Ambit3 Peak, Now with More Altitude…

With the 2.4.1 software update that was just released (at the beginning of December 2016), the Suunto Ambit3 Peak gains the route altitude profile that was introduced on the (Ambit3) Vertical and later came to the Traverse.

To make yourself at home in this world, you have to make yourself at home with current tech, too. It still helps when “old” things learn new tricks, not least after enough customers have expressed a desire to see a company provide something.

When the Ambit3 Vertical came out, and I had a chance to try out and present its functioning almost exactly 10 months ago, its main feature was the route altitude profile.

 

(Of course, there’s also the case without the antenna bump and the addition of vibration alerts, but those aren’t necessarily features; and the Vertical is a rather different story due to its absolute focus on ascent/descent – verticals.)

Running in Snow between Grosser and Kleiner Sonnstein
Running in Snow between Grosser and Kleiner Sonnstein

Now, 10 months later, with snow in the mountains again, the Ambit3 Peak just received firmware update 2.4.1. With that, the main news is the addition of the same route altitude profile.

Ambit3 Peak SW 2.4.1

Other parts of this update: A long-awaited fix to the cadence measurement stopping to work when running with a high pace, other bug fixes, and the addition of a steps view (to the other views visible in the time display, switched by pushing the lower left “view” button, but still not synced/stored anywhere).

The official list / update notes from Suunto:

  • Route altitude profile navigation in real-time
  • Full route track and altitude profile of the track included in move summary and logbook
  • Route preview and altitude profile preview in route selection
  • Possibility to clear recovery test calibration values in service menu
  • Daily step count
  • Fixes to wrist cadence when running with fast pace
  • Several other smaller fixes and general performance improvement

Ambit3 Peak and Altitude Profile

So, now you can also see the altitude profile for a route you have created in Movescount and synced to your Ambit3 Peak on the Ambit3 Peak itself, and you can see it with a display of where you are on that profile when you do a ‘move’ and have a route active.

(You only need to check if Movescount previews the altitude profile; it sometimes can’t do that when creating a route by importing a GPS file, and I’ve also seen errors in the online map’s altitude data mess up the profile, though I think that has been fixed by the map-makers/community.)

In difference to the Ambit3 Vertical (or Traverse, which also received the route altitude profile display), the Ambit3 Peak still continues to also use the waypoint display, i.e. it also has the navigation view that shows the direction and distance to the next waypoint on the route.

Of course, given that, the alerts when “approaching” the next waypoint and the “Continue to …” the next waypoint messages are still there, as well.

And Next?

With so much attention at Suunto currently having to go to the Spartan, it is particularly satisfying to see them not forget about “old” customers and react to their wishes.

I still don’t think there’ll ever be a real-time breadcrumb track coming to the Ambit3 series (the other feature I often see calls for), but I don’t see much of a need for that, either.

And let me add that, if you are a Spartan owner and fear that Suunto having updated the Ambit3 means that they took time away from their work on the Spartan (or have abandoned that, as I see some mad ravings surmise), you are sorely mistaken.

Ambit3 Peak w| altitude profile, during testing
Ambit3 Peak w| altitude profile, during testing

This update was being tested in the middle of this year already, and the work on the Spartan series is also continuing. (Sure, not as fast as we’d all wish, but there is progress.)

Having even updated the Ambit3 Peak (and the other Ambit3 models, with the bug fixes and step counter???), now let’s see how (and when, ahem), “Spartan Gets Stronger” again…

4 responses

  1. Ivo Abreu Avatar
    Ivo Abreu

    And the sound alerts still weakness in the ambit 3 series with this firmware update?

    1. Not alone in the mountains. I assume you mean that you don’t hear them well? I find that to depend a whole lot on where you are… (if that is what you mean)

  2. Ingo Avatar
    Ingo

    Wondering if this update also introduced WP navigation that shows distance to the next WP following a route (and not just line of sight distance). I think the Traverse can do that and when they roll out “Route altitude profile navigation” to the A3P maybe they just threw that one in as well. Do you know? Cheers!

    1. As mentioned in the video, that’s a no. And unless I completely missed something, the Traverse doesn’t do that, either…

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