Suunto has just announced the new Suunto Race 3S, a small-form-factor watch that believes it needs a big-form-factor price increase. On top of that, Suunto has also launched a new subscription service, Suunto AI Coach, where new Suunto App features are being funneled into. I’ve been using the Suunto Race 3S over the last few weeks, and in this review I’ll dive into how it all works, and whether Suunto can justify the price.
The new Suunto Race 3S includes a brighter display, more storage, and some software feature updates that the existing Race S didn’t get this past summer. This isn’t really a major change from the previous model, but nonetheless these updates are appreciated. It also features upgraded materials, shifting from a stainless steel bezel to a titanium bezel.
In any case, I’ve been putting it through its paces over the last little but, across all sorts of activities to see how it holds up, and how it compares to other newly announced watches from the last few weeks.
With that, let’s dive right into it!
What’s New:
Now, as you probably know, the Suunto Race 3S is an upgrade to the existing Suunto Race S. There was no Suunto Race 2S, and equally confusingly, there is no larger Suunto Race 3 companion at this point. When I asked about the Suunto Race 3 elephant in the room, Suunto simply said a variant of ‘No comment’. Thus, that elephant will stay with us for now, joining other elephants I’ll talk about later.
Of course, when you look at changes vs. the original Suunto Race S, that watch continued to get meaningful firmware updates till this past April. So I’ll ignore all of those things and focus on the new stuff otherwise (software and hardware).
Starting off with the hardware changes:
– Upgraded peak display brightness from 1,000 nits to 2,000 nits
– Upgraded lens cover material from Gorilla Glass to Sapphire Crystal glass
– Updated bezel material from stainless steel to titanium
– Upgraded optical heart rate sensor
– Faster processor (Apollo 510)
– Increased GPS time from 30 hours to 38 hours (dual-frequency), 45hrs (single-frequency)
– Increased smartwatch daily battery from 9 days to 12 days
– Increased internal storage from 32GB to 64GB
– Added support for offline music playback (MP3 files, no streaming services)
– Increased number of SuuntoPlus apps in a single profile from 2 to 3
– Slightly increased official case size from 45mm to 46mm
– Decreased weight from 60g to 56g
– Increased retail price from $349USD to $599USD (and 349EUR to 499EUR)
Do note that while you might see NFC listed on some spec sheets, that’s only applicable for the China market. There’s no contactless payment integration elsewhere. Unfortunately, like the music streaming services piece, those industry gates closed a decade ago.
Then there are a few new software features, mainly ones that rolled out on the Suunto Race 2 this past summer:
– Added Tide Widget
– Expanded map labels (road names, water, mountain peaks)
– Added Ascent as an exercise target
Finally, Suunto has noted that there’s a new ‘Race Planner’ feature coming later this year to the Suunto Race 3S, though it’s not there at launch. Here’s a quick blurb on that:
This sounds super interesting, and so I’m keen to see how this works. Especially the pieces looking at weather. For example, does that also look at your historical training weather (e.g. if you train in cold temps, but then arrive at a hot-temp race day). And, best of all, it doesn’t require Suunto AI Coach.
Finally, when it comes to model colors, here are those three options – purple, white, and black:
With that, let’s get into the box.
In the box:
This section is pretty straightforward. Above is the Suunto Race 3S box, following the same design as other recent Suunto watches.
Below are the contents of said box:
You’ve got the band/strap, the pod (separated from the band), the braided charging cable, and some paper stuff.
The charging cable follows other recent Suunto models, and is magnetic and much better than the one that came with the original Suunto S model, which I found would often become misaligned.
In any case, you simply embark on a 10-15-second IKEA assembly project to attach the standard band straps to the watch pod, and you’re off and running.
The Basics:
In this section, I’m going to look at some of the basics of the watch, including daily usage such as activity tracking, sleep, etc… As well as pieces like responsiveness and general usability.
