Suunto Ambit2 or Garmin Fenix2? Thoughts? (Page 2)

The beep alert sound on the Suunto isn't very loud.  you won't be happy with this.

Another thing that you won't be happy with.  you won't find anything that will do what the garmin can do.

Yes, you can change the display on all of the Ambits.  I've got the 2S in black with the silver/aluminum bezel.

Easy.  Get the white 2S.  the Sapphire is too masculine looking and while it's only about 2mm thicker, it's a much bigger feeling watch.

If you need the bigger battery for one race that's 2 years away, there are workarounds.  Like taping a tiny usb charger to your bike and clipping it onto the watch.

There are plenty of good interval apps.... and probably plenty of annoying ones as well.  the app section of Movescount is a bit of a free-for-all.  You might want to filter for the "Suunto" developed apps.  

give yourself a couple weeks to just figure out the watch and how movescount works.  it's very different than Garmin, but in many ways better.

Got my Ambit2 Sapphire in the mail yesterday, charged it up and went for a 40 mile ride. I am happy so far!

My local REI had an Ambit2, a 2s, and the Fenix 2 but no Sapphire so I have been able to hold all of them and try them all on. The 2s is definitely lighter and thinner, would likely fit a smaller wrist much better. The Ambit2 is thicker and heavier, slightly better build quality. The Fenix looks and feels a little cheap to me. I was not impressed with the buttons on the Fenix and I have read that they have a problem with sticking if you spill gatorade on them or sweat to much, I sweat like a pig so that is not a good thing. The Sapphire by far is the superior watch in fit, finish, looks and quality over all the rest. But it is big and a little heavy. I have medium sized wrists but big hands so it feels and looks fine on me. My wife is 115lbs and 5'6", it looks like a monster on her. 

The Ambit is very easy to set up with the Movescount website. I was only able to spend an hour or so with it but I was able to figure it out pretty well. I am sure I will find more features and stuff to learn about it, but I was able to get out and use it very quickly. It also charged very quick which was nice.

The ride was great. I found that it is easier to see the numbers with black numbers and white background, but for everyday walking around I like the look of black background and white numbers, just a few buttons to swap it back and forth, very nice feature. The layout makes good sense and you can customize the screens however you want. I kept overall time on top, speed in the middle, distance at the bottom and then I could hit view to see my avg pace. 

One of the best things was how fast it picked up the satellites. I am coming from a Forerunner 305 so way behind the tech curve. It was annoying as all get out to wait 3-5 minutes for the dumb thing to get satellites every time I used it. First time out of the box I hit start and in less than 15 seconds it had a fix and was ready to go. Thereafter getting a fix took 5-10 seconds, it was awesome! Battery did great as well, lost 2-3% on a 2 hour ride with the best gps options.

Downloading the ride was quick and easy, the GPS track on the map was spot on perfect, no zig zags or offtrack moments. The speed was always very quick to update, put a little more into the pedals and the speed on the watch would immediately increase.

Lots more for me to play with and learn (haven't even looked at apps yet) but so far I am very happy. Going to try the run today, see how the cadence works. As I gathered from my reading, it seems the Suunto has a few less options, but everything it does it does well and fast (so far), I can live without a few options if that means it will work consistently and do what I ask quickly. 

Agreed.  Watch looks better (more formal) with a black background and white numbers, and is a tad easier to read with Black numbers and a white background.  Although- wait until you do a night ride/run and use the backlight.  it reverses the look.    

There are two ways to change the display.  Hold down the Next button, > General > Tones/Display>Invert Display   Which is probably how you did it.  But there's a much easier way.  Hold the 'view' button (lower left) down for 1-2 seconds and it will do it with a single button push!  

The white watch will almost certainly look better with the white background.

My graphite one, looks dressier with the black background, and sportier with the white background

Wow thanks for the tip. Indeed I was going the long way, the one button trick is awesome! Thanks!

Just thought I would post up once more with some experience with my new Ambit2.

Did a 103 mile ride on Saturday, worked great, auto pause works very well. I used 35% of the battery for a 6.5 hour ride. That was with the best of the best gps settings. So it should be fine for an IM even with the best gps settings.

Did my first OWS with it yesterday, worked awesome. Didn't even notice it was there when swimming. It tracked very well according to the map, and seemed accurate based on my effort yesterday. Was nice to know the temp of the water. Here is a link to the move showing the smooth gps tracking.

http://www.movescount.com/moves/move32441843

Overall very happy so far!

Hey, thanks for the OWS post.  When DCRainmaker did his review, the OWS function was ok, but not the best.  There was a firmware upgrade shortly afterwards to improve it, but I haven't seen any real data from the new firmware for OWS.  Yes- your track really does look very solid (for an OWS track).  Glad to know that it's working well.

As for me... I live in the desert.  No open water nearby- but I love it for when I get to travel.

The Ambit2 seems to work really really well for swimming- both indoor  and out.  Only problem seems to be with how Movescount captures and displays the swim data- which is really a mess.  It indicates that you did a lot of pausing.  Did you swim one long set?  or were you doing intervals during your OWS?  

Yeah the graph is a bit all over the place, however I can't blame all of that on the watch. It was my first OWS in 3 years so I was a bit sporadic in my swimming. I didn't get my wetsuit on correctly so I paused to fix that, took some breathers here and there and practice sighting a bit. I tried to pause the watch when I would stop but I didn't always get it done. 

I was mostly in it for the time and overall which based on my effort seemed to be pretty close. I felt my effort was around the 2:00min/100 pace so with the sighting and stops that I didn't pause I think it was pretty close.

I plan to do quite a bit more OWS in the next 4 weeks so I will get some better smooth swimming in and see how it does with a little more consistent swimming.