[00:00] At 299 euros or dollars, this new Suunto Run 2 running watch includes offline maps at a decent price, and as you will see in my testing, the heart rate tracking accuracy is great for this price.
[00:13] That makes the new Suunto Run 2 a watch I can definitely recommend, for of course there are some limitations, which we will discuss in detail in this video. And as always, the focus of this review will be the data and the data quality of the Suunto Run 2.
[00:28] Specifically, I'll be testing the heart rate tracking, sleep tracking and GPS tracking. By the way, for those of you that are new to the channel, my name is Rob and I'm a postdoctoral scientist specializing in biological data analysis.
[00:41] But before getting to the testing, let's first talk about some of the features of this watch and what has changed compared to the previous generation, the Run 1. Now, as I said, what I really like is the offline mapping because that's not necessarily
[00:55] something I expect to see at this price point. There are two versions of the Suunto Run 2, a 4GB model for 299 euros a dollar and a 64GB model for 349 euros a dollar, so 50 more.
[01:09] Both support offline maps and music, although more storage should obviously allow you to keep more data on the watch. I'm still waiting for some of the details from Suunto about the mapping functionality and what limitations there potentially are, but so far it's worked well for me for normal
[01:25] runs, for instance. Now the changes in the Suunto Run 2 compared to the original Run 1 are pretty big in my opinion. The three most important ones are that we now have dual-band GNSS, so better GPS tracking,
[01:38] and an upgraded optical heart rate sensor, which now has 12 channels, so the new upgraded one you'll see in some of their other watches, and then an increased screen brightness compared to the original one from 600 to 2000 nits.
[01:51] And in my testing especially, the heart rate tracking showed great performance. Now the display right here is still a 1.32 inch AMOLED panel, but again, it's brighter. And also the battery capacity has increased from 295 to 380 mAh.
[02:09] And C2 claims it provides up to 10 days of normal use and up to 24 hours in performance mode, compared to 8 days and 20 hours on the original watch. Now, if we put them side by side right here, you can see that the basic design hasn't changed that dramatically.
[02:25] It's still a 46mm watch with stainless steel, and basically, otherwise, it's mostly very plasticky, with a 5 atmosphere rating. But, of course, plastic has the benefit of being relatively light, which probably helped with the good hardware tracking performance.
[02:40] Now, the new model is about 0.2mm thick or so, about the same, and the watch body is 3 grams heavier at 35 grams. but again, relatively small differences. Now, those are the specifications,
[02:53] but the interesting question, in my opinion, is whether the upgraded sensors actually work. Now, I tested the heart rate tracking during exercise, and as I said, the results were surprisingly good. Not universally good in all conditions,
[03:06] but overall very good and recommendable. I also tested the GPS tracks, and I looked at the nighttime measurements, including heart rate and sleep stages. Now, the sleep stages will be the weakest part of this review,
[03:18] I corrected around two weeks of data, but Murphy's Law was there and multiple things went wrong. In the end, you have to re-enable sleep tracking in the beginning, and I forgot that I didn't do this. So for most of the two weeks, there was just no data tracked with the scene to watch.
[03:33] As a result, I ended up with very few valid sleep comparisons, and I will show you the available data, but this part of the review should be interpreted very cautiously and super initial. But the heart rate tracking and GPS tracking conclusions are based on much more extensive
[03:49] testing and I would therefore consider them very reliable. As always, the goal is not to promote this watch, it's to objectively test it and how it has improved or changed compared to the previous model and how accurate the measurements
[04:02] are. And then you can see if the Run 2 is a good choice for you as a runner or cyclist for instance to claim that runner, but as you will see the cycling results are actually very good. Now, of course, testing is limited. It's on my body and my circumstances, but the results are super interesting.
[04:19] And we can also see how it compares to other watches that I've tested in the past. And as I said, let's start with the result that surprised me most, the heart rate tracking during exercise. So let's have a look at those results right now.
[04:33] And as always, we test the heart rate tracking by comparing it against a reference device. in this case the polar H10 ECG chest strap, which measures the electrical activity of the heart and can measure my heart rate very reliably.
[04:46] And that is plotted here along the horizontal axis. And then we have this thing to run to here along the vertical axis. And if the two would perfectly agree, all points should be on or at least close to this blue line.
