Suunto Vertical 2 review: what you're buying
Price band: under $600
A big 1.5-inch AMOLED screen under sapphire, free worldwide topo maps on 32 GB, dual-band GPS and a real flashlight with white and red LEDs. It has three buttons, no crown and a 10 ATM rating. It doesn't store music or pay for coffee. This review covers the steel model; the titanium edition is a separate, untested watch.
Does the Suunto Vertical 2 battery hold with maps and multi-band on?
Close enough to plan a race on, which most AMOLED watches can't claim. In my old trade, a spec sheet that named its test condition was halfway to being believed. Suunto's does. Nobody has run one to empty in that mode, but DC Rainmaker's pace projects to roughly three-quarters of the 65 h.
The shortfall from 65 h is mostly the lit screen and navigation, the two biggest drains on any AMOLED watch. One owner's 4-hour hike used 14% with the screen off, close to twice DC Rainmaker's pace. It's one watch, and unexplained. Plan your longest day on the testers' figures in our GPS battery planner.
It recharges in 72 minutes. Suunto's user guide covers a defective battery for 1 year or 300 charges, whichever comes first. At one charge every 10 days, the calendar wins that race by a mile. If one charge must cover your longest day with a bright screen, this is the AMOLED watch we'd buy.
How does 3 ounces sit on a slim wrist?
Not well. It weighs 3.0 oz (85 g) on OutdoorGearLab's scale, against Suunto's 3.1 oz (87 g). The case is 2 in (50 mm) across and comes in one size. Suunto lists it at 0.54 in (13.6 mm) thick; OutdoorGearLab measured it thicker. On a slim wrist, that's a deck of cards hunting for the wrist bone. Gadgets & Wearables found exactly that: it slid onto the bone and read heart rate poorly until moved higher. TechRadar found it clumsy in bed.
The screen is superb, rated to 2,000 nits, though testers found the dimmed always-on face hard to read. Slim wrists should start with our small-wrist guide.
Can you trust its wrist heart rate?
On steady trail runs, once it's warm and snug, yes. OutdoorGearLab found it read 3 to 4 bpm low for the first 15 minutes. After that it stayed within 5 bpm of an armband 90% of the time. The Quantified Scientist's chest-strap test shows where it wobbles:
Trust it for easy miles and long days on foot. For intervals, the bike or the gym, wear a chest strap.
What can't the Suunto Vertical 2 maps do?
It's a very good map and a poor guide. The topo maps are free and, the user guide says, download over Wi-Fi while charging. Routes import from planning apps or a GPX file. But it can't re-route you offline. Wander off and it shows the line you left; the way back is your problem. Owners also find the maps less detailed than Garmin's.
The iPhone route path is the catch owners return watches over. One owner on February 2026 software imported a GPX offline in Suunto's iOS app but couldn't send it to the watch. He sent the watch back, and no fix has been confirmed since. Plan at home on Wi-Fi and it won't touch you. Plan at a trailhead with no bars and it might.
One owner also found no "resume later", so a multi-day hike becomes separate recordings. Our hiking with maps guide covers watches that re-route. If you plan at home and read your own contours, we'd still buy it. If you need the watch to rescue a wrong turn, we wouldn't.
What's it like to live with day to day?
The GPS earns its keep: OutdoorGearLab's distance came within 0.03 mile over a measured 2-mile course. The buttons work through gloves. That matters, because the touchscreen gets confused when wet, and you can switch it off. Owners use the flashlight more than anything, though it resets to half-brightness each time. Sleep tracking is middling. No Suunto watch has ever been recalled by the CPSC.
The one catch, and our call
The weight. Everything else is a quirk or a missing smartwatch trick. Three ounces of steel on a slim wrist costs you daily: worse heart rate, a watch off at night, a lump that snags a jacket cuff. On an average or larger wrist, it's simply a big watch that lasts.
Milewright's call on the Vertical 2 is a buy. It's for the hiker or ultra runner with a wrist of average size or bigger who wants the brightest map screen for the longest day.
Suunto Vertical 2Under $600 
