Spartan ultra collection

This is Spartan!

Suunto has released its next generation, multi-sport device at the same time as using big data techiques to revamp its online sports service.

The Finnish brand has launched the GPS-enabled Spartan Ultra, a digital watch perfectly suited to ‘athletes and adventurers’ alike while also introducing new features to its online sports community, Suunto Movescount.

“People have been asking about what’s next after Ambit3 for quite some time now,” said Sami Arhomaa, performance business unit director at Suunto. “So it’s a great pleasure to announce our next generation Suunto Spartan solution for athletic and adventure multisport.”

The 100m water resistant Spartan Ultra watches are hand-assembled in Finland and feature full-colour touchscreens with wide viewing angles and good visibility in strong sunlight.

A glass-fibre reinforced polymide case and sapphire crystal – with both Grade 5 titanium and stainless steel bezel options – ensure its rugged construction can withstand the lifestyle of Suunto users.

The four-watch collection also offers GPS-guided route navigation, barometric altitude, heart rate monitor and a digital compass. The Spartan Ultra also has dozens of presets suited to numerous individual sports.

The Suunto Spartan Ultra will be available in August and will cost from £545 to £585.

Suunto has also been busy behind the scenes using big data methods to analyse ‘tens of millions’ of sports sessions to provide its audience with sports-specific ‘heatmaps’ that suggest where they should train, how to avoid the crowds and how best to make progress with their training via Suunto Movescount.

“Suunto Movescount is an essential piece of the Suunto offering. The service has today over 100 million Moves and counting. We want to give back to the community by introducing new community-powered tools. In addition to the heatmaps launched today, we’ll bring further improvements and other tools during this year,” says Janne Kallio, performance business digital lead at Suunto. “We have worked quite intensively together with our customers on this project, and we would like to thank everyone who participated. Their knowledge and feedback have helped us to create what’s going live today.”

These heatmaps can be studied at movescount.com and transferred to Suunto GPS watches.

James Buttery

Editor of WatchPro, the WatchPro Hot 100 and The Luxury Report.

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