[04:59] And luckily they are. So most points are there. There's just a few moments of some minor deviation. the correlation this r value up here is also really high at 0.99 now this correlation cannot
[05:12] be higher than 1 so 0.99 is just really good we have seen some better results but this is just good and good enough for most people we can see that we're looking at some example sessions so inverse hiking is a relatively easy exercise because there's not so much bumpiness or movement
[05:27] so here we have the reference in blue green and the seem to run two in red and it's several and you can see it basically tracked my heart rate perfectly. This second session showed some minor issues here in the beginning but otherwise a really small difference also here a tiny difference here in the beginning but really minor so overall just looking really good and sometimes in the beginning a small
[05:52] deviation but that's just so minor that I don't think it will make any difference for people looking to track their heart rate with their soon to run to again this is on my body so some people might get different results also they got some
[06:04] other reviewers but on me at least it's doing really well but let's now make things more difficult and let's actually look at the exercise that most people are interested in running because that's probably what you're going to get this device for now running is a bit harder because
[06:18] there's more bumpiness and especially cadence lock can be a thing where the frequency at which you're running also introduces a periodic signal in the watch and that can be confused with heart rate because the heart rate signal is usually very faint. But as you will see, it does weather well.
[06:35] But before looking at those details in detail, I quickly want to ask for your support. Now to start, if you want to like this video and subscribe to the channel, that would be great. And in addition, I also have a bunch of affiliate links down here or up here. And if you use those,
[06:48] you support the channel each time you make a purchase. There's also a general Amazon affiliate link. So even if you buy something as small as toilet paper or coffee beans, if you click that links first you can even bookmark it with command and control d you make it your default way of
[07:00] going to amazon that really supports this channel or if you end up buying the soon to run 2 or garmin watch whatever there are also specific links down below but let's take a look at those running results so for running again we have a really nice correlation here at 0.99 that's just
[07:16] really good and most points are on or close to the blue line again potentially even a bit better than what we saw for indoor cycling. Just one moment of deviation right here. And if you take a look at some of the runs that I did,
[07:29] you can indeed see that most of the time it was quite accurate. Just some of the dips were slightly differently detected, so it didn't detect that full dip. But that could even be a definition question. So how do you define the current heart rate and some minor deviation here?
[07:44] This second run, just perfect, I would say. And this third run, also very good. So running the exercises watch is probably made for just does really well. But what about an even harder exercise, biking outside?
[07:58] And this is where many devices start to struggle. But surprisingly to me, actually, the Suitu Run 2 did really well here. It had a correlation of 0.98, which for cycling outside is just amazing.
[08:12] You don't see this on many watches, especially when worn on the wrist. but this did it really well and I tested it for many many bike rides. So you see most points are on or close to the blue line yet there is some deviation mostly where it attacks a bit of a too low heart rate
[08:27] sometimes but it's just looking very good. For this first session we do see some deviation right here second session also some minor deviation and if you go through all sessions we definitely see some moments
[08:39] where it's actually too low heart rate but overall compared to the competition this is very good also on this longer ride there was some minor deviation here but otherwise really good it's not
[08:51] perfect but this wouldn't change the way i exercise so i'm just really happy with this again if you want true perfection there's just a few watch that tend to do better so for instance the pixel watch and the apple watch tend to do very well on the wrist but otherwise you really
[09:06] need to go to the biceps to get better tracking and on the wrist this is just a very good result especially also for the price. But to close things off, let's take a look at the results for weight lifting or the gym. And this is where most devices struggle, and this is also true for the
[09:21] Suntouran 2. In the higher heart rate range right here, it detected too low heart rate much of the time. And a too low heart rate in the high heart rate range, regularly you will notice, means that
[09:33] most of the peaks were not fully detected. So I did many sets of exercises, some of the peaks were detected but many were not fully detected. Same right here not all the peaks were fully detected.
[09:46] Again some are but it's just not complete especially for this exercise we see most peaks were missed. So specifically for weight lifting I would recommend an external chest strap and actually Suunto has a new chest strap coming out at the same time as this watch that will be a
[10:02] separate review but that also did really well and it basically adds food as a Polar H10 so I can really recommend that as well but check out a separate review for that up here that might be a few days later than this review and then finally we can compare these results to the competition
[10:17] and that's displayed right here now regular users will notice but we're using that correlation value along the vertical axis right here so the higher the better where we have the different exercises here so indoor cycling outdoor cycling running and weight lifting where each dot is a device
[10:34] that I tested, so the correlation for that device, where the device of interest in this case is Zoom 2 Run 2 is indicated by a red dot and a red line. So the higher the better, and you can see that with a correlation of 0.99, in this case for indoor cycling, it's doing better than 60%
[10:49] of devices I previously tested, but this is just good enough. It's doing better than 80% of devices for biking outside, and actually better than 89% of devices for running, which is what probably
[11:03] many people are getting this device for. Only for weight lifting it's somewhere in the middle of all devices and definitely not good enough for that. There's only a few devices that I could sort of recommend for that, but most devices actually really struggle.
