard to know where to start, especially if ...

The advantage of using a non-Wear OS smartwatch is that they can usually last much longer on a charge (Wear OS is very power hungry). The company says the Suunto 7 will last 12 hours in GPS mode and 48 hours in normal use. It is far from other GPS watches such as the Suunto 5 and Garmin Forerunner series, but on par with what other Wear OS champions offer.

The watch has a total of four buttons around the case: one on the left, three on the right. The button at the top left will scroll through your most frequently used applications; the upper right corner allows you to choose sports modes; the central button is the home button and can be used as a rotating crown; and the button at the bottom right is customizable. Personally, I like smartwatches with physical buttons (I don't like playing with touch screens during the race), so I'm happy to see a lot of buttons here.

If you're interested and want to buy one for yourself, the Suunto 7 will go on sale Friday, January 31 for $ 499. It will be sold on Suunto.com, in REI stores and online, and in Best Buy stores and online.

Suunto is not trying to please the average user with its new Wear OS watch. The average user, or really anyone else who wants a Wear OS watch for everything but fitness, should probably buy the Fossil Gen 5.

On the contrary, the Suunto 7 is intended for people who want an outdoor GPS watch but do not want to sacrifice the functionality of the smartwatch. In the past, Suunto, Garmin, Fitbit and Polar have focused on strengthening their own operating systems to catch up with Wear OS and Watch OS. Since Google’s ecosystem has already covered the tough stuff (mainly app partnerships), it made sense for Suunto to join Wear OS.