Suunto 9 barometer is a great sports watch for outdoor activities like hiking or camping. Read our Suunto 9 Baro Review to find out why!
- Suunto 9 Baro: This durable multisport GPS watch is designed for athletes who demand the best; Featuring over 80 sports modes, a barometer for accurate altitude info, and wrist heart rate monitor
- Built To Last: Made for training, racing and extreme adventures, this GPS watch delivers up to 120 hours of continuous exercise tracking; Water resistant to 100 meters; Great for running, hiking, cycling and more
- Get Connected: Connect to your favorite sports apps and services from the Suunto app to get more from your watch; Share with your sports communities and access specific training analysis and guidance
- Adventure Starts Here: Combining Scandinavian design with ultra durable materials, our watches track your sports, daily activity, and sleep to help you keep life, training and recovery in balance
- Authentic Heritage: Founded in 1936, Suunto brings over 80 years of high-quality heritage craftsmanship, relentless accuracy, and pioneering innovation to our watches, compasses, and dive products. Proudly made with 100% renewable energy
Suunto 9 is a real outperformer. It has an amazing battery life of 120 hours of GPS monitoring to outlast even the longest endurance challenges. Tracking more than 80 sports activities modes and an optical heart rate monitor. This is an adventure sports watch for extreme athletes willing to push themselves to their limits. Here is the Suunto 9 Baro review:
Design and features
- Battery life: 25-120 hours with GPS
- Dimensions: 50mm face x 16.5mm depth
- Weight: 72g
- Resolution: 320 x 300
- Stainless steel bezel & removable silicone strap
- Operating temperature: -20° C to +55° C
- Glass fibre reinforced polyamide casing
- Water resistance: 100 m
- LED back-lit screen
Suunto 9 Size
This is a chunky piece of the watch, standing between the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus and 5X Plus. The Suunto 9 is a big watch. I have a fairly small wrist (by male standards), barely fitting comfortably. The face of the watch is 51mm wide and 17.5mm thick, and the watch weighs 76g. For comparison’s sake, the Garmin Fenix 5S is 42mm wide and 15.5mm thick, weighing 55g. So the Suunto 9 is significantly larger than other multisport watches on the market.
The size makes sense considering that this watch has a battery life of up to 120 hours in Ultra mode, which uses GPS intermittently to conserve battery life. In standard mode, you get 25 hours with full-time GPS tracking, comparable to most multisport watches today. That’s also about twice as long as you’d get from an Apple Watch or Android Wear device.
So there are two ways to look at this: You can go with a smaller watch that lasts less time, or you can go with a more oversized watch that lasts more time. The choice is yours.
Suunto 9 Display
The display is a sapphire crystal that can survive knocks and scratches. It has a 320 x 300 matrix color touchscreen, which isn’t that bright. The display is big enough to show up to five in-session stats at a time that is easy to read. It displays numbers and charts such as heart rate progression in enough detail.
The resolution is pretty high compared to top market competitors. Garmin 5 Plus series is crafted with 240 x 240 pixels. However, although the resolution is much higher, the readability lacks behind Garmin’s flagship.
Suunto 9 comes in 3 colors: black with a dark metallic bezel, white with a brushed aluminum bezel, and lime.
It offers a variety of customizable features to help preserve battery life. These are manually adjustable brightness, screen-saver style dimmer, and auto power saves settings kick in when you move between power modes.
The watch locks to avoid any miss-presses. You need to push a button first and then start swiping.
The Suunto 9 still suffers from complexity when it comes to the menu. Out of the box, the menu is entirely intuitive. The interface needs some time to get used to.
Performance
- Tracking covers a huge range of activities apart from Running, Cycling, Swimming
- GPS, Altimeter, Optical heart-rate monitor
- Long battery life (with tracking capabilities)
- Magnetic charging cable
The Suunto 9 supports up to 80 different activities. These range from the most common ones like running or walking to rare ones like yoga, sailing, and everything in between.
Every activity can be customized by adjusting what exercise data is shown on the screen. Changing screen data during the activities is straightforward. The user can add extra data or less to optimize battery life.
The menu is organized into a shortlist of up to 20 activities you can add using Suunto Movescount software.
Choose one from the training menu and wait for the GPS signal to start an exercise. GPS is quick and takes less than a minute to lock. The touchscreen is automatically turned off as soon as you start exercising. During any activity, you can use the buttons to navigate between screens. Like most multisport watches, the Suunto 9 displays distances, elevation, heart rate data, etc.
After exercising, you’re requested to reply to how you feel with a “smile” scale from excellent to poor. You can skip this process or turn it off. The data is saved in a logbook on your smartphone to review whenever you like.
Coaching
Apart from the outstanding battery life, the watch offers many coaching choices for activities fulfilling the most demanding athletes. These are Running, Cycling, Swimming, Trail Running, Treadmill, Power Cycling, Indoor Cycling, Mountain Biking, Openwater Swimming, Triathlon Race, Obstacle Race, Weight Training, Circuit Training, Hiking, Cross-Country Skiing, Alpine Skiing, Ski Touring, many other.
Apart from the activities, Suunto 9 is equipped with a step counter and a sleep tracker. Step counting is performed with a built-in accelerometer.
The large display of Suunto 9 offers a wide range of data during and after any activity.
Regarding the battery, you will never worry about running out of whatever activity you choose. It comes with three predefined battery modes, Performance, Endurance, and Ultra, delivering from 25 to 120 hours of recording time with GPS tracking. This means it can easily accompany you at any ultra race event, like Spartathlon or Iron man, without any worries.