[11:17] So for a wrist worn device, I cannot really recommend any watch really even the Apple watch which is super well there still has drop out moments So that it compares to the competition we can give this is a score as always this is purely based on the data so here we have the three
[11:33] correlations we take the average and multiply that by a hundred which gives us a score rounded of 99 and a score of 99 or higher would be perfect but given that it's actually slightly below a 98.7 it gets a heart rate rating of great but
[11:51] but almost perfect for cardio exercises. Again, this doesn't include weightlifting, because that's just so hard and not a use case for most people. So those are the heart rate tracking results, and those are really good in my opinion,
[12:03] at least on me, on my body, as always with any reviewer. But what about heart rate tracking at night? Is this any good? Well, generally yes, that's what I've plotted here. So the heart rate, according to the reference along the horizontal axis,
[12:16] and the simple run 2 along the vertical axis, there were just a few measurements where I detected a too high heart rate. Now as I said, I hadn't enabled sleep tracking by accident, so I only have two nights of data for both the sleep stages and for this.
[12:29] I think for the heart rate that's just enough data, for the sleep stages it's really enough. I'm going to show you the results, but these are super initial. But for heart rate we mostly see a good agreement between the reference in red and the soon
[12:41] to run 2 in blue-green. However, the soon to run 2 detected a slightly higher heart rate sometimes. times. Now again this might be a definition thing. I don't know if they take the average or the max
[12:53] in a certain interval. So I might actually have gone out of that and had an increased heart rate. I assume the average here but I'm not sure that through overall the patterns are mostly the same. So according to the reference my heart rate varied let's say between 55 and maybe 40 dpm right here
[13:11] or for the second night it varied between 45 and maybe 36 bpm and mostly the soon to run to in blue green degrees but there are these spikes but again these might have been moments where i went out of
[13:26] that and my calculation which sort of averages that out and you don't get such a high peak where i seem to might be taking the max but i couldn't really find how they define it Now I would also like to do a heart rate variability test but I couldn't extract that data from
[13:41] the Suunto app. So actual heart rate variability is something I couldn't test for the Suunto Run 2 at this point. What I could test but again very preliminary is the sleep stage tracking.
[13:53] And what I found mostly agrees with my previous testing of more expensive running watches I think I previously tested the Vertical 2 in more detail. But the deep sleep tracking is a bit better here. So I use the ZMAX EEG device as a reference, which is sort of a silver standard.
[14:08] It's far from perfect, but good enough to give us a general impression of which watches are good at sleep stage tracking, which are not so good, and which are mediocre. And the reference here is on top, and the run 2 on the left right here.
[14:21] And if you would perfectly agree, all values on the diagonal should be 100%. Now, these sleeper rooms was better than I expected, at 85%. So I expect, based on the Vertical 2 testing, that with more nights, this will drop a bit to maybe, let's say, 50 to 60, maybe 70%.
[14:38] Light-Sleep Agreement was very good also at 83 or 82%, actually. And Ram-Sleep Agreement was the worst, where only 28% of what was Ram-Sleep, according to the reference, was also Ram-Sleep, according to the Soon-To-Run 2.
[14:52] So I expect this will actually rise a bit. but this is based on testing with another scene to watch so I'm assuming this is still the same algorithm which I don't know. These are the results for the scene to run to right now with two nights of data so super preliminary but I wanted to show it to you. But again take this
[15:07] with a big grain of salt. My overall impression though is that the REM sleep tracking won't be great but the deep and light sleep might be okay. But let's now get to the GPS tracking and there I have much more trust in the testing that I did. Now I did all the testing with the most accurate
[15:21] and battery consuming mode that's the general mode I activated for all the testing. So let's see how the GPS tracking was and the way I test the GPS tracking is by cycling or running the same route
[15:33] many times and seeing if the signals nicely overlap which would likely mean that the GPS tracking is pretty good or actually the opposite we can say with more certainty if the GPS tracks don't nicely overlap then the GPS tracking probably isn't very good. I tested it for both running and
[15:48] but I started the running results because that's probably what you care about most and I ran this Rectangle shape many times and we want those signals to overlap So this is run one and this generally looks very good. So the signals are quite close together
[16:01] It's a little bit sort of jaggedy but not very jaggedy and even here next to this wall Which we actually better see in Google Earth There it's filled it really well. So right here on the right side
[16:14] there's this wall and usually this interferes with GPS tracking but it doesn't appear to be a major influence on the run-through. Maybe still a little bit compared to this side. Let's actually switch to satellite view so it might still be a little bit interfering on this side compared to this
[16:30] side right here but also here there was a little bit of deviation. Overall this does look pretty good. Not perfect but very good. Almost as good as what I've seen but maybe not quite there because
[16:44] of those minor moments of deviation though even some of these moments like what you can see right here might have been because I needed to go around some tourists that were there as well but let's actually also take a look at a second run right here to see if this did equally well and I would
