Suunto’s New Entry-level Watch ‘RUN’

Suunto introduces a super fun looking, and incredibly aggressive priced entry-level watch ‘Run’. Their marketing materials show a super cool looking orange version which doesn’t seem to be available in the US yet. I also love the look of their new band. Ray Maker has a full breakdown of all the new features and details on his website:

Suunto has just announced the Suunto Run, arguably one of Suunto’s best-priced watches in years – at least if you’re a runner. The device takes most of the features of the popular Suunto Race S introduced last year, and shaves off a bit of the multi-sport components, like power meter support (but keeping triathlon mode), as well as skips offline topographic maps. However, it also adds a boatload of new features, including offline music support, outdoor running track mode, and a host of new training and recovery features.

The kicker though, as evidenced by the review title, is that it comes in at just $249. In a spring of ever-escalating prices, this is pretty astonishing, especially for such a feature-packed running watch. Granted, it won’t appeal as deeply to trail runners wanting offline maps (don’t worry, course/route navigation is still there), but for anyone doing on-road running, it’s something to consider.

Only downside of this watch, which obviously has shorter battery life (but that I don’t consider a downside given the price and target market) is this, and Ray agrees with me here:

Finally, I’ll note that Suunto has changed charging cables here. I’m generally not a fan of companies changing charging cables, though they noted that realistically the target market for this watch is a consumer who doesn’t likely already have a Suunto (or at least, a recent one), so a different charging cable isn’t a huge deal.

However, it should be pointed out this charging cable properly sucks. Specifically, it only works in one unclear orientation (not a huge deal-breaker), but more annoyingly is the magnets are wimpier than trying to use a single square of toilet paper after Taco Bell. It simply doesn’t hold to the watch against even casually moving the watch with the charger. Sigh.

Suunto’s current charging cable for the Race and Race S was already a huge point of annoyance for me, now they improved it by adding USB-C but made the charging mechanism somehow worse? How? Why? Who’s deciding that shipping this is somewhat a good idea? I don’t get it.