Suunto Updates Popular Race Watch

My favorite watch just received an update and there seems to be a lot to love.

Ray Maker from DC Rainmaker has the full review of the new watch:

The Suunto Race 2 is an incremental update, aimed squarely at keeping up with the times, rather than driving major upgrades from existing Suunto Race 1 owners. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Suunto seems to be establishing a two-year hardware refresh cycle, and this cycle was clearly designed to ensure the underlying hardware is ready for whatever Suunto plans over the next few years. Likewise, I continue to appreciate Suunto ensuring that virtually all of these new software features are there for existing Suunto Race owners, heck, even before today’s launch in almost all feature cases.

My two highlights:

• The ridges on the case are gone and the new case has now clean and simple lines. Suunto seems to be the only company going in that direction and I like this so much more than the weird industrial look competitors are choosing.
• The charger is updated – hallelujah! Now running on USB-C and, according to Ray, that things seems to actually be working – thank the lord, this was way overdue.

Are these enough reason for me to update? Not really. My Race watch is still in perfect condition and in any case it seems that these watches last much longer than the company’s desired “two year upgrade cycle”.

A couple other observations:

• The Race received a product refresh ahead of the Vertical which initially had been released ahead of the Race.
• If Suunto would be able to bring the same screen percentage increase to the Race S, the smaller watch might be serious option for my next upgrade.
• The Suunto website has a product shot of a slightly upgraded ‘old charger’ – no further details on that yet, but clearly they are trying to fix that damn thing. Sadly the product shot still shows a USB-A connector on that seemingly upgraded connector cable. Will update when I have more info.