Suunto 9 Baro Watch Review

JUMP TO: SPECS  /  PROS & CONS  / HOW IT PERFORMED  /  FEATURES  /  ACCESSORIES  /  SUMMARY

Author: Steve Edgerton

The Suunto 9 Baro GPS watch is a high-performing tool for ultra-endurance endeavors and multisport athletes, with a particular focus on mountain adventure sports.

As someone whose primary pursuits are trail running, backpacking, and skiing, the 9 Baro intrigued me. I need a watch with battery life and GPS accuracy suitable for long ultras and multi-day backcountry trips, but with enough versatility to be my daily fitness tracker for everything from hiking to bike commuting to climbing sessions at the gym. 

The watch’s focus on backcountry travel — with its altimeter, compass, namesake barometer, and a strong feature set including route navigation and storm alerts — was also a major selling point.

Although the Suunto 9 Baro ultimately met or exceeded these key expectations, its usability, comfort, and overall value proved disappointing. I believe it is an excellent watch, but what the 9 Baro does well might not compensate for what it doesn’t, especially if you don’t identify as a mountain endurance specialist.

HOW IT PERFORMED

GPS ACCURACY: The GPS accuracy of the Suunto 9 Baro is outstanding. It tracked remarkably well along my familiar running loops close to home and on the GPS routes I followed while skiing and hiking in the Canadian Rockies. It had the occasional section of errant tracking, usually through heavily-treed sections, but this kind of deviation is inevitable in all GPS watches.

BATTERY LIFE: Compared to similar watches from COROS and Garmin, the 9 Baro’s battery life doesn’t seem that remarkable. What is remarkable is how that battery life is managed and optimized. The watch has three distinct GPS modes, offering varying battery life: 25 hours for Performance, 50 hours for Endurance, and 120 hours for Ultra. Like COROS and Garmin, Suunto reduces GPS tracking frequency to save battery. But Suunto outperforms them by providing more accurate GPS tracks when in battery-saving mode. The 9 Baro does this thanks to Suunto’s FusedTrack software, which I will dive into further below.

I found that in smartwatch mode and Performance GPS mode, battery life lined up closely to Suunto’s specifications, falling perhaps just a little short. I’m charging the watch every weekend after a week with four or five tracked activities. With minimal to no GPS tracking, the watch goes for close to its advertised two-week maximum.

ACTIVITY TRACKING: Outdoor endurance sports are where the 9 Baro really shines, and what I mostly use it for, but it can go much further. It accommodates over 80 activities, covering everything from triathlon to table tennis. Paired to a smartphone, activities upload automatically upon completion to the Suunto app, which is easy to connect to third-party apps like Strava.

DISPLAY AND INTERFACE: The watch has a gorgeous LCD touchscreen that is fairly easy to manipulate, even with compatible running gloves. Unfortunately, the overall interface is nonintuitive and clunky. Suunto uses a mix of horizontal and vertical movement between screens in a way that often feels arbitrary. Controls and settings take longer to access than they should. It took me quite a while to understand and get comfortable with the layout and navigation, and I still don’t love it.

HEART RATE MONITOR: Beyond the user interface, the heart rate monitor is the second place where the 9 Baro misses the mark. This is partly due to the large watch face, which never seems to sit flat and securely on my wrist. During runs, my displayed heart rate jumps and dips erratically, sometimes being comically wrong. I can look down mid-interval to see a BPM reading in the 90s when I am really pushing 175. Often, the reading simply goes completely blank. I’ve even seen it continue displaying a fluctuating heart rate reading minutes after removing it from my wrist!

If you track your heart rate with any seriousness, you will want to pair the watch with an HR chest strap to get any meaningful insights.

ABC: Like GPS, the altimeter, barometer, and compass (ABC) of the 9 Baro are all top-notch. The compass and altimeter are helpful for off-trail travel and complex alpine terrain, while the barometer constantly monitors air pressure. Notable fluctuations in barometric pressure will activate a storm alert. I received one midway through a long nordic ski tour, which allowed us to adjust our objective for the day and avoid an incoming blizzard.

The watch earned big points for me here and is a huge vote in its favor for any extended backcountry outings.

FIT: I love the look of the 9 Baro, and would wear it daily if it were not for how uncomfortable it is. Unless you have larger wrists, the watch face will fit awkwardly. As mentioned, this affects the accuracy of the heart rate monitor, but it also just feels unpleasant.

This unpleasantness is compounded by the textile watch band. The band is extremely stiff, making it impossible to achieve a good fit. The watch is either too loose and shifts down my wrist with movement, or it is painfully tight to the point of cutting off circulation. I plan to replace it with the Suunto silicone band that, fortunately, often comes with the watch as the default. I recommend avoiding the textile band at all costs.

MATERIALS AND DURABILITY: The 9 Baro is built to endure. Its sapphire glass display is bulletproof and the stainless steel bezel and glass fibre-reinforced polyamide casing will withstand some serious bashing and dropping. I have not pushed its limits, but those limits appear to be considerable.