The Suunto Race 3S has a three-button layout, as well as a touchscreen. You can mostly use either touch or buttons for navigating around the user interface. The upper right button accesses the sport menu, the middle Digital Crown allows access to pinned widgets during smartwatch use (and of course scrolls up/down), and the bottom button acts as a back/escape button.
The left side has no buttons. Meanwhile, the touchscreen is a 2,000-nit display that’s perfectly viewable in both bright sunny conditions or shade conditions. I live on a Mediterranean island, and I’ve had no issues viewing the display in any scenarios out on the trails. Oh for fun, here’s three watches side-by-side: Suunto Race S, Suunto Race 2, and Suunto Race 3S
That said, it can’t be left unstated that virtually all watches released in 2026 are using 3,000-nit panels. The COROS Pace 4 Pro released a few weeks ago is using a 3,500-nit display (which is also larger), and atop that, the more-capable watch is $150 cheaper. To be super clear here, I have no issue with seeing the display at all. Period, hard-stop. However, we can’t ignore the fact that Suunto is putting in kinda old tech but with over-the-top premium prices. To be, the ‘savings’ on this display panel should be reflected in the price. It’s clearly not.
The only minor ‘nit’-picking I’d have with the display is that their power-saving algorithms seem a little bit aggressive at times, quickly dimming the panel within a few seconds of wrist-raise. Again, the display is still visible, but this could use a bit of work.
Speaking of brightness, note that for whatever weird reason, there’s no physical LED flashlight like there is in the Suunto Vertical 2 watch (which is priced the same at $599). You still have a screen-based flashlight, but obviously that’s not the same.
Perhaps given Suunto’s lawsuit with Garmin concerning the topic, they got a bit skittish. Either way, it’s a bit of a bummer.
In any case, scrolling down into the widgets you’ve got a customizable set of quick-access data bits. I will note that if you watch the video, you’ll see it’s more laggy here than the older Suunto Race S – despite the claims of a faster processor. This is such a good example of why processor specs mean absolutely nothing in most devices. You can have the fastest processor in the world, but if the firmware/operating system isn’t optimized for it, it’ll still be slower than an optimized processor. Again, check out the above video for that.
As for those widgets, they all work just as before. Aside from the new Tides one, there’s nothing new here. You can tap into any given smaller widget in this list to open up details about that topic, such as steps, sleep, weather, etc…
When it comes to things like sleep tracking, the times I went to sleep and woke up have largely been correct here, usually matching the other wearables within a few minutes. The same goes for the HRV status values. I don’t compare sleep phases/stages, because doing so is peak faux-science. The best-case reference devices you can use to do so are only about 80% accurate, which isn’t all that great (and again, that’s a best case scenario in perfect lab conditions). Thus, we’d never compare a heart rate sensor to a chest strap that was wrong 20% of the time. Therefore, I’m not gonna do it here either.
Meanwhile, most of the data around heart rate-driven metrics is coming from the new optical heart rate sensor seen on the bottom. As I’ll show you within the accuracy section, this heart rate sensor is a huge jump up over the previous Suunto Race S sensor, which wasn’t super awesome.
Speaking of other internal-ish things, the unit now has 64GB of internal storage, which is ostensibly mostly for offline music (yes, it’s also for maps, but Suunto’s maps are so well optimized that you simply don’t need anywhere near that much storage…more on that in the next section).
Now, with Suunto’s offline music playback, it requires you to transfer MP3 files via USB cable the device. There are no offline streaming services (e.g. Spotify/etc), and that’s simply not going to happen anytime soon. Those industry gates closed nearly a decade ago now, and the only way Suunto would gain access to them is by going back to WearOS. Nonetheless, if you’re one of 12 people that are still transferring your owned/“borrowed” MP3 files to your watch via cable, you can do that here. You’ll pair up any Bluetooth audio device (e.g. headphones) to the watch, and of you go. It all worked pretty easily for me, and you can also load in playlists as well.
Finally, when it comes to smartphone notifications, you’ll get the basic text and emoji from your phone.
