Suunto Vertical Solar Review: The Endurance Athlete's Watch That Goes Where You Go
Suunto Vertical Solar Review: The Endurance Athlete’s Watch That Goes Where You Go Endurance training and racing demand a watch that does three things well: it tracks accurately, it lasts longer than your longest day, and it does not get in the way. After fourteen months training and racing with the Suunto Vertical Solar across an Ironman, two ultra-marathons, hundreds of training hours on the bike and on foot, and a one-week mountaineering objective, I am ready to tell you whether this is the endurance watch worth making your daily driver. This is the kind of long-form review I wish I had read before I made the switch from my previous watch. Specs on a tag are one thing. Months of real training and racing with the device on your wrist is another. I will walk through what the Vertical Solar does well, where it falls short, the features that genuinely matter for endurance work, and exactly who should put this watch at the top of their shopping list. What the Suunto Vertical Solar Is The Suunto Vertical is the Finnish brand’s flagship endurance and adventure watch. The Solar variant adds a solar-charging panel built into the watch face glass, which extends battery life dramatically when you train in daylight. The watch is built around a 49-millimeter case (with a stainless steel or titanium bezel option), a 1.4-inch full-color matrix display, multi-band GNSS positioning, full mapping and navigation, and a feature set targeted at long-format athletes. This is not a smartwatch in the Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch sense. The Vertical is purpose-built for sport and adventure, and the design choices reflect that. The interface is button-driven (with optional touch on the color matrix display), the strap is wide and athletic, and the software prioritizes training data and navigation over notifications and apps. The competition in this segment is real and well-known. Garmin’s Fenix and Forerunner Ultra lines, Coros’s Vertix line, Polar’s Grit X line, Apple’s Ultra (in athletic mode). The Suunto Vertical Solar competes with the top of these lineups on most metrics, and it differentiates on a few specific features that matter for certain athletes. The Spec Sheet That Actually Matters Here are the Vertical Solar spec lines that drive endurance-athlete buying decisions. Battery life: Up to 60 days in time mode, up to 85 hours in dual-frequency GPS mode (the most accurate but most power-hungry tracking mode), up to 140 hours in best-accuracy single-frequency GPS mode. The solar charging adds significant battery life when training in daylight — Suunto rates an additional 30 percent in time mode and 30+ percent in standard GPS mode under typical training-day sunlight conditions. In real-world endurance use, this translates to a watch I can take through a full Ironman with tracking on, a multi-day fastpacking trip, or an ultra-marathon without worrying about battery. I have personally completed a 24-hour ultra with the watch in best-accuracy mode and ended the race with 30 percent battery remaining. The Solar variant in normal training rotation routinely goes a full week between charges. Positioning: Multi-band (dual-frequency) GNSS, supporting GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, and QZSS satellite constellations. Dual-frequency mode is the gold standard for accuracy in challenging environments — under tree cover, in steep canyons, in urban canyons. The Vertical’s multi-band performance is excellent and matches or exceeds the best of the Garmin Fenix and Coros Vertix in side-by-side testing I have done. Mapping: Full-color offline topographic maps with route navigation. Pre-loaded with worldwide outline maps and detailed regional maps for the region where you bought the watch. Additional regions can be downloaded over Wi-Fi. Routes can be created on the Suunto app, on third-party platforms (Komoot, Strava, etc.), or on the watch itself. Sensors: Optical heart rate (wrist-based), barometric altimeter, three-axis compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, ambient light sensor, infrared sensor for skin temperature. The watch does not include an electrocardiogram (ECG) function or wrist-based blood-oxygen estimation, both of which are present on some competing watches. Display: 1.4-inch matrix color display with 280x280 resolution, optionally touch-enabled. The display is visible in bright sunlight (helped by the matte finish on the solar panel layer) and has a backlight for low-light use. Build: 49-millimeter case, 13.6-millimeter thickness, 74 grams in titanium configuration (significantly heavier in stainless steel). Sapphire crystal lens, 100-meter water resistance, MIL-STD-810 ruggedness certification. Real-World Endurance Performance Specs are one thing. A year of actual racing and training is another. Here is what the Vertical Solar has done for me across the spectrum of endurance sport. Ironman Performance I raced a full Ironman (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run) with the Vertical Solar in dedicated triathlon mode. The watch handled the multisport transitions cleanly, captured accurate distance and pace data across all three legs, and ended the race (which took me a bit over 11 hours) with 65 percent battery remaining. A few specific notes from the race. The optical heart rate captured cleanly through the swim leg, which is a meaningful improvement over older watches I have used in open water. The bike-leg distance matched my bike-computer to within 0.3 percent. The run-leg pace was responsive and accurate, including in the late miles where my pace dropped and the watch tracked the change without lag. The auto-lap function was helpful for managing the run pacing. The vibration alerts for nutrition reminders, set during pre-race configuration, were unobtrusive but consistent. The post-race data sync to the Suunto app was clean and complete. Ultra Running The Vertical Solar has been my training and racing watch for ultras up to 100K. Battery life is the dominant factor for ultras, and the Vertical’s combination of best-accuracy GPS and solar charging has handled everything I have asked of it. A 50-mile training run on a bright summer day showed nearly net-zero battery drain due to solar charging — I started at 80 percent and ended at 78 percent over six and a half hours. The mapping and navigation features are where the Vertical earns its place for ultra training. Loading a course onto the watch, following the breadcrumb trail at night, getting turn-by-turn alerts at intersections — all of this works as intended and works smoothly. The barometric altimeter is accurate enough that the elevation data on a known course matches official course profiles to within a few meters of total ascent. Long Bike Days For a 10-hour gravel ride or a multi-day bikepacking trip, the Vertical Solar is excellent. Battery life is sufficient for any day-length ride I have done, the navigation handles complex unfamiliar routes, and the data fields are configurable enough to show what matters (heart rate, power if you are paired to a power meter, elevation, time of day, ETA at next waypoint). The watch syncs cleanly with most major cycling apps and devices. Pairing with Wahoo and Garmin head units works as expected, although for a serious cyclist, the watch is best used as a backup data-logger and navigator while the head unit handles primary data display. Multi-Day Mountain Use A one-week mountaineering objective in the high country gave me the chance to test the watch across continuous wear, varied weather, navigation challenges, and the kind of conditions that punish electronics. The Vertical handled all of it. Battery life across the seven days, with GPS active during travel and standby during camp, used about 60 percent of total capacity. Solar charging during clear-weather travel days extended the battery meaningfully. The compass and altimeter were the features that mattered most in the mountains. Both calibrated easily, both held calibration through the trip, and both gave me data I could trust when navigation got tricky. Training Features and Software A watch’s hardware is only as useful as the software that supports it. Suunto’s training and analytics platform has improved dramatically in the last few years, and the Vertical Solar gets the benefit of the current generation. The Suunto app handles route creation, training calendar, recovery tracking, and post-workout analysis. The platform integrates well with Strava, TrainingPeaks, Komoot, and most other major endurance training platforms. The Suunto app is not as feature-rich as Garmin Connect — there is less in the way of detailed physiological estimates and predictive analytics — but the data export and integration with third-party platforms means most serious athletes use Suunto as the data source and a separate platform (TrainingPeaks, Final Surge, etc.) for analytics anyway. On-watch features include guided workouts, structured intervals, recovery time estimates, training stress scores, sleep tracking, and a daily readiness score. The interval programming is straightforward and works well for both run and bike workouts. The recovery and readiness scores are reasonable but not as well-tuned as the equivalent features on Polar’s Grit X or some of the more research-oriented platforms. What I Don’t Love Honest reviews name the gaps. The optical heart rate, while improved, is still not as reliable as a chest strap for high-intensity intervals or for users with darker skin tones. For most steady-state training the wrist-based reading is adequate, but for serious interval work or laboratory-grade training data, a chest strap remains the standard. The Vertical pairs cleanly with most ANT+ and Bluetooth chest straps, so this is easily worked around. The case size is large. At 49 millimeters across, the Vertical is on the larger end of GPS watches, and on smaller wrists (mine is 6 inches around), it sits high and wide. It is comfortable enough for daily wear