Suunto Vertical is a Power-Packed Adventure Watch

What You Need To Know

We love good gear here at Believe in the Run, and nothing hits the spot more than a good watch with solid performance. Finland-based Suunto has long had a name in the GPS watch game, though in more recent years it’s been somewhat been eclipsed by the upstart Coros and the ever-present Garmin. The Vertical may change that.

According to Suunto, the Vertical is made for adventurers, a reliable guide for “exploring the highest peaks, the steepest valleys, and everywhere in between.” Of course, some key features need to be present for a watch to hold up to that standard, and Suunto does its best to employ them.

And while we haven’t had a review sample into the office yet, we’ve seen some pretty high grades in its early performance. For now, let’s see what this watch is about.

Key Features

Any good adventure watch needs a long battery life, and the Vertical certainly lives up to that. With 85 hours of continual battery life on full record mode (with dual-frequency GPS), the Vertical beats out other adventure watches like the Coros Vertix and Garmin Fenix. Suunto even claims you can get a full year out of the battery if you utilize the solar charing in the titanium version (of course, this is in watch mode, not GPS).

Speaking of solar, yes, this does have a solar charging ring on the inside of a bezel. This isn’t totally new technology (Garmin has several models with solar assist), but it’s a nice thing to have and it will give a bit of extra juice when in direct sunlight.

Of course, true adventuring means probably getting lost once or twice– the good news is that the Vertical offers free detailed offline maps and advanced weather forecasting. Free of charge, the maps sync seamlessly with the Suunto which allows users to easily create routes and view heatmaps for a greater level of safety and confidence.

Stylistically, the watch offers a clean silhouette with a 1.4” screen size (touchscreen, btw) made with sapphire glass. Two models are available: stainless steel and titanium, coming in at 3 oz. (86 g) and 2.6 oz. (74 g) respectively.

As with other watches, a variety of sport modes are available for activity recording (97 in total), and there is also the option to create custom modes. 

The watch also comes with a fairly large storage capacity of 32 GB, and while it doesn’t offer onboard music storage, hopefully that’s something that can come in the future. The good news is that it should have plenty of space for hardware upgrades that rollout over the coming months/years.

On the sustainability side, users can rest assured that Suunto is doing everything in its power to keep the environmental impact down. The Vertical is made in Finland in Suunto’s own factory with 100% renewable energy. And this is the first time I’ve ever seen a carbon footprint actually calculated and verified– during its whole lifespan, the titanium solar variant creates only 6.59 kg of carbon emissions, the equivalent of driving a combustion engine car for 39km.

Our Thoughts

On paper, the Vertical looks like a solid watch for adventuring, and especially nice if you’re looking for a heavy duty hitter out in the wild. I also appreciate a bit of competitive snark, so naming it the Vertical after Coros named its adventure watch the Vertix after Garmin named its adventure watch the Fenix, is a nice touch.

I’ll be honest, we’ve been plenty happy with our Coros models over the last couple years. That said, my Vertix 2 just randomly stopped working, so I haven’t used it recently. But I really had no desire to use Suunto. However, the Vertical seems to offer up some pretty good competition to both the Vertix and Garmin’s Fenix. The size and weight are virtually identical and it somehow offers even longer battery life. Throw in the detailed offline mapping with quick route guidance and responsiveness, and I’m very interested.

If your interest is also piqued, you can grab the Suunto Vertical Steel ($629) and Vertical Titanium ($839) for pre-order on May 9 or when it goes live on May 16 by using the shop links below.