When I think about serious fitness tracking watches there are three companies I look to: Garmin, Polar, and Suunto. They all make great products, but to date, only Polar has pushed aside their own software to take a stab at making a true smartwatch with Google’s Wear OS. Today, Suunto makes its play.

Suunto announced the Suunto 7, its first Wear OS watch with all of the current to specs available. You get the Snapdragon Wear 3100, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage, 450mAh battery, GPS, heartrate monitor, barometric altimeter, NFC (Google Pay), microphone, and 1.39″AMOLED display (454×454).

The case, which is made of a stainless steel bezel and reinforced polyamide body, uses interchangeable 24mm straps, plus you get a design that is shock-proof, water-proof (50 meters), and dirt-proof. There are a variety of colors including black/lime, white/burgundy, black, sandstone/rosegold, and graphite/copper.. The watch weighs 70g.

But can the Suunto 7 live up to the Suunto name as a fitness device knowing that Wear OS and all of its limitations are here? I certainly have worries about battery life for a watch that is probably going to be considered by fitness enthusiasts who might spend hours and hours on the road or trail, miles away from the nearest charger.

Suunto is saying that you should get 12 hours of continuous use with GPS or about 48 hours with normal daily wear. Again, knowing that almost every Wear OS I’ve tested only lasts about 24 hours with daily use and no GPS, I’ll need to test to see if it can live up to those lofty numbers.

As a sports watch, Suunto is including 70+ sport modes (running, cycling, swimming, skiing, yoga, etc.) and an offline outdoor maps mode, so you can leave your phone behind. They even included a way to boost display brightness to 1,000 nits for those outdoor moments.

The Suunto 7 arrives January 31 for $499 but pre-orders should open tomorrow, January 6. I’ll see what I can do to try and test one.

Shop Suunto sport watches

UPDATE 1/6 : We had a chance to play with the Suunto 7 and toss in on the wrist! In short – very cool watch with some really neat fitness software, but it’s huge and we’re forever going to be worried about battery life knowing the Wear 3100 is behind it.

// Suunto