Charging is straightforward, using a magnetic docking clip easily put in place.
GPS Accuracy
One of Suunto 9 over the Spartan models is the chipset switch from SIRF to Sony.
In Performance mode, rated for 25 hours in training mode with GPS, Suunto 9 delivers the best GPS accuracy with maximum brightness. This mode provides GPS accuracy quite closely to the Fenix 5 Plus.
Endurance mode, rated for 50 hours in training mode with good GPS accuracy and 20% brightness. This mode can last approximately 5 days on one charge averaging around 2 to 3 hours per day.
Ultra mode, rated for 120 hours in training mode with GPS. This mode offers adequate GPS accuracy, and the display screen operates at 10% normal brightness.
In Ultra & Endurance modes, GPS readings are further apart, up to 60 seconds, to extend battery life.
FusedTrack: improve accuracy, less energy consumption
At this point is where FusedTrack comes in. A major innovation introduced by Suunto 9.
FusedTrack technology combines GPS signal with motion sensor data delivering great GPS accuracy. This function, developed by Suunto, reduces the necessary GPS performance and thus increases battery life. A useful function, especially for long training sessions. FusedTrack supports power management lowering the sampling rate of GPS signals.
Once you hit the navigation function during your activity, the watch automatically switches to the best GPS accuracy. Suunto 9 will ask if you switch modes in case of low battery during an activity. If the watch runs out, it automatically switches to Chrono to ensure it lasts until the end of your activity.
FusedSpeed is ideal for serious athletes. It combines wrist acceleration and GPS data to measure running speed more accurately. It’s great running interval training.
Suunto 9 Power Management
With advanced power management, you can choose between 1-second accuracy and up to 120 hours of battery life or 5-second accuracy with up to 25 hours of battery life in Ultra mode. The watch will switch to dynamic GPS mode for an additional 120 hours (240 hours total). The watch tracks your location every 60 seconds instead of once per second in continuous mo in dynamic GPS mode. If you don’t need that much time, you can also use Power Save mode to extend your battery life by disabling some power-hungry features like GPS endless synchronization.
You can also use the Suunto app for iOS and Android to control power management settings on your watch.
The Suunto 9 is one of the first watches to feature a barometer sensor. This sensor is used to help the watch determine your current altitude. The Suunto 9 also has a built-in alt barometer sensor. This sensor is used to help the watch decide on your current altitude. The Suunto 9 also has a built-in altimeter that can track your elevation gain/loss over time.
Wrist HR Accuracy
Suunto 9 is equipped with a new Valencell wrist HR sensor. An improvement in heart rate data accuracy over the Spartan Wrist HR Baro.
Still, as in all sports watches, the wrist-based heart rate monitor lacks accuracy. So, you’ll need the Suunto Smart Sensor, another Bluetooth-compatible device for serious heart rate training.
The optical heart rate sensor in Suunto 9 is sufficient for low-intensity activities. Based on my experience, this is true. The more static you are, the more accurate are the heart rate measures.
This means that the heart rate readings seem adequate in a brisk walk, better in a mild walk, and even more accurate when standing still. However, during a run, the HR readings are not that accurate.
We observe that the heart rate measurements through the wrist optical sensor can provide a sufficient indication for amateur athletes. In the case of serious athletes wearing a chest strap will give you accurate HR data.
Suunto 9 Baro vs Suunto 9
Suunto 9 comes in two different variations. The only difference is the built-in barometric pressure sensor in Suunto 9 Baro model. However, the original Suunto 9 does not measure barometric pressure and relies solely on GPS to calculate altitude. This makes it less accurate if GPS strength is low.
When not tracking activity, the Baro version still tracks trends in barometric pressure, which can help you forecast changes in the weather.
Setting the GPS measure interval to more than 60 seconds (60 or 120) will record vertical gain and loss more accurately.
The Suunto 9 Baro model comes in 3 editions: Titanium, Black, and White.
Conclusion
The new Suunto 9 Bar watch comes as a replacement for the Suunto Spartan Ultra. In terms of innovations, it brings a superbbattery life and FusedTrack algorithm.
The main difference is to combine extended battery life (up to 120 hours) with accurate measurements. Suunto 9 delivers optimal energy-saving modes (Performance, Endurance, Ultra) thanks to the new FusedTrack functionality.
FusedTrack is ideal for long-distance runners looking for a sports watch lasting at least 50 hours and even several days while maintaining accurate and reliable measurements.
The battery management works great. Battery life can be extended over 14 days in time mode. When selecting recordings and mobile notifications, the battery lasts at least 7 days. In GPS mode, battery life can survive 25 to 120 hours, depending on the energy-saving mode.
The intelligent battery management makes Suunto 9 is an excellent choice for endurance athletes who prefer long training sessions.
Suunto 9, compared to other sports watches in the same price range, makes a clear difference here. It offers the longest-running battery life of any other sports watch.
Pros
- Outstanding battery life
- Accuracy even in power-saving mode
- Innovative FusedTrack motion-based tracking
- High-resolution, touchscreen display
- Switch option from one battery management mode to another
- Richness of performance metrics
- Comfortable fit
- Quality, robustness and reliability
- Reasonable price
Cons
- Lacks advanced sleep analysis
- Not the brightest display
- Complex menu
FAQ
Alex is a fitness aficionado, empowers others towards healthier, active lives through small, sustainable changes for lasting results. Visit Gearuptofit.com for insightful tips and resources to enrich a balanced lifestyle.