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{{DISPLAYTITLE:Suunto Spartan Ultra Review}}[[File:Suunto Spartan.jpg|right|thumb|200px]]
The Suunto Spartan is an expensive but beautiful running watch. It has an elegant, simplistic physical design, combined with an effective and intuitive user interface. The materials are not only beautiful to look at, but like the ambit range before, there pleasing to the touch. Unfortunately, this beautiful design is let down by incomplete functionality and a rather hefty price tag. If you buy the Spartan, it should be predominantly because of its looks and feel, rather than its functionality.(This review is based on 1.7.30 firmware.)
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* '''Something Novel'''. To belabor the point a little, to justify this price tag, I'd like some new feature rather than a nice display and materials. I've not found anything innovative that the Spartan provides, nor does there appear to be anything on their roadmap.
* '''Apps'''. Suunto were the first sports watch manufacturer to allow extensibility through apps. These apps were relatively simple and nothing like the complexity and sophistication of Garmin's [[Connect IQ]], but they allowed for new functionality to be added by the community. Sadly, this functionality is not available in the Spartan, but I hope it eventually gets added in. It would be even better if they include some of the rich options that are available with Connect IQ. I've really come to appreciate the custom watch faces, new data fields, and support for niche [[Running Sensors]].
* '''Navigation'''. There's only a primitive display of the course you load, not waypoints, off course notifications, distance to the end, backtrack, etc.
* '''Interval Timers'''. I'm not a fan of using timers for interval training, but it's something I'd expect on watches that are far cheaper than the Spartan.
* '''Where's my phone?''' I've come to appreciate the Garmin "Where's My Phone?" feature that buzzes the phone to help you find it. It's one of the most useful bits of having a watch connected to the phone.
* '''Stability'''. Each new firmware release seems to break functionality, which This is indicative becoming less of quality problemsa problem, and I'm not seeing a problem with existing functionality becoming broken with the latest release.
=Physical Characteristics=
The Spartan is a big watch, though it is dwarfed by earlier devices like the [[Garmin 910XT]] which always felt like wrist mounted computers. On my minuscule wrists, the Spartan feels large, but not cumbersome or awkward. The design seems to epitomize the simplistic elegance that the Scandinavians and Finns are renowned for. There is nothing about the Spartan that indicates it's a sports watch, and I feel that it would not look out of place when worn with more formal clothing. It's a far less fussy design than the [[Garmin Fenix 3]] and like other Suunto watches, the strap is made of wonderfully soft material that feels pleasant next to the skin. Below you can see the Spartan next to some of its competitors. To the right of the Spartan is the [[Garmin Fenix 3]], which is probably closest in terms of style and tactile qualities. It's a little more rugged with its exposed bolt heads, but this also makes it a little more visually fussy. Next is the [[Garmin Epix]] that has a little more functionality than the Spartan, adding in preloaded maps which is great for navigation. As we continue to move right, the [[Polar V800]] has similar design aesthetics to the Spartan, using high-quality materials and an elegant, simplistic layout. The Polar does not have the conventional design of the Spartan but it is a beautiful watch. The polar lacks a color display, but has outstanding GPS accuracy. Finally, we have the [[Suunto Ambit3]], which is here to show an earlier (and much cheaper) offering from Suunto.
{| class="wikitable" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: none;"
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|[[File:Spartan-LapsRun.jpg|centernone|thumb|x300px|The This is the five field display, which you can customize.]]|[[File:Spartan Updates A (broken3) lap .jpg|none|thumb|x300px|The Spartan displaycan show 7 fields, which is really nice. It 's more readable than I expected, but you can't customize the 7 field displays yet.]]|- valign="top"|[[File:Spartan Updates A (1).jpg|none|thumb|x300px|The option for an inverted display was cool when added, and it workedreally improves ease of reading.]]|[[File:SpartanUpdates A (4).jpg|none|thumb|x300px|Heart rate graphs are available on the predefined activities, but you can't add them to a custom layout.]]|-Runvalign="top"|[[File:Spartan Updates A (2).jpg|none|thumb|x300px|Here's the graph with the inverted color scheme.]]|[[File:Spartan-Laps.jpg|none|thumb|x300px|The five field lap displayis a nice feature, showing you how each split is changing. There's some confusion in the Suunto software between manual laps and auto-laps (hopefully they'll clear that up.)]]
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=Going For A Run=
|[[File:Spartan Run (5).jpg|none|thumb|x300px|Then choose the exercise mode..]]
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|[[File:Spartan Run Updates A (45).jpg|none|thumb|x300px|Wait for the pointer to go solid indicating GPS lock and hit the middle button.(A firmware update added a display of connected sensors and HR.)]]
|[[File:Spartan-Run.jpg|none|thumb|x300px| The Spartan can display lots of data, though it looks to me like the distance is negative, which is confusing.]]
|- valign="top"
|[[File:Spartan Run (2).jpg|none|thumb|x300px|Pause resume is the top button, even though start was the middle.]]
|[[File:Spartan Summary.jpg|none|thumb|x300px|Lots of summary data at the end of the run,]]
|- valign="top"
|[[File:Spartan Updates A (6).jpg|none|thumb|x300px|A firmware update added a graph of altitude…]]
|[[File:Spartan Updates A (7).jpg|none|thumb|x300px|…and a graph of heart rate (if available).]]
|}
=Navigation=
[[File:Spartan-Map.jpg|center|thumb|x300px|]]
=Sensors=
The Spartan works with the various Bluetooth heart rate monitors I tried, including the Polar H7, [[Wahoo TICKR Run]], and Suunto's own heart rate monitor. I found the heart rate monitor that is optionally packaged as with the Spartan worked fine, though I've generally used the Wahoo as I can get the heart rate data on any Ant+ watches I'm also using. The Spartan is unique in supporting the [[Stryd]] footpod, a [[Running Sensors| Running Sensor]] that will transmit "Running Power." It's nice to see these new Running Sensors supported as first-class devices, but even there's no support for calibration, so the latest firmware seems have occasional problems Spartan won't work with Stryd, dropping the connection occasionallyother Footpods. The Spartan has an internal accelerometer that will give a reading for [[Cadence]] without a [[Footpod]], and I'd say this is broadly adequate but far from perfect. One annoyance is that the Cadence from Stryd is twice that from the internal accelerometer, and the Stryd Cadence data seems to be rather noisy. I tested the Spartan with the Polar Stride Sensor and the Adidas footpod and they transmitted pace and cadence information. However, there's no facility for calibration of a Footpod which limits the ability to use these devices. (In theory, the Stryd Footpod is accurate enough that it doesn't require calibration.)
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{| class="wikitable" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: none;"
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|[[File:BridgeSuunto Spartan Ultra 1.6.14.jpg| None none | Thumb thumb | x300px |This is the 1.6.14 version of the firmware. (This diagram has tracks color coded with green indicating good accuracy through to red indicating poor accuracy, and the lap markers as blue dots.)]]
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|[[File:BridgeSuunto Spartan Ultra 1.4.6.jpg| None none | Thumb thumb | x300px |This is the 1.4.6 version of the firmware. (This diagram has tracks color coded with green indicating good accuracy through to red indicating poor accuracy, and the lap markers as blue dots.)]]
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|[[File:BridgeSuunto Spartan Ultra 1.2.4.jpg| None none | Thumb thumb | x300px |For comparison, here's the earlier 1.2.4 Firmware.]]
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|[[File:BridgeSuunto Ambit3 R.jpg| None none | Thumb thumb | x300px |Here's how the [[Suunto Ambit3]]'s accuracy looks.]]
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