Suunto 7 Wear OS smartwatch hands-on: the perfect smartwatch for fitness fanatics

At CES 2020, the Wear OS ecosystem got a little bigger with the introduction of the Suunto 7 smartwatch. While the Suunto brand may not be well known to most, the Finnish company has been around for decades, building fitness-oriented watches that compete with the likes of Garmin.

The Suunto 7 if the company’s first Wear OS device. The specifications of the watch may not be extraordinary, but they’re definitely better than what you’d get from most other Wear OS devices these days. The Suunto 7 packs in a full 1GB of RAM with 8GB of storage for your music, GPS for location tracking, a heart rate monitor, NCF for mobile payments and a 1.39-inch 445×445 display. Like most of the newer devices in this category, the Suunto 7 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 3100, which when paired with its 450mAh battery, is able to deliver 48 hours of use on a single charge.

The company is also one of the first to take full advantage of the SD3100’s companion chip which allows for 12 hours of fitness tracking with GPS and heart rate monitoring. That’s more than 2 times longer than most other Wear OS devices ca last while tracking your workout. The company has also developed its own proprietary workout tracking software which will track more than 70 different types of workout while offering offline maps and route tracking so that you can go on a run or back ride and leave your phone behind.

As for the design of the watch, the Sutton 7 features a 50mm watch face with a stainless steel bezel and plastic body which comes in five different color combinations. The bezel around the display even features a unique raised design which gives the Suunto 7 bit more character than what we’re used to seeing from Wear OS devices. While it would have been nice to have a full metal body option, Suunto purposefully wanted to keep the body of the watch light since its focus is more on customers who will use it for a workout than those who are looking for a fashion piece. Since Suunto’s focus has always been on sport-centric watches, they ensured that the Suoot 7 is shock-proof, dirt-proof and water-resistant up to 50 meters.