The Suunto Spartan (Ultra) has been one of the strangest product releases of the year, at least for people into such outdoor sports tech.

(And chances are, if you have found this blog, it is because you are interested in that…)

There have been lots of complaints about the Spartan, to the point of DC Rainmaker “not wish[ing] that on anyone“, and many of them are very understandable.

Here, however, let’s look at how the Spartan is performing, mention that Suunto is working on it (What am I a tester for, even if I’m not allowed to share any details?…), and show what has come when there is a new public firmware release…

Scene 1: My Italian Marathons

You may have noticed that I went to three marathons in Italy this year.

The one in Rome was in spring, before the Spartan was even announced. There’s a look at the Kailash from this trip, but that’s a very different device.

More recently, and with a Spartan Ultra, were the Venice Marathon (end of October) and the Firenze Marathon (end of November).

Venice Marathon / Maratona di Venezia

You can view what this run looked like (and read about my experience with it) in this earlier post.

Just for details of the watches’ performance, look here:

	Ambit3 Peak	Spartan Ultra
Distance	42.49 km	42.46 km
Speed	10.8 km/h	10.8 km/h
Pace	5’32 min/km	5’32 min/km
Cadence	79 rpm (max 103)	79 rpm (max 151)
Ascent	31 m	87 m
Descent	36 m	98 m
Highest Point	17 m	13 m
Lowest Point	2 m	-7 m
EPOC Peak	171 ml/kg	173 ml/kg
PTE	4.7	4.6

Not sure what gives with the altitude (ascent/descent, especially) difference, but given that the GPS has been the main concern…

… there is little concern. You can even, ahem, see where I had to head for the bushes.

Firenze Marathon

The race report video will follow shortly, finally, but here I also produced a video just for the Spartan (vs. Ambit3) performance, to give you an impression of what that looked like for me:

	Ambit3 Peak	Spartan Ultra
Distance	42.59 km	42.56 km
Speed	11.0 km/h	11.0 km/h
Pace	5’28 min/km	5’28 min/km
Ascent	69 m	92 m
Descent	72 m	85 m

(No HR data here; had some issues with the pairing. Turned out they were probably due to my having used an old Movesense POD and not having bothered to check what was connected where quite well enough.)

Again, somewhat more difference than I’d have expected with regards to altitude, but as good as no difference in speed and distance.

Looking at the track, there are a few things to notice:

The tunnels/underpasses towards the beginning (in the Northwest, before the loops through a park) caused hardly any difference in distance between the watches.

However, at the tunnel under Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station, the track shows the Spartan jumping a bit to the side upon entering and back after leaving.

All the narrow roads were definitely a bit of an issue, worse for the Spartan, but neither ideal for the Ambit3.

There are instances of either watch meandering a bit… and this time, I wore them on the same arm to avoid the influence of that.

The bridge we passed in the farthest southeast of the track (Ponte San Nicoló) is an interesting lesson for issues of track vs. map: In the map view, one could think that I must have swum – but then, that would have been the case according to both watches.
Switch to satellite view, however, and it’s clearly an issue of the map drawing.

At the very end, the Spartan produced a bit of a strange track, there it must have lost the signal somewhat, but overall, if performance were always like that for everyone everywhere, I could definitely live with that.

Scene 2: The Sonnsteine Mountain Trail

Just a week after Florence, I finally took the time to head into the mountains.

 

The trail there is an easy one at the Traunsee lake, where I have spent quite a bit of time, but it is also varied.

There are meandering paths, trails through forest and in open space, a bit of road at the beginning and end, and especially, a section on the foot of a rock face.

That last bit is particularly interesting, as it is rather challenging for GPS…

The verdict from that, really, has to be that it’s hard to tell.

The Ambit3 Peak meandered around a bit more, but since the trails also do, but not quite that much, and aren’t really visible on online maps (and not always where I would have gone, necessarily) who’s to tell if that was a better or worse track?

The comparison with the route, as mentioned in the video, showed the Spartan Ultra a bit off at times, but mainly just in a way that is easy to explain as an artifact of the way the route was created.

The last section on the road, however, does show that the Spartan Ultra continues to have issues; this part of the track really should have been closer to where the Ambit3 Peak showed me.

	Ambit3 Peak	Spartan Ultra
HR	153 bpm (90-188)	153 bpm (87-188)
Distance	7.17 km	6.86 km
Speed	3.0 km/h	2.8 km/h
Pace	20’12 min/km	21’10 min/km
Cadence	54 rpm (max 181)	58 rpm (max 254)
Ascent	827 m	839 m
Descent	800 m	817 m
Highest Point	1043 m	1048 m
Lowest Point	418 m	402 m
Est. VO2	38 ml/kg/min	38 ml/kg/min
EPOC Peak	144 ml/kg	147 ml/kg
PTE	4.8	4.7

Still some work to do – it could always be better – but not bad… and all that, very strangely if you read (and see…) the complaints that are easily found online, with the same GPS software version that is out in public, if I am not mistaken.

Next up (2016-12-16)

Suunto have just announced that there is an update to Suuntolink, in preparation for a new Suunto Spartan firmware release.

(1/2) We’ll be releasing the first phase of Suunto Spartan sport mode customization next week.

— Suunto team (@suunto) December 16, 2016

So, in that update, a first step into sports mode customization by the user. And more…