The new Suunto 5 Peak is the new mid tier GPS training watch available from February 2022. It’s a step forwards from Suunto who have lagged behind a little in the sports watch market. You can buy it at £259 direct from Suunto here.
The Suunto 5 Peak is most attractive, lightweight and usable product I have used from Suunto
Improvements
- Very light at 40g
- Detachable standard straps that can be swapped out easily
- Music controls that work with your smartphone
- Over the air updates of software
- Long battery life (Up to 7 days)
- Built in training plan that prompts you to train on certain days
- Navigation ‘back to home’ is a bonus if you get lost
- Simple user interface and reliable connection to Android smartphones
- Good for running in the dark (Screen comes on when you lift your risk)
Cons
- Priced at £259 you may find other products that suit you if you are ‘advanced’
I used the new Suunto Peak 5 for just over 1 and 1/2 weeks at Parkruns, trail running at night and exercising at the gym.
In the dark the watch was useful as all you have to do is tilt your wrist towards you and the screen lights up without having to press any buttons. I went for a trail run with my new body mounted light. It was a lot of fun avoiding tree roots and animals.
Using the watch
The watch is easy to use with “Suunto’s user interface”.
The menu goes from ‘Exercise’ for all of the 80 sports to ‘Navigation’ with a useful breadcrumb trail that you can use during a run to see where you are going and may have to go back to. A nice ‘logbook’ records your activity. If you go into settings you adjust the battery life with options to switch off the watch and switch it on again to extend the battery life. I got more than 7 days out of the watch from one charge.
Other reviews mention
Other reviews have been critical of how dark the screen is inside buildings and ‘it is not advanced enough’ in certain app areas. I compared the screen brightness to a Garmin Forerunner 235 and to my surprise couldn’t see any difference indoors. The watch is optimised for battery life, if you want a brighter screen adjust it under settings and sacrifice some battery life. The watch can also sync with apps such as Training Peaks so I’m not sure why is has received criticism for that. The watch has no touch screen and to be honest touch screens don’t add much to this type of product as when you are running you need a solid button.
Weight
The watch clocks in at 40g that’s 2g heavier than the Garmin 235. What’s 2g between friends?
Suunto App
The Suunto App is quite cool as it gives you a 3D playback of your run on a map. I had no issues with software on Android.
Music Controls
You can now control your smartphone music using the watch. You can advance to the next track easily with the right mid mounted key. I found selecting volume up and down and previous track difficult and had to consult the user guide. You have to long press keys to access the volume keys and previous keys. I thought that this was poor design as when you are running you won’t be bothered to long press anything.
Training guide on board
If you opt in on start up of ‘training plan’ the watch sets up a plan for you and prompts you on certain days to either have a ‘hard’, ‘medium’ of ‘soft’ workout. This is a very useful plan to ‘nudge’ you to get out and ‘just do it’.
If you are wondering what the vertical watch screen is with the blue dots over the days it shows you with a blue blob the next training day planned so you can see training is very other day.
END OF REVIEW
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