Suunto may not be a brand as familiar as Rolex when it comes to watches or Fitbit when it comes to fitness trackers, but it has a wide variety of fitness tracking watches with the flourish of a premium watchmaker.
The latest offering from Suunto is part of its Spartan Collection of sport smartwatches, and is called the Spartan Trainer Wrist HR.
This new smartwatch is the successor to the Suunto Spartan Sport Wrist HR, which has been used by TechRadar’s very own Running Man of Tech, Gareth Beavis.
The older Sport model featured what Beavis described as “one of the best wrist-based heart rate monitors” he’d ever seen, and the Spartan Trainer Wrist HR features the same heart rate monitoring technology, made by Valencell. But the Spartan Trainer Wrist HR also finds ways to improve on the faults of some of Suunto’s other watches.
Slimmer and cheaper
Past Suunto activity trackers have been reviewed as bulky and overly expensive, including the Spartan Sport Wrist HR. But the new Spartan Trainer Wrist HR trims down both the bulk and the price.
Base models start out at $279 (£219, AU$399) and 56 grams in weight, and two models are available with metal bezels that cost $329 (£279.99, about AU$420) and bump the weight up to 66 grams.
The Suunto Trainer Wrist HR can track 80 different activities from running to cycling to swimming, and uses GPS to track the wearer’s speed pace distance, and altitude. Motion sensing and heart rate measurements also provide step counts and track burnt calories.
With water resistance up to 50 meters and a 10-hour battery while GPS is on, it’s ready for most fitness activities. It’s power-saving mode claims to stretch tracking up to 30 hours, and disabling all tracking can stretch the battery out for 14 days.
With a sleek design and customizable watch faces, it’s a fitness tracker that can pass for a normal watch day to day but still provide plenty of tracking details during physical activities.