[16:59] say this mostly also looked good now again there's a little bit of deviation here near the wall so not quite as good as I would have hoped but still very good and over here on the left a bit of deviation so not quite perfect but very good I would say but we can actually also take a look at some cycling
[17:16] results to see what kind of score I'll give to this now let's start by looking at seven times I cycled the same route to work and this looks really good so here the signals are super close together not a lot of deviation right here very close to the road as well this still looks very
[17:33] very good i have nothing to complain about here there is a bit of deviation here there can also be a little bit of an overhang which might be an issue around this area right here otherwise looking good here we see a bit more deviation i'm not sure if there was construction here at this
[17:51] point i think there actually was where normally you cycle more on this side and at some point they had some construction so you needed to go around so this is an actual true signal here we do see a bit of deviation but very minor and then here the signals get super close together again
[18:08] here i really have to go around something i think a tractor or bus was parked here so overall just very good gps tracking nothing much to complain about but again we have more data so let's take a look at a total of nine times i cycle back from work which are displayed right here i actually have
[18:24] two working locations right here again the signals are acquired super quickly so nothing to complain about there a little bit of deviation here generally the signals are super close together right here we do see a little bit of deviation but i checked on the map right here and there
[18:40] was actually also construction here things are going pretty crazy in vienna at the moment then here we do see some deviation that wasn't actually there so this is not construction here it actually has me going through these buildings let's actually take a look at that on 3d maps there
[18:55] here you can definitely see some deviations when I'm in between these buildings right here so this I wouldn't call quite perfect and I also don't go over the roundabout here but really
[19:07] around it so that's not quite perfect and it continues until roughly here I would say and then here we do also see one other nine signals deviating a bit so not quite perfect
[19:19] also right here near the opening where there's an overhang it struggles a bit more so when there's something on top so overall not perfect but still very good compared to the competition there's a few watch that seem to do better but not a heap better so overall i would actually get the gps
[19:36] tracking a score of 85 which is great now we've had some devices scoring up to 90 which is a little bit better like some garmin devices and also recently the pixel watch 5 this is still very
[19:48] good performance and would be good enough for me i'm happy with this based on the tracks that we saw in the environment where I tested the device. Now it would be interesting to see if some people tested in New York for instance if they get very different results with even taller buildings but
[20:03] based on my environment I think the GPS tracking gets a rating of great. So overall great heart rate tracking close to perfect, great GPS tracking, heart rate tracking at night pretty decent,
[20:16] sleeve failures probably not perfect but they seemed quite okay maybe but that requires more in-depth testing overall for sports a very complete device especially considering the fact that you
[20:30] also have maps on there let me actually show you some examples of the maps but first let me actually put the two watches side by side at their peak brightness and you can definitely see that the soon to run 2 on the right here is brighter than the soon to run 1 now in this environment that
[20:46] doesn't matter so much but for outdoor running that might actually make a little bit of a difference but I'll take the run one off for now and let's actually load some maps to see what they look like so that they were running and for navigation we want to have some kind of target
[21:05] we load a route for instance this run so now we've loaded that map and we can start now of course we won't get a GPS signal right here in the studio I can record some b-roll where you can see it
[21:18] But then we can scroll down to the map which are saved offline on the device. You can nicely see that the route is on here. It does seem that a GPS signal was acquired.
[21:30] And as you can see I also calibrated the compass. And we have the map here offline on the device. And I think it looks nice and clear. So far I'm not disappointed to even just have these maps on a relatively affordable device.
[21:44] Now as I said it's not a perfect device. probably this sleep tracking could still be improved a little bit but if you mostly care about cardio exercises like running indoor cycling outdoor cycling and you want good gps and good
[21:58] heart rate tracking based on my testing both of these are great and the heart rate tracking is almost the best i've seen for a wrist based wearable again this is on my body in my environment or check out some other reviewers but based on the data i have i'm really happy with this
[22:13] seem to run too. Now don't forget to like this video and subscribe to the channel all those things really help and if you do end up getting yourself a seem to run too maybe an ultra humor ring an aura ring you want a sit-biz air a biceps band or a whoop strap another device or anything
[22:30] at all on amazon for that matter even something as small as toilet paper or coffee beans you want to support the channel and give yourself the best discount possible use one of my affiliate links down here or up here. Now, given that you watched this video on the Zoom 2 Run 2, check out this
[22:46] video on other Zoom 2 watches and this video on my favorite sleep improvement device, the A3Pod.