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I have raced with this watch, trained with it and just worn it around town and have found it to be one my favorites (I have about eight watches in all). I got my Suunto X6HR while at an adventure race in Borneo in 2002 and have used it extensively since. Overall, this has been a great watch for me and I would recommend it to a friend. One issue that does iritate me about it is the altitude setting goes back to zero each time the battery is changed and the process to bring it back up to 6660 (my home altitude) requires several minutes of button pushing/holding. I have found the watch to be an overall great training and racing tool over the years. I would agree that battery life is not the strongest feature (my experience has been two per year for the watch and one a year for the chest strap - the battery life is significantly reduced if connected to the computer often).
If you are looking for a tough watch, look elsewhere. This is supposed to be a watch that you can bring to an expedition, yet it failed miserably in a everyday environment. The LCD on the watch also became fuzzy when I wear it around beaches.
However, in less than a year, I foung the rubber band of the heart monitor is broken in many placed and the rubber became brittle with many hairline cracks. The band itself also has many small cracks. I wear my X6HR in a regular environment (office, home), nothing near extreme condition.
I am sure the band will break in half sooner or later. My Casio G-shock never gives me any headache that this watch gives. This is clearly a quality issue with the material used for the watch.
In a trip to the Keys, FL, I found that the little rubber ring that holds the band of the watch in place broke in two piece much like what happed to the heart rate monitor band.
Instructions are simple and clear. All the features work exactly as described. Great product. I love this thing. It would be hard to live without.
The watch delivers everything you want from a HR monitor + outdoor adventures and is very simple to operate.
I've parallel tested with a $30 HRM, which seems more reliable.- The compass function is unbelievably poorly designed. This is a completely counterintuitive way of displaying the information.- The PC connection software looks like it was written in the 1990s- provides little functionality and poor usability.This watch had great promise. The X6HR has a great range of functions. Instead of drawing a compass on the face, or indicating N/S/E/W points around the bezel, the watch tells you the number of degrees you are facing, or prints N, NW, W, SE, etc on the screen. but it has proven very disappointing in design. However, the user interface and reliability of the product need serious work before its steep pricetag can be justified.- Bezel buttons give no positive feedback, so you need to look closely at the screen to confirm button presses.- The HRM function seems both unreliable. Heart rate occasionally drops out or spikes to double for no reason.
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