Ok, with all that sorted, let’s get into the sports bits.
Sports Usage & Mapping:
Next up, we’ve got all things sports, including mapping and navigation.
To access a sport mode, you’ll tap the upper right button, which opens up the workout panel. Here it’ll automatically open your last sport mode, and start searching for GPS (if outside), as well as get heart rate lock. Further, if you’ve got paired sensors (like cycling sensors or an external heart rate sensor), it’ll pair to that too.
You can change the sport mode to one of a boatload of other sport modes in the list:
Back on that main page though, you can select to load a course (within Navigation), as well as select/load SuuntoPlus apps. The Suunto Race 3S supports up to three concurrent enabled SuuntoPlus apps within a given sport profile (you can have additional apps loaded but not enabled). In addition, you can also load up ‘Guides’, which would include things like structured workouts. However, you can only load two apps + one concurrent guide, if using guides.
Finally, there are also the exercise options, where you can tweak various display, map, and other target settings. For example, the Suunto Race 3S added the ability to set an Ascent target (similar to how you might set a calorie or distance target). This came in a firmware update for other newer Suunto watches this summer, but the existing Suunto Race S was skipped.
In any case, circling back, I’m gonna add a course to navigate for my trail run. So I’ll select that back in the Navigation/Routes area:
In terms of maps, the Suunto Race 3S doesn’t have any maps pre-loaded, though they are easily downloadable via WiFi from Suunto. You simply go into the app and choose the regions you want. Here’s some random sizes to get a feel for things:
Since I’m here, one thing I really wish Suunto would sort out is their app to watch syncing/configuration situation. For years it’s been that as soon as the watch thinks you want to tweak something, it starts syncing, which in turn prohibits you from actually tweaking the thing until it’s done, taking forever to do that. It’s just very 1990s-modal style. I can’t think of a single other wearable device that still has that restriction left. And more critically, there’s no way to cancel the app from syncing once it starts. That’d at least half-way solve it.
It’s in this area of the app that you’d modify things like the data fields/pages of your sport modes, add new SuuntoPlus apps, create interval workouts, and more. Of course, like in the past you still can’t modify default sports profiles, you have to create a new custom one if you want to tweak something. And it needs to sync a bunch back and forth too. These are the types of actual useful things I wished Suunto would focus on, rather than adding offline MP3 music support that virtually nobody will use.
With that all sorted, synced, and re-synced, we’re ready to start our workout. Off I go for a run. While running, I’ll of course see my data pages as configured:
From a navigation standpoint, I’ll get a little chirp and then an on-screen notification when a turn comes up. And then if I miss a turn, I’ll get a notification about that too, such at this:
Otherwise, the route shows as expected, and in terms of the responsiveness of the map, it’s a double-edged sword. For rotation, things were instant, and I didn’t experience any black square tiles. You can see this in the video.
But for zooming in/out, there was always at least a second or two of black square tiles. Ironically, a runner friend was with me as I was sitting there filming this, and not being familiar with Suunto watches, he was a bit surprised and asked “Is that normal?”.
And ultimately, different companies handle things in different ways. For Garmin, when it slow-map renders, it has a fuzzy look or other color-matching tiles (or shows a tile at a higher zoom level first, before enumerating the detailed tile). Most other companies do the same. But in Suunto’s case, they’re just showing black tiles, which looks a bit sloppy.
Even more so, because I’d also notice these tiles as I run, if I had the map screen just open. Meaning, visible at a glance on my wrist even when not fully raised. Again, we can have an academic debate on slow-map-loading differences (more detail vs less deatil, etc…), but I think we can all agree that the black tiles just look rough.
In any case, you’ll also be able to see your progress on the elevation and climbs, both for the full course, and then specific climbs as you trip them:
All of this worked perfectly fine. After the workout, you’ll get a summary of your workout as expected on the watch:
And then likewise you’ll see the additional detail within the Suunto App:
Assuming you have your account connect to one of Suunto’s boatload of partners (e.g. Strava, TrainingPeaks, etc…), it’ll automatically push that data off to those platforms. Again, all of that worked without issue for me.
