Suunto 9 Peak is the company’s thinnest & lightest sportswatch to date
Suunto has added a new watch to its arsenal today. Dubbed Suunto 9 Peak, it is an updated version of the Suunto 9 Baro. This is the company’s thinnest and lightest sportswatch to date and it chargest really fast.
It has been well over a year since we last saw a new watch from the Finnish-based outfit. The Suunto 7 was showcased at CES 2020 and it was made official a couple of months later. In a bid to take on Garmin, the Wear OS device had the addition of offline maps, along with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 Platform. The latter was fairly new at the time.
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We knew the Suunto 9 Peak was due for an imminent arrival due to a recent FCC filing. Obviously this is an updated version of the Suunto 9 Baro which was unveiled back in 2019. That one was a high-end sports watch with excellent battery life. Depending on settings, it can run anywhere up to 120 hours and that’s with GPS tracking switched on.
Suunto 9 Peak – technical specs
Suunto 9 Peak has been designed to be more pleasant to wear than anything else the company has produced so far. The device is 37% thinner (10.6mm) and 36% lighter than Baro.
The watch retains the circular look, a sapphire glass face, bezel and button configuration. But the case is smaller measuring only 43mm. Inside it you can find a 1.2 inch LCD display.
The company has sacrificed some screen quality. The matrix display that can be found on Suunto 9 Peak measures 240 x 240 pixels, so it is outperformed by the 320 x 200 pixel screen of the Baro. But that is largely due to the much larger size of this watch. The Baro has a diameter of 50mm making it less of a unisex device.
The silicone strap on Suunto 9 Peak is also narrower. It comes in at 22mm versus the 24mm of the Baro.
Once again, we’re getting the intelligent battery modes of its predecessor. Battery life with GPS tracking in Tour mode (doesn’t ping the satellite as often) is unchanged at 170 hours. Other GPS options last 25, 50 or 120 hours depending on the settings. In smartwatch mode the device is good for up to a week. This is all unchanged from Baro. The upgrade here is that it only takes an hour to charge the battery from zero to full.
The 80 sports modes are still there along with the 100 meter water resistance and navigation functionality. There are also weather functions with a built in barometer and stress and recovery information.
One further addition over Suunto 9 Baro is an SpO2 monitor. This allows users to check their blood oxygen levels on demand. Wimilar to the likes of Garmin and the Apple Watch, it will also spit out an average sleep oxygen saturation value. The remaining upgrades included Blutooth 5.0 support and automatic backlight intensity adjustment depending on lighting conditions.
Suunto 9 Peak – cost, retail availability
The Suunto 9 Peak has been made official today. You can pick from one of two iterations – the $699 titanium one and a $599 steel version. The first weighs only 52 grams the second 62 grams.
The titanium build version comes in two colors – Granite Blue Titanium and Birch White Titanium. The steel version can be picked up in All Black and Moss Gray. All of these will be available for purchase from 17 June. Pre-sale starts on May 25th.
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