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Today, January 7th, in the middle of the maelstrom of press releases and communications coming from the CES in Las Vegas, a totally unexpected one has snuck in, because Suunto does not even attend this fair.
The presentation, in the purest Suunto style. Without making noise, going totally unnoticed. I don't think it's the best way to announce a new device, but when they presented the Traverse this summer the procedure was exactly the same, it appeared on their website suddenly without anyone noticing and without "consulting" with anyone or calling the industry media.
What's new in Suunto Ambit3 Vertical
Many of you are anxious to get to know the Ambit4, but you must keep waiting. Instead, to kill the bug, you have this new model of the Ambit3 family, called the Vertical. We can place it between the Sport and the Peak, so the Ambit3 family would be broken down into Run, Sport, Vertical and Peak.
This new model is more like an Ambit3.5, because beyond the model-specific software peculiarities, there are two important hardware changes.
- Firstly, and following the path marked by the Traverse, the antenna design has been lost underneath the watch case. Now the antenna is on the bezel, following the design stream that the public is demanding (especially after the arrival of the Fenix 3 on the market). The strap is now more comfortable since the anchorage is directly on the case, and not on the antenna protrusion.
This change of location will surely have an impact on the quality of the GPS signal, to a greater or lesser extent, but it will surely be noticed. How much? You will have to wait for the test to know. - Vibrating alarms are finally coming to the Ambit3 range. If there was one thing that was missing from this model, it was the possibility that the alarms would not be audible, but would alert with a vibration. So now when you are training and you receive lap warnings or specific alarms the clock will also vibrate.
As I mentioned before, the new Ambit3 Vertical is located between the Sport and the Peak. The reason is simple: it has the barometric altimeter of the Peak, but the battery is the one of the Sport model.
The clock software is very similar, but now it is very focused on controlling vertical ascent. With the barometric altimeter, you also have the FusedAlti algorithm, which combines GPS data with the barometric altimeter data to always have a much more accurate altitude reference on a constant basis, regardless of the current air pressure.
Another novelty you can find in the route tracking is that now you can also navigate with the altitude profile, so you will see not only the distance you have left, but ultimately the most important thing, how many vertical meters and the profile of the route.
The activity widget has also been redesigned. In addition to having the accumulated activity on a weekly basis, you will also be able to see the vertical metres for each day. If you are a mountain runner, the distance data you are looking for is not exactly the same as that of the asphalt runner. For you, the accumulated vertical metres are much more important than for those of us who are more used to running on asphalt (who get scared from 10m upwards, we get dizzy).
If you remember the Ambit3 activity widget, it detailed the level of activity you had during the week in a bar chart, so that same widget now unfolds to include the accumulated level change data from the week's workouts.
In summary, the new Ambit3 Vertical is an Ambit3 Sport with a barometric altimeter, vibration and a case with an antenna integrated into the bezel. In the Suunto video you can see the new features in detail quite quickly.
Suunto Ambit3 Vertical. Availability and price
The new Ambit3 Vertical will be available in four different colors: Black, white, blue and lime green. In terms of price, it's £419 for the version without a pulse sensor and £469 if you want the watch with the Suunto Smart Sensor. It arrives on the market in just under a month, starting on February 2nd in Europe. Of course there will be a test so you can get to know the new features in detail, and I already have a unit on its way.
And with that... thanks for reading!
