Is the Suunto Race the Garmin alternative you’ve been waiting for?
As a lifelong Garmin user, I’ve generally been pleased with Garmin watches. Their GPS signal is accurate (most of the time), they offer plenty of workout features, such as the ability to program intervals into the watch, and they have a large ecosystem.
However, like any long-term relationship, familiarity breeds complacency, and over time, I find myself curious to try something new. Fortunately for me, the sports watch market has recently been flooded with new models, including the Coros Apex 2, Apple Watch Ultra 2, Polar Vantage V3, and Suunto Race.
Among these, the Suunto Race caught my eye for its bright AMOLED display, attractive design, and competitive price for the features it offers.
If you’re not familiar with Suunto, don’t worry. They’re not exactly a household name for GPS running watches. Founded in 1936 by Finnish adventurer Tuomas Vohlonen, Suunto made a name for itself by manufacturing some of the best navigation devices in the world.
Suunto made the world’s first sports watch with an altimeter, barometer, and compass functions. It wasn’t until 1998 that Suunto entered the endurance world by introducing the Suunto Vector, designed for mountaineers. Since then, Suunto has continuously evolved its endurance sports watch line.
I’ve tried Suunto watches in the past, and while they offer outstanding navigation features, they have lagged in other vital areas, such as run features and health tracking, preventing them from becoming a viable competitor to Garmin for the average runner.
To appeal to a broader running audience, Suunto recently launched its most feature-rich watch yet, the Suunto Race, and more recently, the Suunto Race S. Interested in finding a Garmin alternative, I’ve been testing the Suunto Race against Garmin’s similarly priced Forerunner 265 for the past month. I’ve logged over 150 miles between the two watches on the roads, tracks, and trails to compare their GPS and health data accuracy, features, and general usability. Here’s a head-to-head comparison of how the Suunto Race stacks against the Garmin Forerunner 265.
Appearance & build quality
Regarding appearance and build quality, the Suunto Race is a standout, especially for £389. It surpasses the Garmin 265 in appearance and materials, featuring a tough stainless steel bezel with sapphire crystal glass. In contrast, the Garmin 265 uses a less durable plastic bezel with a Corning Gorilla glass lens, which scratches easier than sapphire crystal glass.
If you like a big and bold appearance, you’ll love the Suunto Race. It is a much larger watch, measuring 49mm in diameter compared to the 46mm of the Garmin Forerunner 265. However, a tapered bezel gives the Race a refined look while preventing it from feeling oversized. It also offers a slightly larger display. Both watches feature a bright AMOLED touch-screen display that’s easy to view even in bright sunlight. I found the Race was marginally easier to read, especially with sunglasses on.
One significant difference, which took some getting used to as a longtime Garmin user, is the Suunto Race’s button configuration. The Race features three buttons on the watch’s right side, one of which is a turn dial for navigating vertically through the settings. My criticism of this setup is that if you wear the watch on your right hand (like I do), you have to reach over the watch face to use the turn dial, which blocks the screen.
Winner: Suunto Race
Battery
Given how many devices I already need to charge, battery life and charging time are crucial for an everyday watch. Manufacturer specifications on battery life state that the Suunto Race has up to 16 days in smartwatch mode compared to 13 days for the Garmin Forerunner 265. So, the Race has a slight edge in this aspect. However, once in GPS mode, the Suunto Race really starts to pull away. With four battery modes, you can get anywhere from 50 hours in performance mode to 200 hours in touring mode worth of GPS tracking. The Garmin Forerunner 265 isn’t as impressive, with 20 to 14 hours, depending on the setting.
While these stats are good, my battery usage varies daily, depending on how often I check the time, my running schedule, and satellite availability. My observations over the past month follow a similar pattern to the manufacturer's specs. I found the Suunto Race has far superior battery life in every aspect.
Winner: Suunto Race
GPS Accuracy
In my experience, no watch offers 100% GPS accuracy. There is always some variance, which I observed during my testing of the Suunto and Garmin. To test GPS accuracy, I did several runs wearing both watches on routes I knew the distance. For the most part, on clear out-and-back routes, they both recorded accurate distances.
However, during a tree-covered gravel path run, the Suunto overestimated a 7-mile run by approximately 0.12 miles. A closer look at the GPS maps from both watches reveals how this occurred. As shown above, I plotted the GPX data from both watches on a single map. The red line represents the Garmin Forerunner 265, and the blue line represents the Suunto Race. You can see that the Suunto (blue line) frequently strayed off course, particularly at the turnaround point. Zooming out, I observed a similar off-route pattern from the Suunto, which explains the 0.12-mile excess distance. The Garmin Forerunner 265 stayed true to the trail and measured the distance accurately.
Winner: Garmin Forerunner 265
Heart rate accuracy
As someone who has been training by heart rate for over 20 years, I am very particular about accurate heart rate data. It’s well known that wrist-based heart rate sensors are not the most accurate, but if you want accurate readings, you should wear one of the best heart rate monitors in the form of a chest or arm strap. However, the convenience of wrist-based readings is hard to beat. To compare the two watches, I wore both and compared the data.