So then, let’s talk about the accuracy of that data.
Accuracy of Heart Rate & GPS:
The new Suunto Race 3S has a new optical heart rate sensor compared to the existing Suunto Race S. Suunto says this new sensor has six LEDs and four photodetectors behind 2.5D curved sensor glass. No matter what it has behind it, I’ll just state things up front: It’s really darn good in my testing.
I’ll also cover the GNSS/GPS side of things, as well as battery and elevation bits down below. But the GNSS piece hasn’t changed here, so we’ll keep that efficient.
Let’s start off with this slightly hilly run I did. It started off with a long and occasionally steep descent, before some flats, and then going all the way back up again. As a reminder, hills (going down), can often be challenging for optical HR sensors. Still, the Suunto nailed it here. I’ve got zero complaints.
Next, we’ve got a 90-minute long trail run across plenty of varied terrain (steep stuff, shallow stuff, rocking spicy stuff, etc…). And again, overall very good.
About the only thing I could nitpick here is this section for about 20-seconds where it’s off by about 3-5bpm. That’s nothing in a 98-minute long workout. Again, really good job here.
Here’s another trail run from yesterday. Setting aside whatever happened with the chest strap at the 28-minute marker for a few seconds, things here were quite good as well. Again, there’s virtually nothing to be upset about, and this also included some steep ups/downs.
Next, just for fun, check out this shorter morning gravel ride thing I did a few days ago. I was taking photos and such on this ride of a few different devices. So lots of stop and go. Lots of pretty spicy typical Mallorca gravel chunk (most would call it MTB material). And yet, it absolutely nails this. Like, really solid job while cycling.
Now, I’m going to continue to test this sensor, but switch over to the new Suunto Run 2 sensor over the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that. I don’t expect a difference though. Either way, this represents a major improvement for Suunto over past sensors.
Meanwhile, on the GPS side, let’s quickly run through some of these. Here’s that city run from a few nights ago. At a high level, obviously all look pretty good.
Meanwhile, in the actual city/downtown parts with tall buildings, none of the units did amazing. None were bad, but across the board (Garmin, Suunto, Apple), all of them were ‘blah’ accuracy-wise. I’m not quite sure why.
You can see this here as well. Again, nothing was crazy-bad, but all four units took turns crashing through buildings slightly, cutting corners, and generally acting like the drunk tourists that fill this area.
That said, as soon as I left the buildings behind, it was perfectly fine on the rest of the run:
Moving along, looking at yesterday’s trail run, which includes cliffs, ravines, trees, etc… things at a high level look good:
I could quibble about each unit being a few meters offset at different parts of the route. Here the Fenix 9 Pro briefly goes across the road, then the COROS and Suunto does some 20 seconds later.
Still, we’re talking less than a 5-meter difference in most cases, such as this here:
Or going around this gate for cars. The Garmin & Suunto were most correct here, the COROS went a bit more lazily around it.
Anyway, this is the pattern over and over again – basically all these units were spot on across runs, rides, etc… I’ve got some actual swim tests to do this weekend (I’ve spent a bunch of time in the water swimming with it, but wasn’t doing accuracy testing).
As for looking at the elevation, no major concerns on any of my activities. Here’s that 90-minute trail run:
This is the one I showed the other day in the Garmin MARQ Gen3 review, where for some reason both Garmin units started sliding downwards while I stood and took some photos (27min marker). Garmin’s already digging into it, as it’s likely firmware-related if two different units do it. I will say there’s a little bit of separation early on in the above that seems a bit odd between the Suunto/COROS and the Apple/Garmin watches. Though those all eventually bundled back up together again.
As for the battery bits, here’s the official battery chart:
Looking at my battery life in always-on display, with roughly 60-90mins of GPS time per day, I’m closer to about 5ish days, maybe a touch bit more, but a little shy of the 7-day above (which is spec’d as 60mins per day, versus my times a bit higher). Also, my routes had navigation enabled, which would draw more battery.
