If you are like me, then you didn’t know much about a small, Finnish company called Suunto a few months ago. For those not in the new, you likely knowthat the company has been making fantastic fitness watches for years. And the company has been on a tear of updates in 2025.
Over the last six months, Suunto has released the Race S, the Run, Race2, and the latest in this review, the Vertical 2 watch. Building atop the platform of the Race 2, this new Vertical 2 could be the adventure wearable you’ve been waiting to buy.
Design
I’ve really enjoyed the industrial design language that Suunto has brought to the market with this generation of watches. Just as the Race 2 was a larger model of the Race S, the Vertical 2 is a beefier Race 2. This houses the same AMOLED 1.5-inch screen with 466×466 resolution. This makes for a vibrant display capable of sharp viewing in any environment.
Controls are slightly altered for the Vertical 2 to have a more “glove-friendly” software navigation over other models with a digital crown. This Suunto makes use of a three button layout to move through menus and screens. I can’t decide which I prefer, but the new buttons have a solid build and very good travel for tactile feedback.
Atop the watch, is the most star addition. Here, you’ll find a dedicated LED flashlight built into the casing of the Vertical 2. The light is bright enough to get you around in a pitch black environment.
The Suunto Vertical 2 has a rugged, and ribbed, stainless steel bezel (there’s a $100 upgrade for a titanium variant). The screen is encased in the extremely durable sapphire crystal glass. This offers all around quality to avoid scratches and dings to the watch. The casing is fiberglass polymer, which is fancy for plastic.
Lastly, the underbelly houses the updated optical sensor arrays. This is identical from the one found on the Race 2 and should lend to solid heart rate tracking.
The Suunto Vertical 2 is a rugged powerhouse, pairing a brilliant AMOLED display and a built-in LED flashlight with the kind of marathon battery life that leaves standard smartwatches in the dust.
Software and Fitness
I’ve come to really enjoy the operating system Suunto runs on these watches. The optimized Linux system is fast and efficient. The navigation is mostly vertical in the main menus, with sub-menus moving you horizontally via the mentioned three button layouts. The top and bottom button move you up and down menus, while the middle one functions as a select, with long-pressing taking back one screen.
There are a few daily comfort things I’d like to see added in the software. The weather widget is well-designed, but painfully stripped down. You can only view the current day’s data. It desperately needs a five to ten-day forecast option.
The same is true for notification mirroring. You get just one line of notification preview, and most of that is taken up by the app name on the screen. I’d love to see Suunto start to take advantage of the large screens found on these latest watches, like the Vertical 2. I should be able to scroll through an email or test to see most, or all, of the included message.
You can’t have a fitness tracking smartwatch without the fitness. Thankfully, Suunto has one of the most robust options on the market with the Vertical 2. There are over 115 sports modes including cross-training, mountain climbing, hiking, running, and even chores. Yep, chores! Call me crazy, but I’ve been using the crap out of this one doing fall yard work and leave removal.
All this data is backed up in the companion app. Available on iOS and Android, the Suunto app offers a well-designed dashboard to house all your metrics. You have dedicated home widgets for things like Sleep, Steps, Heart Rate, and recent Fitness Activities.
The longer you use the Vertical 2, the more intuitive and insightful the app becomes. The company has built a solid option that takes in account of all your relevant sleep and fitness data into meaningful results. Resources gives you a metric of how you should “feel” based of exertion and activities and how much time you’ve given to recovery.
Suunto Coach utilizes AI to see trends in your Activities and Recovery to offer suggestions that don’t complete feel wasteful nonsense. You can even use it to build a fitness improvement program. I’ve been using it to follow a 10-week overall fitness program, and it’s done a good job of slowly building up my endurance and strength training incrementally, much like a personal coach would schedule.
As Vertical 2 is focused on the outdoors crowd, the star of the software are the offline maps and navigation. Including things like route planning from the app and point of interest, you can easily navigate through any task. Whether it’s a walk to the nearest coffee shop, or that endurance trail run, this navigation system has you covered.
Battery Life and Comfort
To make use of all that powerful navigation prowess, the Vertical 2 needs unmatched power. While I didn’t have a scenario to test the estimated 65 hours of dual-band GPS activity tracking, I don’t doubt these claims. I’ve been consistently getting over 16 days of real-time battery life using the full smartwatch mode, Always-on display turned OFF, but running all-the-time heart rate tracking.
This blows most first party options like the Galaxies, Apple Watch, and Pixel Watches out of the water in endurance options. Honestly, that dual-band GPS mode makes it the longest lasting watch I know of on the market for those types of tracking. Charging isn’t great at around 90 minutes, but adequate via the USB-C magnetic charger.
While my time has been overwhelmingly positive, I do have one negative around the Vertical 2: size. The Suunto is big, bulky, and heavy. Even side-by-side to the Race 2, the screen and width are almost identical, but the added girth for the battery and flashlight are immediately noticeable on the wrist.
Especially on smaller wrists. I’m not a huge guy, and this thing can look massive at times. I don’t mind, and like larger watches, but it’s worth considering.
Final Thoughts
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Suunto has found a rhythm in 2025 and the Vertical 2 is the peak of this new generation of fitness watches. The vibrant screen, superb battery life, and robust mapping makes for the adventure watch to have at the top of any shopping list. It has strong competition from the likes of Garmin and even the Suunto Race 2, but if you’re a hardcore outdoorsman, this could be the watch for you.
The Suunto Vertical 2 is $599 for the stainless steel model and $699 for the titanium bezel upgrade. Both are easily worth the investment, and the titanium should cut down slightly on the weight issue.
Purchase the Suunto Vertical 2 from Suunto
Purchase the Suunto Vertical 2 from Amazon
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