What's really exciting about Suunto's 2.16.26 Update

What's really exciting about Suunto's 2.16.26 Update

TL;DR, I love Suunto: whilst a Garmin device has n+1 levels of functionality, I find that Suunto devices have an allure that almost makes up for what a Garmin promises (and sometimes delivers).

In 2021-06, Suunto released firmware 2.16.26 for the 9 series of watches (9, Baro and Peak). The 9 Baro was three years old at time of writing, but with this update Suunto released features advertised as being part of their as-yet unreleased watch, the 9 Peak.

In a culture of planned obsolescence this is nothing short of incredible. Garmin stop releasing new features after about a year, even if the older hardware is capable (one imagines...) of executing the code.

Suunto could have chosen to keep new features, such as Ghost Run, for its new watch, encouraging existing customers to upgrade to new hardware, but instead they chose to behave like a decent organisation, not intent on creating endless profit based on endless churn.