The above illustration portrays heart rate data for a 30-minute run with the Garmin Forerunner 265 on top and Suunto Race on the bottom. As you can see, the Garmin data is relatively flat (minus two water stops), whereas the Suunto data demonstrates a different story. My heart rate quickly climbs above 165 beats per minute for the first 8 minutes before settling down to a rate similar to that recorded by the Garmin. Then, after 18 minutes, it spikes again, peaking around 190 bpm. I know this is inaccurate, as I’ve been lab-tested, and my maximum heart rate is 163 bpm. As you can see, the Garmin Forerunner 265 shows a more realistic heart rate of around 131 bpm for the entire run.
I regularly experienced these abnormally high readings on the Suunto, whereas the Garmin was consistently more accurate. I still advise anyone interested in heart rate data to take wrist-based readings on any GPS watch with a grain of salt and opt for a chest strap.
Winner: Garmin Forerunner 265
User experience
I’ll admit, after nearly 15 years of using Garmin, I’ve become quite familiar with their navigation experience and application. The thought of learning a new user interface and application was overwhelming. However, I found the Suunto app and user experience intuitive. The app has a similar structure to Garmin Connect, featuring a home page that summarises all activity and health data, with the option to dive deeper into each data point by tapping on it.
Both watches utilise a vertically aligned widget structure for quick and easy access to crucial data such as heart rate, pulse oximetry, weather, and training information. Additionally, you can customise which data appears as a widget. Overall, transitioning to Suunto’s watch and app interface was smooth and straightforward.
Winner: Tie
Health and fitness tracking
I typically don’t pay close attention to the detailed health tracking information provided by sports watches, as it can be pretty granular and only provides valuable insights compared to historical data. However, metrics like training readiness, load, and recovery recommendations are valuable and are calculated using that data.
Both watches offer detailed health tracking data such as sleep, continuous heart rate, heart rate variability, pulse ox, steps, and active kilocalories. The data is used for training load and recovery recommendations. The data is easy to digest via customisable widgets on the watch or via the app.
Like the Garmin Forerunner 265 each morning, the Suunto Race provides a morning report that summarises your sleep data.
Suunto and Garmin use proprietary algorithms to provide training load, recovery data, and recommendations. However, they rely on activity, heart rate, and sleep data to make these calculations, so the accuracy of this data is crucial. Since I found the heart rate data on the Race to be inaccurate during a few of my runs, I questioned the validity of its training load and recovery data.
Another point worth mentioning is that Suunto uses terminology from the popular online training log platform TrainingPeaks, such as Training Stress Score (TSS). This is excellent if you're a TrainingPeaks user, but it can be confusing if you need to familiarise yourself with the platform.
Winner: Garmin Forerunner 265
Run features
The features available during your run are the most crucial aspect of a GPS running watch, as tracking your runs is the primary purpose of having the watch in the first place. This includes customising your data fields, pre-program intervals, accessing post-run stats, and receiving training recommendations. One of the major frustrations of the Suunto Race is that once you program your data fields for an activity, you can’t edit them from the watch or the app. To make any changes, you have to start from scratch. Conversely, the Garmin Forerunner 265 gives you complete editing power directly from the watch.
Another knock for the Race is there’s no activity type for track running. The Garmin Forerunner 265, on the other hand, comes standard with a track activity type that recognises each lap around the track as 400m, enhancing the accuracy of the recorded distance.
Winner: Garmin Forerunner 265
Other features
While I won’t discuss every feature, I will highlight two standout ones and compare them for each watch. The most obvious and Suunto’s strongest asset is mapping and navigation, which the Garmin Forerunner 265 lacks altogether. The Race is extremely competent at mapping and navigation, featuring bright-coloured maps that can be downloaded for offline usage. I preloaded a difficult-to-navigate 10-mile mountain run in Tuolumne, CA, to test the navigation. The mapping was on point with the correct route and very easy-to-follow turn-by-turn instructions.
There’s nothing better than getting lost in a good podcast to help pass the time during a run. While the Race does have music control capability, it does not have the ability to store music or podcasts directly on the watch. This means you need to bring your phone if you want to listen to music or podcasts. If you want to listen to music directly from the watch, the Garmin Forerunner 265 is your option.
Final takeaways
After years of testing running gear, I've learned one undeniable fact: no piece of gear is perfect; each has its strengths and weaknesses. The Suunto Race is no exception to this rule. Before the Suunto Race, I felt Suunto had more drawbacks than advantages. However, the Suunto Race represents a significant step forward in every aspect for Suunto.
Price wise, there's not loads of difference between the two. The Suunto retails for £389 while the Forerunner 265 retails for £429.99. So, my testing has found that it makes sense to base your decision on the following factors.
If you’re a trail or mountain runner who needs maps and navigation, go with the Suunto Race
If you want the ability to listen to music or podcasts directly from the watch, go for the Garmin Forerunner 265
If you’re an ultra runner who needs a massive battery life, go with the Suunto Race
If you run a lot of intervals, especially on a track, go with the Garmin Forerunner 265
If you use TrainingPeaks for training load information, go with the Suunto Race
If you’re a multisport mountain athlete, go with the Suunto Race
During testing for this review, Suunto quietly released an updated version of the Race, the Suunto Race S. Priced at £325, the Suunto Race S features all the same features as the Race, but with a smaller diameter and an upgraded optical heart rate sensor. Although I only had limited time to test it, it’s sure to be one of the best-priced GPS watches you can buy.
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