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Suunto Vertical: The Complete User Guide

Just a quick heads up for those that aren’t subscribed on YouTube, that I’ve just hit publish on my detailed 45-minute-long user guide for the new Suunto Vertical watch. In this guide I dive into virtually every feature and how it works, or at least almost every menu option and what it does. As always, the video isn’t limited to just the new fancy stuff, but I also cover all of the existing and basic watch features too. So whether you’re a first-timer Suunto user, or upgrading from an older Suunto model, the guide should cover all the information you’ll need to get started (and likely a boatload more that you probably never knew you needed to know.)

I start off with the hardware, followed by a deep-dive into all the widgets (including new features). From there, I talk about real-world battery usage and examples with the new solar features. After that, I break-out the flashlight, and then it’s straight into sport usage for quite a while, including customizing sport modes and all the options you get when you start a workout. After that, a brief touch on sensor pairing before I spend quite a while on mapping, navigation, routing, and the new WiFi connectivity. Finally, I wrap things up with a look at the companion Suunto app, and some of the core features there that help get the most out of the watch.

There’s plenty of goodness and tips/tidbits in this video that I don’t cover as deeply in the written review. But best of all, you can skip right to the video section you’re looking for using the YouTube chapters in the video itself, or the quick-links below:

0:00 Suunto Vertical hardware overview
2:09 Watch Face, Widgets Deep-Dive, Activity Tracking, Sleep, Morning Report
13:22 Solar & Battery Usage Considerations/Real World Examples
17:15 Flashlight Feature
18:34 Sport Modes, Customization, Usage
27:37 Sensor Pairing
29:16 Mapping, Navigation, WiFi
41:34 Suunto App Explainer

As always, give it a whirl, especially checking out the notably new sections (such as mapping and map downloads via WiFi), or the solar bits. Thanks for watching!

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17 Comments

  1. ArT

    Without the backlight, this screen is almost invisible.

  2. Seb

    I think it’s worth mentioning that you can download the Suunto app onto your iPad or tablet which makes route planning and data analysis much more pleasant especially when your eyes are as bad as mine.

  3. Lajos

    This a bulky watch and they are cheating with the height like Samsung. It is more than 16mm thicc!

    • Actually, it’s 16mm thick. Here’s my measurement of it (this method isn’t always perfect, but within perhaps 0.1-0.2mm).

      Suunto’s official specs claim 13.7mm, which is basically ignoring that glossy sensor bump portion (but including the main back bulge).

    • mano

      Ray, Suunto are not cheating, as Lajos is saying.

      Check the dimension lines carefully. I attach an image to make it easier. The rest of the brands, Garmin included, do the same, but without the image in which it is clearly seen up to where each dimension is. That is to say, Garmin tells you that the fenix 7 measures 14.5mm but it turns out that with the sensor it is 15 and a little. The new FR965 is 13.2mm, according to Garmin but in reality, with the OHR sensor, is 15.8mm.

      So, Suunto is not lying and Garmin is not telling the whole truth.
      Regards.

    • Suunto, like Garmin, Apple, Samsung, and others can try and justify it – but at the end of the day, it’s not accurate. The only company doing it right is Wahoo. And frankly, cause I think nobody told them they were supposed to lie about the specs.

      I haven’t yet got to the bottom of who started the silly sensor lie, but it is indeed a lie – especially because in Suunto’s case the poles are substantially lower than the rest of the case, which isn’t how it is on other watches.

      I mean, sure, nobody beat’s Samsung’s fiasco – but that doesn’t makes others right. In case you missed my post on that: link to dcrainmaker.com

  4. Wolfgang

    Hello, does anyone know if there could be a problem with the final firmware?
    I can’t see any maps on the clock. It does load maps onto the watch, but all I see is a black screen with a white grid

    • Chris

      There seems to be a problem with maps, especially in southern Germany. According to the Suunto forum, Suunto knows about it, I guess there will be a hotfix soon.

    • Chris

      Seems to be resolved (at least it works for me now). You may try the following:

      – delete the regions you down loaded with SA
      sync your watch.
      – put the watch on the charger for 10 mins (maybe optional)
      – reboot (maybe optional – I did not and it worked)
      redownload the maps

    • The other solution/fix I’ve seen is that some people simply didn’t have an initial/first GPS fix. Meaning, they got the map downloaded, were excited and stayed inside, but never went outside to get GPS. Thus, the blank tiles were essentially the watching saying “I don’t know where you are”.

    • Chris

      😅 actually thats what I first thought has happened to me too, so I let the watch show me the coordinates of the location it thinks I am and went back inside, typed it into google maps, but the watch saw me where I was supposed to be.

    • Wolfgang

      Hello, thank you for your answers. I’m right on Lake Constance, at a point where 4 different maps meet. Maybe that played a role. I have now uninstalled the map, synced and restarted the clock. Then I reinstalled the card and now it works.

  5. Seb

    I know the Suunto app doesn’t allow pairing two watches at the same time. But I noticed that’s only limited to one device (phone). I just paired my S9PP with my iPad and my vertical with my phone and it seem to work flawlessly without having to switch watches. Would be still nice to have an easier switching for one device only but this one way to circumvent that issue for those who want to keep using their older models on a regular basis

  6. Vic Trevino

    I have tried several times to upload a map of my state to the watch. Several hours later it barely downloaded the map in fact only a small blue tick showed up one the download screen. I downloaded a smaller map which actually worked. Not sure if maybe I have a bad watch as I do not think it should take eons to load a map that is 1.67gb in size.

  7. Steven

    @18:46 “You can customize all these in the Suunto map”

    You can only make a new sports mode, but you can’t change the default ones.

    • Well, I mean, you can customize your own sport modes. The net effect is the same, though I agree it’s slightly annoying I can’t just customize the existing ones.