Suunto t4c Heart Rate Monitor and Fitness Trainer Watch
June 13, 2010 by admin
Filed under Fitness Equipment
- Versatile heart rate monitor watch in contemporary “black frost” color
- Displays current heart rate, average heart rate, and calories burned
- Training Effect function measures how hard your body is working
- Suunto Coach mode lets you create personalized 5-day training workout
- Interference-free digital ANT transmission; water-resistant to 100 feet; 2-year warranty
Product Description
The advanced Suunto t4 Heart Rate Monitor Watch helps you develop a training program for your next upcoming challenge and keeps you on track as the date approaches. Suunto’s built-in Coach software lets you know how long and how intense to train each day. If you opt for a rest day or different workout, it adjusts the rest of your ten-day cycle to ensure you get enough exercise during each phase of training. Plug the t4 Heart Rate Monitor into your PC to track your i… More >>
Suunto t4c Heart Rate Monitor and Fitness Trainer Watch
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I have had my t4c for just 3 weeks, but I already love it. I am a veteran runner, used to wearing a GPS watch to track speed and distance, but this is my first HRM. It not only tells me my real-time heart rate, average and peak HR, but it has a nifty “training effect” function. I do not believe this to be “wildly inaccurate” as another reviewer has said. It will give a 1.0 to 5.0 numerical value for the difficulty of your workout. It shows a countdown to the next level, as well. When it tells me I have achieved, say, a TE level of 4.2 and it’s 6 minutes until I reach the next level, I can of course increase or decrease this time by slowing down or speeding up, changing my level of exertion — is this the “bouncing around” the other reviewer saw? But this is simply measuring the changed effect of a changed pace! At a steady pace, it counts steadily to the next level of Training Effect.
I wanted a heart-rate monitor because, in the depths of winter, I’ll switch from running my rural dirt roads to the YMCA’s treadmills; I was hoping that HR would offer a way to correlate my indoor workouts with my outside ones, since treadmills are different from running in the great outdoors. The t4c’s training effect is a built-in answer to my need!
The manual is not so clear as to make everything easy. Oh, you’ll be able to take your t4c out of the box and set it up easily; even I could do that. Going back and adjusting the settings was a bit more of a head-scratcher. The manual seemed to skip a step or two, as if it were all obvious. To the manual-writer it is; to me, though, it has required a few trips down button-pushing blind alleys to get where I want to go. But that’s a small price to pay for the overall joy of this gem.
The fabric chest strap is quite comfortable; I don’t even notice it. Both the watch and the strap have consumer-replaceable batteries (which I hope not to change for a long time yet!), which is better than sending the device away to Polar when the battery dies.
I wear it all day as my main watch. In the 3 weeks I’ve had it (while I wait for the plastic shield) it has suffered no scratches. I may not even apply the plastic thing! I would definitely recommend the Suunto to anyone looking for a quality HR monitor watch.
The only minor complaint I have is that the thing is set up for HR zones as straight percentages of max HR. You’d think the Suomi folks at Suunto could go with their fellow Finn, Karvonen, and allow one to calculate zones based on his method: as a percentage of HR range between resting HR and max HR. Well, the work-around is to set the zones to percentages that match your Karvonen numbers; you just have to do the math.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a sweet piece of gear. I’ve been using it for about a month now. It works great and gathers a lot of data.
The watch itself is comfortable the band works especially well, (mine is the black volcano). A friend has a Suunto T4C as well, (his is the black frost), but his band is a little different. I will agree with other reviews that the face is prone to scratching. With this in mind I use mine only for workouts. The interface isn’t too difficult to figure out. Had it totally figured out after about 4 workouts. I saw a lot of reviews complaining about the complexity however with all the things this thing does the 5 buttons are easy enough to work with. My Timex was about as difficult to figure out.
The chest strap is OK. About as comfortable as a chest strap is going to be. It took a week or so to figure out exactly where to place the strap on my chest and how tight was tight enough. Once the chest strap placement is determined this thing rarely loses heartrate once it has captured it.
I could take or leave the coach function. It usually tells me to do long low intensity workouts or to rest. I haven’t really done much with the coach function as a result.