Speaking of which, looking at that 98-minute trail run, you can see it burned about 5%, putting me on an 28hr battery estimate in dual-frequency/multiband mode. This is a touch bit lower than the always-on specs above, but again remember I did have navigation enabled, which draws more battery.
Also, kudos to Suunto for including battery data in their .FIT files (Garmin, Wahoo and others do so, though unfortunately COROS does not).
In any case, in terms of all my accuracy bits, I’m good across the board here, I’ve got no concerns in any category. Again, for the heart rate sensor side, this is a big upgrade.
Suunto AI Coach Subscription:
Next, Suunto has announced a new Suunto AI Coach subscription feature, which let’s you use your current and historical Suunto data to get race planning information and tons more. This feature is launching on/with the Suunto Race 3S, though is expected to go to other watch user bases. It’s currently fully on the app itself, as there’s no on-device component.
Suunto has a pretty good 10-minute video that explains the boatload of features that exist there.
My one (kinda big) quibble here is that Suunto Race 3S users get 3-months free to the service, yet, Suunto hasn’t defined what said service will actually cost once that free trial ends. And somehow that rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps it’s because my inbox is filled with AI vibe-coded slop apps that often attempt to hook you into the platform for eventually charging you down the road. In this case, Suunto is clear they’ll be charging you eventually, but aren’t saying what that is. Thus, once you get hooked on it, you’ll feel compelled to start paying for it.
Now mind you, what Suunto is offering certainly seems a heck of a lot more compelling than what Amazfit, Garmin, and others are doing. It doesn’t seem as deep as what Fitbit/Google are doing, but again, we don’t know Suunto’s pricing is yet. Suunto says that part of the reason they haven’t decided pricing is because they want to see what people actually use, and get feedback. Which, is fair enough, but still seems like something they could have done before they launched it.
Now, despite my annoyance with Suunto’s AI Coach roll-out, I will give them all the credit in the world that they’ve also announced a new Suunto MCP that’ll be free for all Suunto users. This joins COROS in offering such a thing for free. I have a feeling we’re going to see similar announcements in the near future from others. Note that in the case of Suunto’s MCP, the details are thin at this point, other than it’ll be free, and it’ll exist. Still, I take both of those for the moment.
Wrap-Up:
Suunto has had a string of solid product launches over the last couple years, paired with frequent and meaningful firmware/feature updates on the app side. And good expansion on the developer side. They’ve been on a roll across the board. But I struggle to put the Suunto Race 3S in that category of wins. This watch feels…off.
To begin, the biggest issue is the price. At $599USD/499EUR, it’s more than a 70% USD price increase over the launch price of the Suunto Race S just two years ago. And it’s not like they’ve drastically changed the hardware. Sure, it has a brighter 2,000-nit display panel, but that panel is what other companies were putting in their watches two years ago, not the 3,000-3,500-nit panels that companies are putting in watches in 2026. Further, while they increased the storage from 32GB to 64GB, it doesn’t really serve any meaningful purpose. Suunto’s maps are tiny in size, and easily fit within even just 16GB of space. And while the theory is for music playback, the reality is virtually nobody is downloading MP3’s to their watches in 2026 (as Suunto doesn’t support offline music from any streaming service). Plus, where’s the other hardware features that other companies are putting in their watches for half the price (e.g. flashlights, voice, microphone & proper speaker, etc…)?
After a string of wins, I think Suunto missed the boat on this one. It feels both overpriced, and kinda seems like it’s just a collection of leftover hardware parts, rather than representing the start of a new Race 3 series generation of watches. Perhaps if it was priced at $399 or at most $449, I’d feel differently. But with the just-released COROS Pace 4 Pro being at $449, that’s a very tough spot for Suunto to be competing in with the specs they have in the Race 3S.
With that, thanks for reading.
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