Suunto Vertical Solar Canyon GPS Watch

It hadn’t only been Garmin devices I’d owned in the past; I’d had a Coros Apex as well. But one brand I’d not owned was Suunto. Although a major player, it had—for a few years apparently, or so the reviews went—fallen a little off the pace, so I’d looked elsewhere. But earlier this year, Suunto released the Vertical, a model that has created buzz for both its insane battery life and its excellent GPS performance. Given these are by far the most important attributes in a watch for me—I want a device for multi-day bushwalks, and (because I live near rainforest, and run and walk in it all the time) I need a device with a GPS that can deal with heavy forest cover—I decided to give the Suunto Vertical a go; I’m glad I did. The Vertical comes in two models: a stainless-steel one, retailing for $999; and a titanium one—AKA the Vertical Titanium Solar Canyon, the one I got—which retails for $1299. The latter is a few grams lighter, 74g vs 86g, but that’s not the key reason for forking out the extra bucks; it’s the battery life. While the stainless-steel model has a superb battery—it can go 60 hours while tracking on its highest level of GPS accuracy, and up to 500 hours on lower levels—solar charging on the titanium model gives it the best battery life of any GPS watch on the market. Period. You can, presuming you get enough sun, go 85 hours on a single charge, all at the highest level of accuracy tracking. On lower levels of GPS accuracy, you can go up to 30 days. And if all you want is the time, you can go a year. That’s right—a year!

However, this 85-hour battery life comes with some caveats. Firstly, you need sun. Without it, you’re back to the still-impressive 60 hours offered by the stain- less-steel model. But the second caveat is that I haven’t quite hit those numbers. I haven’t been a long way off, and I’ve gone by far the longest I’ve ever gone between charges, but in the time I’ve had the watch—admittedly not ages—I haven’t quite got there.

But here’s one other key thing: When you hear impressive battery-life numbers being touted by some other watches, that’s always at lower levels of GPS accuracy. But Suunto’s claimed 85 hours, however, is using its highest-level ‘Performance’ mode GPS, which has offered by far the best GPS accuracy I’ve ever experienced.

The watch uses five simultaneous satellite-tracking systems—GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS and BEIDOU—connecting with up to 32 satellites. The result? No device I’d tried so far, including the Fenix 7, had ever successfully managed to stay locked onto GPS signals on the heavily forested rainforest trails where I live; the Vertical, conversely, has never lost them. In the past, if I paused, every other device has struggled to re-establish a connection; the Vertical, meanwhile, has happily jumped back into action. Always. I’ve been seriously impressed. Suunto claims the watch has the highest GPS accuracy on the market; from what I’ve experienced, I can’t argue with that.