Best hiking smartwatch for women: Suunto Race S review
If you love hiking but want to spend less time looking at your phone to navigate trails, a good hiking smartwatch can make a real difference. I recently bought the Suunto Race S and, after using it for a while for both hiking and everyday activities, I’m sharing with you my honest review. In this article, I’ll walk you through my experience with the watch, focusing on its performance for hiking, its most useful features, and whether it’s worth the investment.
Why I chose the Suunto Race S for hiking
There are many smartwatches and GPS watches designed for outdoor activities, but I was specifically looking for a watch that offered three things: an affordable price, offline map navigation, and a nice design. The Suunto Race S stood out because it offers detailed offline maps, route navigation, GPS tracking, and an elegant design, all at a fair price.
About Suunto
Suunto is a Finnish brand known for its outdoor and sports watches. Beyond its products, I also appreciate the brand's focus on sustainability and accessibility. The company offsets the full lifecycle CO₂e emissions of most of its products through environmental projects. At the same time Suunto also offers refurbished watches at lower prices, helping extend the life of its products and reduce waste.
Suunto Race S size: Is it good for women?
One of the things I particularly like about the Suunto Race S is its size. Many outdoor GPS watches can feel quite large and masculine, especially if you have a smaller wrist. The Suunto Race S has a more compact design that looks great on a woman's wrist and is comfortable to wear during long hikes.
Versatility
What I like most about the watch is its versatility. Suunto Race S is a great hiking watch and you can also easily wear it as an everyday watch. Its relatively small size means it can serve as a sports watch while at the same time still look elegant and delicate on your wrist. I originally considered buying the Suunto Vertical or Suunto Vertical 2, which offer many of the same features but have a much longer battery life. However, when I tried one on, it felt much more like a watch designed for men. It was simply too big for my wrist, and I honestly didn't need the extra battery life that the Vertical models offer. They were also 200–300€ more expensive, which made the Race S an even more attractive option for me.
Navigation and maps
For me, this is my favorite feature of the Suunto Race S. The watch supports map-based navigation, which means you can see your route directly on a detailed map. This allows you to see the surrounding terrain and understand where you are in relation to the trail. This is especially useful if you want to explore alternative routes. You can also easily identify natural features such as rivers and lakes along the way, which can be extremely useful if you are carrying a lower water supply and need re-stocking (always filter your water before drinking!).
Another great feature is that you can import hiking routes from platforms such as AllTrails using a GPX file. I wrote a whole blog post explaining how to download AllTrails routes to Suunto watches.
GPS and elevation
The Suunto Race S uses dual-band GPS, which means it can receive signals on two satellite frequencies for more accurate positioning. I have found this particularly useful when hiking in forests, mountains, or areas where GPS signals can be difficult to receive. The watch also has a barometric altimeter to measure elevation changes, which makes it useful for tracking both your route and elevation gain during a hike.
Something I find really cool about the watch is that it lets you choose between different battery modes, with varying levels of GPS accuracy and battery consumption depending on your needs. This gives you the flexibility to prioritize accuracy on shorter hikes or save battery on longer hikes.
Battery life
The Suunto Race S has different battery modes, allowing you to adjust the balance between GPS accuracy and battery consumption. I have personally found the battery life to be great considering all the features the watch offers. With everyday use and a half-day hike about once a week, I usually charge the watch every four to five days. Personally, I find the watch's battery life more than enough for my needs.
Is the Suunto Race S easy to use?
To be honest at first I did have a bit of a hard time navigating through all the menus and features of the watch. Once you get used to the menus, everything becomes easier.
Cool features of the Suunto Race S not necessarily related to hiking
Aside from hiking, I also use the Suunto Race S as my everyday smartwatch, and there are several features I really enjoy.
Flashlight: The watch has a built-in flashlight. It is surprisingly useful when you need a quick light, whether you're looking for something in a dark room, walking outside at night, or getting up during the night without turning on a bright light.
Sleep tracking: The watch tracks your sleep and gives you information about your sleep duration and different sleep stages. I personally haven't used it because I find sleeping with any watch uncomfortable, but it looks great.
Heart rate and activity tracking: You can monitor your heart rate throughout the day and track your daily activity, including steps and calories burned.
Sports tracking: The Race S supports a wide range of sports and activities, so you can use it for running, cycling, swimming, gym workouts, and much more. Its main purpose is to tell the watch what kind of activity you're doing, so it can show and record the metrics that are most relevant to that activity.
Training and recovery: The watch provides information about your training load and recovery, which can help you understand when your body might need more rest.
Notifications: You can receive notifications from your phone directly on your watch.
Music controls: You can control music playing on your phone directly from your watch.
Weather and altitude information: You can check weather conditions and well as altitude information directly from your watch, which is particularly useful before heading outside.
50 m waterproof and 10 m depth gauge: The watch has proved to be 50m waterproof and provides accurate depth measurements up to 10m underwater
How does Suunto Race S compare to other Suunto smartwatches
Suunto has several GPS watches with very similar features, so choosing between them can be confusing. The Race S, Race 2, and Vertical 2 all mainly offer the same features. The main differences are their size, weight, battery life, and price. For a woman, I still believe the Suunto Race S is the best choice. Unless you are going trekking for several days and need a lot of autonomy, you shouldn't have to worry about battery life. For a man, however, the Suunto Race 2 and the Vertical 2 might be better suited in terms of size.
Suunto Race S | Suunto Race 2 | Suunto Vertical 2 | |
Diameter | 45 mm | 49 mm | 50 mm |
Weight | 60 g | 76 g | 87 g |
Battery, GPS maximum precision | 30 h | 55 h | 65 h |
Battery, GPS good precision | 120 h | 200 h | 250 h |
Battery, everyday use | 9 days | 18 days | 20 days |
Typical price * | 300 – 400 € | 450 – 650 € | 600 – 770 € |
* Typical price depends on the country and well as materials (some offer titanium versions)
I'm a great advocate for buying second hand. That is actually how I bought my watch and I ended up paying only around 220 € for my watch instead of full retail price. I bought my watch on Vinted, but Amazon Second Hand and Suunto itself offer second hand and refurbished options. Feel free to look at other local second hand sites as well.
Disadvantages of the Suunto Race S
One thing I think Suunto watches are missing is more home screen customization. Although you can customize quite a few things, it would be nice to be able to use your own photos or wallpapers. It would also be great to have the option to adjust the vibration strength, either increasing or decreasing it depending on your preference. But honestly, those are pretty minor things. So far, that's about it. Overall, I really like this watch and I'm very happy with my choice.
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