Is it a dilemma to decide between the Garmin Instinct Crossover vs Suunto 9 Peak Pro? If you’re having trouble choosing the right watch for your outdoor activities, then this blog post is just what you need. Both watches come with lots of features and specs to work with different terrain levels, waterways and more. But which one is right for you? Let’s compare these two brands side-by-side—from durability design to power efficiency—so that you can make an informed decision. With both fitness tracking as well as hiking capabilities on deck, let’s take a look at each watch in detail!
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Garmin Instinct Crossover
Launched on 8th Nov 2022, Garmin Instinct Crossover is a new generation of hybrid smartwatches with classic analog hands and a modern digital display.
Released in Solar and Tactical variants, this smartwatch features a military-grade design, is thermal and shock resistant, and boasts plenty of eye-popping features.
The new addition of RevoDrive Analog Hand Technology makes it auto-calibrate after impact. While a Super-LumiNova coating makes the hands and hour markers glow in the pitch dark.
This can be your go-to watch for a long adventure, as you will never run the risk of going out of battery power.
Suunto 9 Peak Pro
Launched on 25th Oct 2022, Suunto 9 Peak Pro now comes with a powerful chipset wrapped in a sleek design. The user interface is now more intuitive and responsive to use.
It’s the thinnest smartwatch on the market, with a military-grade design and improved GPS and battery performance than its predecessors.
Suunto has expanded this watch’s 3rd party integration and app store capabilities. Made by using 100% renewable energy, Suunto 9 Peak Pro can be your 24/7 companion for your next snorkeling adventure.
Garmin Instinct Crossover vs Suunto 9 Peak Pro: Design and Display
Garmin Instinct Crossover
Built from stainless steel and featuring a double bezel and Power Glass, the Garmin Instinct Crossover is a bold and rugged watch fit for adventurers.
It boasts a MIP energy-conserving screen, a 0.9in display, luminescent analog hands, and a MIL-STD-810G rugged thermal and shockproof design. There is no touch screen because of analog hands.
A RevoDrive Analog Hand Technology ensures your watch still works after receiving a fall or whack. It auto-calibrates the analog hands in a few seconds. While navigating apps, the hands will flatline, getting out of the way.
Another new addition to the design is a Super-LumiNova glow-in-the-dark coating that allows for visibility even in the pitch dark. A 10ATM water resistance rating makes it swim-proof in up to 100 meters of water.
Suunto 9 Peak Pro
Built from the highest quality materials, Suunto 9 Peak Pro features a 1.2in sapphire glass display that is crack and scratch-resistant. It comes in titanium and stainless steel variants with a military-grade MIL-STD-810H design, making it resistant to shock, pressure, sand, ice, water, and heat.
This watch has a circular display bespoke of a traditional watch than a glossy bezel-less one. In addition, it is lightweight and houses an ultra-thin 10.8mm body in a slick design that will fit elegantly over your wrist.
A revamped interface makes it easy and quick to navigate the menu and text messages, while a new chipset architecture and MCU controller improve responsiveness to your touch. It also comes with a water resistance rating of 100 meters.
Handcrafted in Finland, this smartwatch is made from 100% renewable energy to make it long-lasting, repairable, and minimize waste. In fact, the lifetime CO2 emissions of one watch is 7.5 kg and 100% carbon compensated.
Garmin Instinct Crossover vs Suunto 9 Peak Pro: Smart Features
Garmin Instinct Crossover
The Garmin Instinct Crossover comes with a built-in accurate GPS, covering five satellites a providing acute situational awareness.
An Incident Detection function automatically sends your live location to your close contacts in case of an incident.
Furthermore, a TracBack function allows you to follow the same route back to the starting position and provides turn-by-turn navigation. Other connectivity features include Bluetooth and ANT+ for wireless activity tracking.
Other smart features include sleep and fitness tracking and women’s health monitoring. It also encompasses a Body Battery Energy function to monitor your energy reserves 24/7.
A wrist-based heart rate, blood sugar, and oxygen monitor allow for wellness tracking.
In addition, Garmin Instinct Crossover supports phone notifications, emails, phone calls, music controls, and contactless payment through Garmin Pay. You can also customize the watch face.
The Tactical version of this smartwatch offers night vision compatibility and a stealth mode to switch off connectivity when you want to go dark. If a security risk arises, a kill switch feature also wipes the user data.
Suunto 9 Peak Pro
The Suunto 9 Peak Pro encompasses a superior GPS mode allowing you to track your live location with greater accuracy and set the pace in challenging environments.
A built-in Suunto app provides live guidance, route-finding options, and training tools.
It also offers 3D and heat maps and road surface map layers to plan your running activity.
In addition, you can connect to 200 partner apps like Strava, Komoot, and TraningPeaks to plan routes, save Strava routes, and sync them to your watch.
A breadcrumb trail functionality allows you to track back to the starting position.
Other features include a Point of Interest navigation, calorie counter, wrist-based optical heart rate sensor, and VO2 Max fitness tracking.
A FusedAlti GPS and barometric combination technology provide altitude reading by minimizing offset errors. You can also track your blood oxygen levels with altitude acclimation.
Garmin Instinct Crossover vs Suunto 9 Peak Pro: Key Sports Features
Garmin Instinct Crossover
The Garmin Instinct Crossover encompasses different sports tracking for active lifestyle individuals.
It includes sports like MTB cycling, running, strength training, golf, yoga, etc. Other activity tracking consists of intensity workouts like HIIT, AMRAP, EMOM, and Tabata.
A Grit and Flow feature measures trail difficulties while mountain biking, while an HRM-Pro will measure your running power while running.
Plus, a recovery function will let you know when you’ll be ready for the next bout of activity.
This smartwatch will suggest daily workouts to you based on your fitness level. Also, you can track your intensity minutes for training workouts and create custom sports modes.
Suunto 9 Peak Pro
The Suunto 9 Peak Pro boasts 95+ sports modes, with presets for popular activities like running, mountain biking, tennis, gym practice, etc.
Unlike other models, you can take this watch for deep underwater sports like diving and snorkeling.
A new “Mermaid Dive” mode tracks depth, water temperature, and shallow-free diving in 10 meters of water depth.
This watch has a wrist-based running power feature allowing you to maintain a steady effort while changing terrain.
A recovery status will inform you about your energy reserves, while a ghost runner feature will enable you to pace your efforts for weekly or long runs.
Also, you can create your own interval workouts in advance and get real-time activity data throughout the session.
Suunto 9 Peak Pro provides Bluetooth connectivity but has no smartphone notifications or contactless payments functionality.
Garmin Instinct Crossover vs Suunto 9 Peak Pro: Battery Performance
Garmin Instinct Crossover
The Instinct Crossover offers a longer battery life than other Garmin watches. It can last up to 28 days in smartwatch mode, and with solar charging, for 71 days.
With GPS, the battery can last up to 25 hours, and with solar charging up to 31 hours. Additionally, the Solar Edition boasts an infinite battery life in battery saver mode.
Suunto 9 Peak Pro
The Suunto 9 Peak Pro offers superior performance and long battery life. It has 21 days of battery life with daily use. Besides, you’ll get three battery modes in total.
The Endurance mode lasts for 70 hours, the Performance mode with GPS for 40 hours, and the Tour mode provides 300 hours of battery life with continuous use.
It provides fast charging, and with only ten minutes of charging, it can last 10 hours of your workout. Moreover, it takes only one hour to charge the battery from empty to full.
Garmin Instinct Crossover vs Suunto 9 Peak Pro: Pricing
Garmin Instinct Crossover
The Instinct Crossover is available in three editions: Tactical Solar, Standard Solar, and Standard Non-Solar. The Non-Solar Edition is available at $499.99, Standard Solar at $549.99, and Tactical Solar at $599.99.
Suunto 9 Peak Pro
The Suunto 9 Peak Pro is available in two titanium and four stainless steel variants. All the stainless steel versions cost $759.99, while more expensive titanium versions cost $959.99.
Garmin Instinct Crossover vs Suunto 9 Peak Pro: Which one to Buy?
Hopefully, you’ve read our detailed review of key features, sports functionality, battery performance, design, and display of the Suunto 9 Peak Pro and Garmin Instinct Crossover above.
After testing both watches ourselves, we’ve concluded that Garmin Instinct Crossover is, hands down, the best watch you can buy.
The Garmin Instinct Crossover is an upgrade over all Garmin sports watches. It beats all the Garmin Forerunner and Instinct series with its unique combination of analog design and digital features.
Added technology such as RevoDrive auto-calibrates analog hands after impact. The hands also get out of the way when you are navigating the menu. A Super-LumiNova coating that provides enhanced visibility in pitch dark makes it an ideal watch for a night adventure.
While a superior battery performance with solar charging won’t let the juice run out while hiking or mountain biking. Furthermore, an accurate GPS and live location-sharing function won’t let you wander off the track.
Other premium fitness, wellness, sleep, and stress-tracking functions will ensure that you are always in good health.
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