The Suunto 7 Titanium was the lightest watch in our GPS watches review. Alex Roddie puts it to the test.
The Suunto 7 Titanium GPS watch runs Google’s Wear OS, which means that a wide variety of apps can be installed, including outdoor apps such as Outdooractive (which supports OS mapping and grid references). This watch is more like a smartphone than others tested, with Google Assistant support and many other built-in apps.
The watch itself is well made and lightweight, with a titanium shell, but feels bulky on the wrist. Operation depends mostly on touchscreen swipes and taps. The display is large, bright, and vibrant. It looks great indoors but less good in full sun, and the raise-to-wake feature can be slow to respond. If set to always-on, it drains battery very quickly.
Suunto’s activity recording and mapping lives in a separate set of menus on the device. Downloaded maps are ok for basic outdoor use, with contours and some paths, but not as complete as OS maps. Tracking is accurate and reliable. The Suunto phone app is quite buggy and won’t work properly without an internet connection, although it will sync to Apple Health and Strava. GPX files can be imported and exported. Confusingly, certain fitness metrics will only sync with Google Fit instead of Suunto.
Battery life is poor. Even with the screen set to time out in seconds, I rarely achieved the 12 hours advertised, and often had to charge the watch every day. Overall this is an attractive device in some respects, but it’s hard to recommend for anything more than occasional hill use.
If you want to compare more GPS watches, check out the rest of Alex’s guide to GPS watches.
We’ve also recently answered a couple of the frequently asked questions when it comes to GPS watches including ‘Do GPS watches need the internet?’ and how to use GPS for hiking navigation.
This review first featured in The Great Outdoors in August 2021.
