Our apologies to Suunto for the misinformation.The included PC-based Trek Manager (sorry, Mac usersno Mac software exists or is planned) is, unfortunately, disappointing. Out of the box, traces from the watch simply display as red lines on a blank background. No maps are included, and you have to pay $99 each for the compatible National Geographic map setsa bit of ruse, in my opinion. This is somewhat mitigated, however, by the free download that lets you export traces to Google Earth. There are some Replica Cartier Santos W20060D6 Mens Watch gotchas here, too, thoughyou can only download from the watch to Google Earth, not via the Suunto software. Minor but annoying.Ive included screenshots (below) from a couple of traces thus downloaded into Google Earth. The smooth trace along highway I-5 was taken with myself as a passenger, holding the X9i flat and above the window line of the car in 1-second mode. Works fabulously.
The second trace was from a friend who volunteered. He has a daily walk route, and we strapped the Suunto onto him like tagging a deer. As you can see, while walking, the X9i fared much worse, with large amounts of error and a fix that jumped around quite a lot. I would guess that the motion of the wrist Replica Cartier Santos W20011C4 Mens Watch makes it much harder for the watch to get and maintain a fix. Of course, the watch is primarily made for hiking, so this could be a problem.The battery is one of the limiting factors of the Suunto X9i, so lets dive into that. The watch allows you to set GPS sampling rates of:1 per second.1 per minute.Manual on-demand.For these rates, the battery lifetimes are, respectively:5 hours.12 hours.2-5 months (no GPS usage).Thats not bad, but it does circumscribe how you can use the watch. For example, dont plan on a super-detailed trace of your two-week hiking trip unless you have a solar USB charger along.
Depending on how you want to use it, battery life may or may not be an issue, but its definitely something to consider. The watch recharges when you plug it into a USB port or charger.The barometer and altimeter have a chart mode as well where you can see a time history of readings. Very useful for hiking profiles, Replica Cartier Santos Galbee W20099C4 Mens Watch keeping an eye on the weather trends, and no doubt impressing your friends.As noted above, the GPS performs best when the watch has a good view of the sky. That combined with the battery life leads me to recommend this for activities like biking, sailing (and boating in general), general aviation and use as a backup navigation instrument.Other watch features (stopwatch, dual-time, alarms, time zones) all work great and are as expected.
