The Team at Futurelooks comprise mainly of a group of Internet and technology junkies. However, some of us have other interests and hobbies in life including outdoor sports. Any chance we get to combine the two interests is a good thing. That’s why I was excited to check out one of Suunto’s new Core Series watches, the Suunto Core Light Green. The Core Series is made up of six watches currently that differ in construction and cosmetics. The Suunto Core Light Green features composite case, aluminum bezel, and airy elastomer strap. The other watches feature other materials like leather, stainless steel and different cosmetics, but the fundamental “Core” features are similar.
If you’re not familiar with Suunto, they’ve been an industry leader for over 70 years and specialize in the manufacturing and developing accurate, reliable and precision compasses, dive computers, and wrist top altimeters. Suunto makes a wide range of products, but their new Core Series of watches are aptly named as they provide the outdoor enthusiast only the “Core” information to make informed decisions in the outdoors. All Core Watches feature Time, an Altimeter/Barometer, and a Compass. Additional technical data can be found right here.
What is in the Box?
When I opened the corrugated cardboard retail box, I was quite pleased with what I saw. The box was not only made of some heavy weight cardboard stock, but the graphics definitely branded it towards the male outdoor sporting enthusiast. If cool mountain biking dude on the side of the box doesn’t tell you who this watch is for, then I don’t know what does.
Inside the Suunto Core Green Light’s box, you of course get the watch itself, but also a bevy of manuals which include a Multilingual Users Guide, Quick Guide, and of course, Warrantee Information. The Warranty on the Suunto Core Series watches is two years from date of purchases but may vary depending on your geographical location.
First Impressions
In the past, Suunto had a reputation of making watches that were somewhat big and clunky so it was nice to see that they’ve made an effort to make their watches a bit more stylish. However, the signature style of the watches did get them cast into popular Science Fiction shows like Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis where they would regularly take trips back and forth through stable wormholes.
The Suunto Core Light Green is a watch that I would be comfortable wearing day to day as it doesn’t feel like a huge obtrusive hunk of hardware strapped to my wrist. It’s lightweight and clean lines really make it pleasant to look at while large tactile buttons make operation easy. The large mineral glass face presented an uncluttered and tidy display of information that is easy to read.
Real-Time Price and Stock Check – Find Other Suunto Products
Impressions Continued
Not that I had to do it yet, but I like the fact that the battery is replaceable by the user. The battery is a standard Lithium cell CR 2032 button battery that you can buy pretty much anywhere. The back of the watch tells you what direction to turn the cap and even reminds you what type of battery to use. I have had some watches in the past where you had to spend at least $45 to send the watch away for battery replacement so it’s nice to see Suunto taking care of its users with these little details.
The buttons are large and have a grated texture to them for extra grip that makes them easy to push with bare hands, thin gloves or either or soaking wet or covered in dirt.I also really like the fact that the alarm function on the watch is loud! I hate having watches that have crappy quiet alarms. I am now confident that the alarm in this watch is loud enough to wake me up no matter how long a night I’ve had.
I would be a bit concerned about the rotating compass bezel as it is plastic and I am not sure about the longevity of rotation mechanism. When I rotate the bezel, it’s initially a bit stiff to rotate amongst each click. I am sure over time the clicks will get less stiff and the bezel will be easier to rotate.
Initial Setup
Like any watch, basic things must be done to get the watch up and running. After spending about 15 minutes with the user manual, navigating around the different modes and displays of the Suunto Core interface is pretty straight forward. If I didn’t take the 15 minutes with the manual, the Core would have been a bit frustrating to figure out. The manual is written in 8 different languages (EN, FR, DE, ES, IT, NL, FI, SV) and is relatively easy to follow.
More Than Just a Watch
Asides from the Core telling you normal “watch” information like Time and Date, the Time mode also has the following standard features that most digital sports oriented watches have including stopwatch, dual-time and a countdown timer. The other interesting feature that I liked was that the Sunrise and Sunset times are configurable to the location, region and city that you are currently in. Knowing the Sunrise and Sunset times is relatively important for outdoors enthusiasts as available daylight is crucial for planning your time in the wilderness.
Real-Time Price and Stock Check – Find Other Suunto Products
Getting Elevation With the Suunto Core Green Light
The Altimeter/Barometer Mode of the Suunto Core gives 3 different views. Altimeter, Barometer and Depth Meter. Unlike GPS, the Suunto Core’s Altimeter/Barometer calculates information based on barometric pressure or known reference values. Air pressure changes from location to location, so it is required for the user to calibrate the starting altitude or barometric air pressure before commencing on an activity where the user requires accurate altitude or barometric pressure information. Most outdoors enthusiasts that venture off into the mountains are aware of this and elevation information is usually posted along trail markers or on topographic maps. It is important to check and calibrate the watch with the maps and sign posts as you go.
During my trip to the outdoors of beautiful British Columbia, I spent a lot of time logging runs down some of the best chairlift accessible mountain trails on the planet. I used the Altimeter function during those days to measure and log how much vertical change from the starting point (bottom of the chairlift) we were getting each day. The numbers were staggering at times! We were getting some serious vertical!
Here is a summary of the information recorded by the Suunto Core Green Light for the four days I went mountain biking:
I wasn’t too concerned with the accuracy of the Altimeter as I knew the chairlift would take me to the top and I could ride back to my condo in the afternoon. I’d be pretty picky on altitude accuracy if I was going for a hike into the mountains. Knowing accurate information when hiking in the mountains helps people make decisions on how much further to go or when to make camp. There were certain mornings were I would calibrate the Core’s altimeter to the elevation posted at the bottom of the chairlift and there were other mornings that I forgot. I found that on the days that I didn’t calibrate the Altimeter, it would be out on average about 30-40m from the posted elevation.
