Going out for a Suunto GPS testing alone can get quite strange – as you can see for yourself in this post, for which I went to my usual testing ground that is the Sonnsteine trail…

At the Bergmarathon this year, I had managed to forget my main running clothes after showering, but fortunately they were left and recognized there.

Meaning, I had good reason to go out into that area – which I decided to use for a Suunto GPS testing extraordinaire.

I went to my usual testing ground of the Sonnsteine trail, where there are nicely variable mountain conditions, including forest cover, roads, exposed trails, and trails next to a rock face.

All that, this time around, with the Suunto 9, (on my left wrist together only with the) Suunto 3 Fitness, the Suunto Spartan Sport WHR Baro on my right wrist alongside the Ambit3 Peak, and the GPS TrackPOD from Suunto on my running pack.

(The Suunto 3 Fitness, of course, got no GPS of its own but the track recorded by my Sony Xperia smartphone.)

Here, everything ran at the best GPS setting available for the respective device.

GPS Tracks

As you can see for yourself, even when all the devices come from Suunto and run at the same time, there are differences.

Compare with the one other GPS device I had, my smartphone, and there’s still a distinct difference.

Telling which device gave the best results would be difficult.

At least at the beginning, it was not the Suunto 9; it had some issues there.

All in all, however, the Suunto 9 track just looks smoother than the others, but all are a bit jumpy – and all are basically where the trail goes, on the ground, for the most part.

Full Data

[wpsm_comparison_table id=”1″ class=”hover-col1″]

Heart Rate

Heart rate recordings (Ambit3 Peak from a Suunto HR belt, all the other watches from their oHR) are quite consistent here. Of course, there are some differences, but overall, not many that are too bad.

Altitude

Something happened with altitude data; certainly FusedAlti doesn’t look to have ever kicked in (and I had just left the watches with their last reference altitude from who-knows-when).

That way, the profile ended up relatively similar to each other, but the devices all counted different altitudes.