NOTABLE FEATURES

FUSEDTRACK: The 9 Baro marries its excellent GPS and battery features together through their FusedTrack technology. FusedTrack uses GPS data as a baseline, filling in the gaps with data from the compass, altimeter, and accelerometer. Even in Ultra mode, with a data point taken only every 60 seconds, FusedTrack combines all of these metrics to create remarkably accurate GPS tracks. That means you get 120 hours of excellent tracking on a single charge.

FUSEDSPEED: Like FusedTrack, FusedSpeed combines multiple data points to deliver highly accurate, real-time pacing data, displayed in seconds, not in increments of 5 seconds as many watches do. I notice less lag in pacing data after finishing a speed interval or starting up a big ascent—the watch reflects these pace changes quickly and accurately.

TRAINING INSIGHTS: The 9 Baro has the standard set of training insights you would expect. It tracks steps, calories burned, and sleep quality. It also tracks fitness levels and recovery time estimates to alert you when you are at risk of overtraining.

NAVIGATION: You can use the 9 Baro’s navigation functions as part of an activity or independently. I create GPS routes in Strava or Gaia and import them to the Suunto app, but you can create routes directly through the Suunto app as well.

Updating the watch via the app will add the selected routes to your watch, up to a maximum of 15. There are no topo base maps on the 9 Baro, but the GPS routes are great for general guidance. Breadcrumb tracking can also help you retrace your steps as needed, whether following a GPS route or not.

MEDIA CONTROLS: While there are no music storage capabilities, you can pause, skip songs and adjust the volume when connected to another device, which is great when your phone is stashed away in your pack or vest.

OPTIONAL ACCESSORIES

There are two accessories strongly worth considering to get the most out of the Suunto 9 Baro:

CHEST HEART RATE STRAP: I struggle to get reliable heart rate readings from the 9 Baro, but honestly, most wrist-based heart rate monitors are subpar. If you want accurate heart rate metrics for health or performance reasons, you should invest in a dedicated chest strap.

The watch pairs with standard Bluetooth Smart sensors, so nearly any strap will work. The Suunto Smart Heart Rate Belt and Garmin HRM-Dual Heart Rate Monitor are great options.

SILICONE WATCH BAND: Suunto offers a variety of band options in different colors and materials on their website, but they are a little pricey. Luckily, the 9 Baro was conveniently designed to accept any standard 24 mm watch band. You can harvest one off an old favorite watch or get a solid, budget-friendly one like the WOCCI Silicone Band.

SUMMARY

The Suunto 9 Baro is an interesting watch. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced a piece of gear that so impressed and perplexed me in nearly equal measure.

My first impressions were not spectacular: the fit and comfort of the watch leave something to be desired, and the user interface is clumsy and circuitous. As an all-around gear and mapping geek with an education in geospatial technology, I typically get a handle on new GPS watches rather quickly, but the interface of the 9 Baro admittedly flummoxed me. I spent more time than expected poring over the online user guide to understand and operate some pretty basic watch functions.

But with a little time, I began grasping the extent of its powers. Ultrarunning, backpacking, and skiing are my primary activities, so in many ways, this is the perfect watch for me. I never worry about it dying during longer ultras or big training runs, and the customizable battery modes allow me to record accurate GPS tracks for weeklong backpacking trips on a single charge. 

The barometer and storm warning features have already helped me dodge a severe blizzard. Route navigation is easy to use, and the robust ABC functions make this watch an ideal companion for trail races, off-trail trekking, and navigating through whiteout conditions on skis.

The high points of the 9 Baro are unfortunately countered by some lows. In terms of the heart rate sensor, fitness tracking, usability, mapping abilities, and smartwatch features, it is outmatched by comparable watches from Garmin and COROS. At its price, it is hard not to feel a touch let down by the 9 Baro.

These limitations make it hard to recommend the 9 Baro to users outside its endurance mountain sport specialization. For most people, feature-rich and user-friendly watches like the Garmin Forerunner 955 or Fenix 6x will provide more value at a comparable or lower cost.

But what the watch does well, it does better than anything else. It really leans into catering to the specific needs of endurance athletes by prioritizing battery life, accurate GPS and altimeter tracks, straightforward navigation, and overall reliability. In the coming months, I plan to use it for backcountry ski tours, 100 km trail races, and as a reliable navigation aid for 10 days of mostly off-trail hiking on the Yosemite High Route.

For ultrarunners and committed backcountry travelers who regularly engage in similar adventures, the Suunto 9 Baro can rightfully be considered one of the best GPS watches available.

DISCLOSURE

Suunto provided me with a free sample for this review – but the views expressed here are all my own. The review also contains affiliate links, which help us keep churning out more content.

MORE INFORMATION

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Happy hiking and take care out there in the wild!