It was interesting to check out and compare the data over the 4 days of riding. We managed to peel of a staggering 37 runs and descending 18,876m of vertical over the 4 days!
Real-Time Price and Stock Check – Find Other Suunto Products
The Suunto Core Green Light Under Pressure
I would use the Barometer in the evenings before I went to bed to measure the expected weather for the next day. The week that we were riding was perfect weather as a high pressure system provided sunny and hot weather the entire week so the barometer wasn’t doing anything too exciting.
The weather the past few days though has been quite variable and the barometer on the watch has reflected this information. As above, the barometric pressure was holding steady over a long period of time and for a short time period the barometric pressure went up and then rapidly dropped. When the barometer measures a pressure drop of 4hPa/.12 inHg or more during a 3 hour period, the Core will activate a “Storm Alarm” to notify you of a possible weather system coming your way. This is good information to have as if you are outdoors you can make a decision to find some shelter or make camp before the storm or heavy rains come.
The trend data on the barometer can be used to get an idea of the weather. Air pressure that is constantly rising over a duration of time, gives a higher probability of better weather ahead, and air pressure that is constantly falling gives a higher probability of bad weather. With that in mind, you can see how useful this information can be for the outdoor enthusiast.
The Suunto Core Green Light Even Tells You Where To Go…
The Core Green Light also has a digital compass that is handy for getting yourself around in unknown locations; the compass along with a proper map will get you from A to B!
You can use the Compass in two ways; the traditional compass way by moving the outer bezel of the watch or by bearing tracking method as shown above. I had no reason to use the compass on my trip but I did wonder around the park arbitrarily picking a point A and point B the other day and both methods seemed pretty straight forward to use. It is important to note that local magnetic fields will affect the accuracy of the compass so the compass needs to be calibrated before use to ensure that you are getting accurate readings. Calibration is as simple as holding the Core level and rotating yourself around 360 degrees.
It is also very important to note that if you are planning to rely heavily on your compass, you should figure out what sort of map you are using, (ie Paper map or Orienteering map) and set your declination value appropriately. Paper maps will point to True North while Orienteering maps are drawn in relation to Magnetic North. True North and Magnetic North are not the same location and thus you need to set the declination on the compass in order to get accurate readings. The angle between magnetic and true north is the declination and the location of magnetic North changes each year so it is advisable to get up to date values from the internet. Sunnto suggest the National Geophysical Data Center. If using an Orienteering map that points to Magnetic North there is no need to set the declination and thus set the declination correction value to “0”.
How Durable Is The Suunto Core Green Light?
Usually, I always seem to find myself being hard on watches and scratching the hell out of them. With the Suunto Core having such a large face, it is not hard to whack the watch into things. When riding at the bike park, I would toss the Core into my backpack along with my both my metal bike pumps and other tools and spare parts. I would have to say the mineral glass on the face is still scratch free and has held up extremely over the last few weeks of usage.
Although I have only had the Core for about a month, the construction of the watch seems pretty durable. I am definitely not nice to my watches and the band and the mineral glass are still intact. I am very surprised that I have not put a scratch into the face yet. The display is also large and easy to read. The rubber band on the watch feels pretty thin and with all the slots cut into the band, you would think that the structural integrity would be compromised when taking the watch on and off daily. Only time will tell how long this band will last, but I can what I can tell you is that the band is comfortable, breathable and stays in place when it is on my wrist. The closing latch on the watch is great and doesn’t come loose or flap around when closed up.
Real-Time Price and Stock Check – Find Other Suunto Products
Final Thoughts
All in all I really like the Suunto Core Green Light Advanced Outdoor Sports Watch. As the name suggests, it provides the “Core” features that an outdoor enthusiast would want to have. During my mountain bike holiday I used the Altimeter feature daily and it was cool to compare and see the data we logged. I thought the Altimeter and Barometer worked great and was pretty accurate for the information it was giving me. I compared it to my friend’s watch that had similar functions and our data was relatively similar.
After using all the great features on the Core over that last few weeks my head gets all these ideas and wants more features! It would have been great to maybe somehow download this information from the watch into a computer and map it onto Google Earth or something like that, or even a GPS built into the watch to display location and actual distance traveled through the day. I am sure the name of the watch would no longer be the Suunto Core! Maybe I am asking too much, but downloading the information to a computer would have been nice. I guess these are features for another Suunto model.
If you are looking for a watch that is non-complex, that gives you just the important information like Altimeter, Barometer and Compass to make important decisions while in the outdoors, then the Suunto Core Green Light Advanced Outdoors Sports Watch is a solid choice. I will continue to use mine as I fly down mountains on my bike!
Pros
- Mineral glass is very durable to scratching
- Lightweight and easy to press buttons
- Easy to read display
- Easy to use and navigate between features
- Stylish, looks good, not geeky
- Loud alarm
- User replaceable CR 2032 battery
- Altimeter/Barometer, Compass , Time are “Core” features
Cons
- Altitude/Barometer requires calibration to get accurate information
- Lightweight housing and thin watchband makes me question long-term durability
- Download of information recorded to memory to a computer is not an option
Overall Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
Click Here to Discuss This Review in the Futurelooks Community Forums!
Real-Time Price and Stock Check – Find Other Suunto Products