The data that the T4C can store is pretty extensive. There is detailed workout data available for the 14 most recent workouts. This data includes duration, training effect, average heart rate, peak heart rate, calories burned, and lap times (if using the lap timer). I don’t have the PC interface but transfer the infomation manually to a spreadsheet every few days. Long term data is available (totals) for the current week, the previous week, current month, and the previous 11 months. This data includes the number of workouts, total workout time, total running distance (Foot Pod), total bike distance (Bike Pod), total GPS distance (GPS Pod), and total calories burned.
I don’t have the Foot, Bike, or GPS POD paired devices.
I’ve found it most helpful when lifting. I’ve set heartrate targets for starting my next set so my weight workouts remain in a cardio zone. Prior to having the watch I’d just wait until if felt like my heartrate had dropped enough. Now I have hard data to start the next set.
Spent a lot of time researching before buying. I recommend buying something really cheap that you won’t mind throwing away when it fails/battery dies or buy something decent. This is something decent. Things that drew me to the Suunto T4C is a coded system. You won’t get crosstalk in a spin class with others using a monitor. With the Suunto you can change your own batteries. Most of the Polar monitors have to be sent back to the manufacturer for battery replacement, (read the reviews). The only other monitor that I considered was the Garmin Forerunner 305. Picked the Suunto T4C based on word of mouth of a friend, and I have no regrets.
That’s about all I have to say about that.
Rating: 5 / 5
Overall, the T4c does exactly what Suunto advertises. The heart rate monitor is fairly accurate (I have checked it against the HR monitors on many different treadmills). I believe the coach works well although I often feel like it schedules far too many runs of the slow and lengthy type. If I increase the activity class, the sessions become much longer with little adjustment in difficulty. Suunto should have included a coach that plans for more sprint or interval sessions rather than just plain-old-fashion run-at-a-gentle-pace-for-an-hour-or-more sessions. As it is, I have to pick a day to do sprints and just see how it affects the coach’s decision-making afterward.
Another major problem with the T4c is the Training Effect (TE). This feature goes hand-in-hand with the coach. Basically it is a numerical rating of the difficulty of your session. Lower numbers are easy to achieve. Anything between 3 and 5 will require more and more effort. The T4c gives an expected completion time based on your TE goal and current heart rate. However this estimate is wildly inaccurate, bouncing between times that differ by at least an hour.
The T4c menu system is a bit confusing at first but I figured out how it works after just the first run.
As for the hardware, I have yet to see my screen get scratched like so many others on the site. However I haven’t removed the plastic film that the product was packaged with. I’m still waiting for my InvisibleShield to come in the mail. That should prevent ANY scratches.
Overall, this is a decent product but I do not believe I will buy another Suunto trainer in the future.
Rating: 3 / 5
I have had my T4c for 4 weeks now. On the plus side:
* the heart rate monitor functions better than Polar or Timex, especially early in a workout. With Polar and Timex I’d usually get wild values until I had warmed up (i.e. pouring sweat). Suunto seems to do a better job.
* I enjoy the Coach. Not sure if I will attain my goals but it has so far really nailed the intense/moderate/rest periods well.
* definitely okay for an every day watch.
The negatives though are definitely things Suunto could fix:
* the manual is bizarre, clearly missing steps. Figuring this thing out was tough.
* in heart rate mode you can lock the buttons which is necessary as the stop/start is very easy to push. BUT you cannot lock the device while showing heart rate AND training effect prediction. Um… why not? It’s the only setting like that.
* the face gets scratched. I have managed a few very deep grooves in 3 weeks with normal living. Definitely will be needing a solution here.
Rating: 3 / 5
SO I bought this watch, in need of a heart rate monitor and since I already owned a Suunto watch I thought I would love this one too. I LOVE IT! It’s comfortable, it’s easy to use once you figure out all the little applications, it’s a good size for women. I’m still finding cool little things out about the watch. I suggest you buy the wireless PC Pod too and it will also log your RPMs if you buy a bike pod or even distance if you buy a GPS pod or foot pod. The PC pod will log all your workouts on your PC. I am about to purchase that. The coach on the watch give you the option to follow it but it does not punish you if you don’t. The training effect is confusing at first but when you log your workouts it gives you a range to categorize each workout. I love this watch/ HRM and would recommend it to active women who are into gadgets.
Rating: 5 / 5
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