after a few weeks of adjustment, but it is not a subtle watch. For athletes who want a smaller form factor, the Suunto Race or the Race S might be a better fit. The price is significant. The Vertical Solar in titanium is one of the more expensive endurance watches on the market. The build quality, battery life, and feature set justify the premium for serious athletes, but for a recreational runner or rider whose primary metric is daily mileage, less expensive watches will deliver most of the value. The Suunto app, while functional, lags behind Garmin Connect in some respects. Workout history, performance trending, and some of the more advanced analytics are simpler in Suunto’s app than in Garmin’s. As noted, most serious athletes export to a third-party platform anyway, but if you want everything in one app, the Suunto experience is competent rather than great. Solar Charging in Practice The Solar variant of the Vertical adds a thin solar-charging panel integrated into the watch face glass. The panel charges the watch’s battery whenever the watch is exposed to light, with sunlight providing the strongest charge. In practice, the solar contribution is meaningful but not magical. Suunto’s claim of 30+ percent battery extension under typical training-day sunlight conditions has matched my experience. On a bright summer training day with multiple hours outdoors, the watch’s battery drain is substantially slower than the same training session indoors or on a cloudy day. What this means in practice: for indoor athletes (treadmill, indoor trainer, swimming pool), the solar advantage is minimal. For outdoor athletes who train in daylight, the solar variant is a worthwhile upgrade and meaningfully extends the time between charges. Who Should Buy the Suunto Vertical Solar The Vertical Solar is the right pick for several profiles of athlete. The serious endurance athlete (ultra runner, Ironman triathlete, long-format cyclist, mountaineer) who needs battery life, accuracy, and reliability for events that exceed 12 hours. The Vertical’s combination of multi-band GPS, solar charging, and capable mapping makes it ideal for this use case. The adventure athlete who values offline mapping and navigation alongside training data. The Vertical’s full-color topographic maps and breadcrumb navigation are excellent and rival or exceed competitors in this segment. The Suunto loyalist or athlete looking to step up from a lower-tier endurance watch. The Vertical Solar represents the current peak of Suunto’s adventure-watch lineup and integrates with the broader Suunto app ecosystem. The Vertical Solar is not the right pick for: the casual fitness user who primarily needs daily activity tracking and notifications (an Apple Watch or a less expensive fitness watch is a better fit); the athlete who prioritizes the most advanced training analytics platform (Garmin Connect with a current Fenix or Forerunner Ultra is stronger here); or the athlete with a small wrist who wants a more discreet form factor (the Race S is a more compact Suunto option). Care and Longevity A few habits that will keep the Vertical Solar performing well over the long haul. Rinse the watch with fresh water after every saltwater swim or sweaty trail session. Salt and sweat residue degrade the strap and the case finish over time. Charge the watch fully every few weeks even if you do not need to. Letting the battery fully drain repeatedly is harder on lithium chemistry than maintaining a partial charge. Update firmware when prompted. Suunto pushes regular firmware updates that improve performance, fix bugs, and occasionally add features. Replace the strap every two to three years if it shows wear. Suunto sells replacement straps in multiple colors and styles. The factory strap is durable but not eternal. Inspect the case and crystal annually. The sapphire crystal is hard but not impossible to scratch. A small, deep gouge can be polished out by Suunto’s service center; a hairline scratch can usually be lived with. My opinion The Suunto Vertical Solar is one of the most capable endurance watches on the market, with the battery life, GPS accuracy, mapping features, and build quality to handle the longest events and the toughest conditions. It is not the cheapest watch in this category, and it is not the smallest, but for the serious endurance athlete or the adventure athlete who values battery life and reliability above all else, it earns its place at the top of the shortlist. I have raced an Ironman with it, run multiple ultras with it, completed a one-week mountaineering objective with it, and trained on it for over a year. It has not let me down. That is the highest compliment a working tool can earn. If you are stepping up from a less capable watch, or if your current watch’s battery life is constraining the kinds of training and racing you do, the Vertical Solar is the upgrade that will not need replacing for many seasons to come. Browse the Suunto Vertical Solar and premium endurance watches — Maya J Brooks Read the full article
