Good HRM but...

By Kieren Ranked #1093 - Running Watches June 6, 2009

Pro's:

+ Two different log screens.
-- Log screen of the last 15 training sessions.
-- Aggregate review screen of training sessions for this week, last week, this month... etc going back a number of months. This is great for tracking your training progress.

+ You can expand the functionality of the watch by purchasing additional pods. More-so than Polar watches.

+ The HR belt is nice and comfortable. You can completly remove the belt (with included electrode pads) from the monitor, so presumably you could wash it if you wanted.

Cons:

+ The watch is reasonably fat, the lense is convex, soft plastic and there's not even a hint of a raised protective bezel. It's not a case of if but when you scratch the watch face. Mine lasted two weeks before scratches were hindering visability of the screen. Luckily there is a solution zagg.com make high grade polyurethane protective films which solve the problem (the T1,T2,T3 version fits the T3c). I took the watch to a jeweler who polished out the scratches on the face before I applied the Zagg invisibleSHEILD. My only gripe now is that Suunto should have inlcuded such a cover with the watch, it is quickly useless without one. You should factor one into the cost of this watch.

+ There seems to be a bug in the watch software. When you press the lap button the display freezes for a few seconds before showing the new lap time and HR - this is useful for reviewing your lap time and average HR for the lap. However it seems to actually freeze the entire watch, if you are running at night for example, you can't press the light button during this time to actually read the screen, it just wont work. The work-around is to remember this, and press the light button before you press the lap button, then the screen remains lit so you can read it in the dark.

+ Navigating the two log screens is inconsistant between the two, I find this very annoying at times. The buttons for scrolling chronologically in the session history screen are not the same in the aggregate screen, you press left and right in the session screen and up and down in the aggregate screen. Its a small thing but the difference between intuitive or not.

+ With the foot pod, there is no option to display speed as pace (min/km or min/mi) like with Polar watches.

+ With an extra pod the secondary display can show a lot of different information like; max. speed, real-time speed, average speed, average HR, time-till-training-effect-increase, total time and still more! The problem is it only shows one at a time and there is only one button to change between them! So if you accidentally skip the one you wanted to look at, you have to click, click, click... away until it comes round again. whoops! missed it, click, click, click, click,.... Ow! stupid tree! The Polar watch has two buttons to navigate, so if you go past the readout you wanted it's one click to go back, it also has a nice feature where you can just tap the watch itself to change screens, which when you are running makes dodging those wily trees so much easier.

Conclusion:

If you purchase this watch with an appropriate screen protector like the Zagg invisibleSHIELD, it becomes a very useful and full featured training watch. The T3c is a good choice if you would like to purchase Pods later to add further functionality without having to buy another more expensive watch. There are some issues with functionality you should take into account when considering this watch compared to similar models from Polar and others.

View Details: Suunto t3c Heart Rate Monitor with Comfort Belt

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