Suunto Spartan ULTRA Collection – Info From The Marketing – As close to a review as you are going to get for a while !

The press release for the Spartan is, err, metaphorically and literally ‘Spartan’.

It’ll be weeks, probably, before we see a half-decent review and a full spec sheet. So, for the moment, it’s just regurgitated marketing info from several official Suunto sources. Here it is:

1. • Suunto Q&A Session – >>HERE<< 40-odd questions from me and answers by them. With some mysterious ones missed out…
   • It’s a GPS Adventure and Athletic Multisport Watch – ie a ‘proper’ triathlon watch
   • Competitive battery life, ability to control power consumption – how competitive? Presumably enables features to function less frequently to save power (Rumour: 25-200 hours with GPS – totally unverified)
   • Titanium5 bezel – sweet
   • Sapphire glass – hard
   • 100m waterproof – deep
   • Barometric Altitude – actually it’s FusedAlti which I think merges in GPS based altitude as well when it ‘feels’ necessary
   • Navigation + GPS + Compass
   • Bluetooth Smart – No ANT+ baby, I checked thisisant a while ago
   • Outdoor-proof colour touchscreen – outdoor proof!?
   • Sports expertise and training insights 24/7 – hmm?
   • Models & Prices: Ultra All Black titanium/Stealth Titanium (Eu749+ Eu50 for HR Belt) advanced titanium 5 bezel;
   • Models & Prices: Ultra Black /Ultra White (Eu649+ Eu50 for HR Belt) – stainless steel bezel;

• Models & Prices: Ultra Black /Ultra White (Eu649+ Eu50 for HR Belt);
• Dozens of sports modes pre-installed – theoretically you should be ‘good-to-go’ in YOUR sport.
• GPS FusedSpeed – gets speed from GPS as well as from accelerometer. Presumably an algorithm works out the ‘best of both worlds’
• Supports a Bluetooth HRM – probably supports caching like the AMBIT3 for swimming
• Versatile insights over a variety of sports
• Carefully designed sport-specific colour displays to give accurate feedback about your training
• Sport overviews give basic details like durations and distance totals

• Popular sports such as running and cycling have ADDITIONAL SUB-SPORT modes – eg Race, Long-Ride, Interval or Indoor.
• 247 Activity Monitor with daily and weekly summaries

• Training history AND future planned training sessions
• PBs/PRs – eg 5k best or peak cycling power.
• Touchscreen can be turned off.
• Touchscreen has press and hold functionality to bring up context sensitive menus.
• MOVESCOUNT: Discover new routes for your sport with HEATMAPS via MOVESCOUNT WORLD (URL guessed at this stage…still down … or it could be this MOVESCOUNT MAP)

• MOVESCOUNT: Plan moves on topographic maps based on Suunto’s millions of moves already stored on MOVESCOUNT.
• MOVESCOUNT: Moves can be based on the heatmap you are displaying for your sport/town and then downloaded to the Spartan Ultra
• MOVESCOUNT: Moves can be imported into MOVESCOUNT from external sources (map view)
• MOVESCOUNT: Draw routes on google or Mapbox maps and download

Pretty 360 Video: