Suunto Spartan Ultra – much anticipated info finally surfaces

Finally today (now) is the official announcement for the Spartan Ultra. The press release is a little short on product details. You will have seen the accompany post to this where there is a user guide so that you can get a little excited whilst reading.

>>More Marketing-Sourced Updated Info on this page<<

But from the press release I draw your attention this this bit on “Sports expertise and insights”:

“The Suunto Spartan Ultra is a true multisport watch. With GPS, FusedSpeed^TM, heart rate measurement and in-built accelerometer, it accurately tracks your training and provides versatile insights on your progress for a multitude of sports. It offers dozens of preset sport modes, e.g. for triathlon, swimming, cycling, running, adventure racing, and snow sports – including modes for specific types of training, racing and activities. If you are a runner, for example, you can choose a basic running mode that offers the essential information for running, or an interval running mode, a trail running mode, and more. The Suunto Spartan Ultra also provides you visual overviews on your training load, rest&recovery status and your progress to help you plan your training. With the watch you can also track your feeling after each workout.”

Referring for clarification in the user guide, not surprisingly the HEART RATE measurement bit means a HR strap not optical. Phew! At least it will be accurate. The FusedSpeed is not new and neither is the ability to support multiple sports. The FusedAlti GPS+barameter altitude is there too.

The sports-mode variants eg INTERVAL RUNNING look interesting clearly when you are racing or doing endurance runs or doing intervals then there is a good chance that different metrics are of interest on each occasion.

The rest & recovery/training load stuff is all good stuff too.

It’s an activity tracker too 🙂

Screen is high quality touchscreen with SWIPE and TAP. Tap and hold brings up in context menus. It can be turned off. It has laps. It has customizable displays. Movescount is starting a process of continual improvement in mass-user supported functionality.

Oh and it still does waterproofing to 100m before I forget.

However clearly the biggest talking point is the aesthetics. I’ve only got one new image so far (above) ie over an above the leaked ones that have been around for a week (I won’t put those up). It certainly looks the part for me.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

And I am still on my main course.