The aesthetic changes are obvious – a state of the art colour touch screen with a wider viewing angle, slimmer body and additional colour choices but in terms of features, what more could it offer?
Quite a lot it appears, especially when you use either of the two current Spartan models, Ultra and Sport, in conjunction with the Suunto Movescount website and app.
Sami Arhoma, performance director at Suunto, said: “In a fast-paced world with an overwhelming flood of information, athletes need better tools to determine how to efficiently achieve their goals. People who are driven by the passion to progress want to know if they are doing things right. More and more people are reaching out to communities of like-minded people for guidance and inspiration.
“With the Spartan solution, we are building on the insights we’ve gained through our constant dialogue with athletes and coaches around the world. The new Suunto Spartan multisport solution offers customers new community powered tools to progress, including peer group comparisons and peer-to-peer coaching. We are convinced these tools will help them progress beyond their expectations.”
The watch itself comes with 80 pre-set sport modes, providing sport-specific metrics and rich display options. For most popular sports like running and cycling, dedicated purpose specific sport modes such as interval running, obstacle race running and treadmill are also available.
In interval running, for example, you can see your latest interval times with average heart rate in the lap table display while running.
More recent software updates also enable you to customize your sport preferences and how you see them.
With Glonass GPS, FusedSpeed and built-in accelerometer, both Suunto Spartan Ultra and Suunto Spartan Sport accurately measure your pace, speed, distance and GPSbased altitude. Pair the watch with power and bike sensors to get running and cycling power and cadence.
Swimming-specific functions include swimming pace, stroke count, SWOLF and heart rate during swimming. Sarina Pietrosanti, Suunto brand manager for the UK, said: “One of the features we’re getting particularly good feedback on is the heatmaps function. It helps you find places to train wherever you are.
“Just locate where you are or are going to on the map, select a sport and zoom into the most popular tracks.
“Based on heatmaps, you can plan your own routes in movescount.com and transfer them to your Suunto Spartan for navigation guidance. Feedback is very important to us and forms the basis of our Spartan Gets Stronger software updates.”
This Spring sees the introduction of Suunto’s first watch with wrist heart rate measurement. Partnering with US-based Valencell, the leading innovator in wearable biometric data sensor technology, the Spartan Sport Wrist HR watch will combine Suunto’s hallmark robust design with the convenience of wrist-based heart rate measurement.
