Thread: Suunato Traverse

I've had my Traverse Alpha since November and I'm real happy with it. Stupidly, I've already had to use their warranty service and I was even more impressed with that. Long story short - my fault, new watch.

On a recent hunt I tried out the "Shot" function. It works as advertised. Surprisingly it also worked when I was using a .22 on bunnies, which was somewhat unexpected as they suggest the feature may not work on small calibre rifles. The altimeter, barometer and temperature features all work well. I got to a trig station the other day with a known altitude of 1471 m and bugger me - the watch said I was at 1471 m. For accurate ambient temperature you just take your watch off for a couple of minutes and let it adjust to the surrounding air otherwise its biased by your body temp. It's taken a bit to get used to the Fused Alt and barometer modes but they are pretty accurate, without doubt.

The GPS works well, no hassles there. A couple of weeks ago for the hell of it I "planned a route" on the computer using a known local track that even appears on google maps, then uploaded that to my watch and followed the track, noting deviations. There is no doubt that you will get to your destination if you follow your watch. It was pretty simple to use. The watch is well set up for training... like fitness training etc. as it can log your exercises for review afterwards. Thankfully it doesn't laugh at me afterwards.

Like most smart watches these days you can Bluetooth it to your phone for incoming messages, emails, texts and calls. I just use it for calls and text alerts. Very handy when you have the volume turned off on your phone. You can adjust these settings via your phone app.

Battery life was my big sticking point. On my last watch I changed the battery every 4 or 5 YEARS... this bloody thing needs to be charged every 10 -12 days. My wife told me to "get over it and move on"... so I almost have.

Overall I'm very happy with it.

Being able to make adjustments via your phone app is handy. Want a different presentation when hiking? No problem, use the app to change what you see on the watch. Don't want a red backlight? No problem, change it on your phone app. Done.

I compared the Traverse to the Fenix5 and technically they're almost identical in every respect. Yep, the colour screen of the Fenix is nice but the Traverse had a couple of extra features I liked so I went that way.