Suunto Vertical In-Depth Review: Maps, Solar, WiFi and More!

Suunto has finally delivered. With the new Suunto Vertical, the company appears to be heading down the right track towards having a more competitive hardware offering. The new Suunto Vertical GPS watch might appear from across the room as just a larger Suunto watch, but in reality it’s significantly revamped inside. To begin, it’s now got fully offline mapping – downloadable via WiFi (yup, it has WiFi too now) for anywhere in the world. Around the outside edge you’ll notice the solar charging, giving you even more battery life. In fact, so much battery life it exceeds their rivals in virtually every category – even with full recording rates. Speaking of which, you’ll also find new dual-frequency GPS/GNSS satellite connectivity, finally matching what their competitors have offered for higher GPS accuracy.

Of course, there’s also a slate of smaller things too, like a flashlight mode (via the display), or the now every-second 24x7 HR recording rate. And everything else that was there before continues to be there. That includes their underwater snorkel/shallow diving support/tracking, and even a so-called mermaid mode. But we’ll get into all that later.

As usual, I’ve been putting the Suunto Vertical through its paces. This includes swims, bikes, runs – even hiking all the way up an 8,000ft mountain nonstop from the sea. All in the pursuit of seeing what works well…and what still needs a bit more love and development.

So, let’s dive into everything that’s new compared to the existing/previous Suunto 9 Peak Pro:

- Added offline shaded topographic maps, with three map types (Outdoor/High Contrast/Dark)
- Added WiFi for downloading maps, by country & region, free of charge
- Increased onboard storage to 32GB (roughly enough to hold all of Europe on it)
- Increased size of touchscreen from 1.2” to 1.4” (compared to Suunto 9 Peak Pro)
- Increased resolution from 240x240 to 280x280 (compared to Suunto 9 Peak Pro)
- Added Solar charging for the Solar/Titanium models
- Increased battery times substantially (see chart below)
- Added dual-frequency/multiband GNSS/GPS chipset & corresponding antenna
- Added new GPS recording rate mode: Low (in addition to Best, Good, OK)
- Added truly continuous 24x7 heart rate monitoring (previous was every 10 minutes)
- Added new on-device weather pages, including forecast, air quality, observations
- Added Strava Live Segments on-device (for Strava paid users)
- Added screen-based flashlight option
- Added new charging screen when charging, or map downloading screen when on charger
- Increased to two sport apps concurrently (3rd party/etc apps, note that guides are different than apps and cannot be concurrently combined)
- Military spec durability tests by 3rd party lab
- Watch is made in Finland with 100% renewable energy
- Watch is fully carbon-compensated for the entire life cycle of watch & future usage/charging, by planting trees on behalf of each watch
- Existing Suunto 9 Peak 22mm series straps/bands compatible with new Suunto Vertical

Pricing is as follows:

- Suunto Vertical base/Stainless steel: $629USD/599EUR/£560/$849CAD
- Suunto Vertical Solar/Titanium: $839USD/799EUR/£735/$1,099CAD

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