Back to Suunto From Garmin

I like Garmin Connect and the Garmin Instinct 2. Both the app, and the device are good and they’re reliable for tracking sports on a daily basis. Having said this, I felt the urge to slide back to my Suunto devices and the Suunto app. For many, many, many years I was very happy with suunto getting two dive computers, one feature watch an ambit 2, ambit 3, Suunto Spartan and Peak 5.

I used these for hiking, climbing, scuba diving, swimming, running and one or two other sports. For years I had no issues with this brand but I was curious to slide towards Garmin, to see what that experience was like. It has been good so far.

Recently I noticed that with the Garmin Instinct 2, as well as the Explore, and Explore 2 synchronisation between the device and phone app were slow. Sometimes I would finish a workout and it would take minutes to sync rather than seconds.

Aside from the slowness of the app I also notice feature creep. They want us to log food, and to pay a yearly fee, rather than just paying for a device and using it for a few years before paying for another device and using that for another few years.

Digital Sovereignty and Fitness

In theory I should dump Garmin, Apple and Strava, in favour of Suunto, Sports tracker and komoot. In this day and age America forgets that although some people want to migrate to the US, plenty of people spend billions on IT, Apps, devices and more. Garmin and Apple really benefit from Europeans and the rest of the world using American brands, rather than local ones.

Google, Apple and others are actively kissing the ring, so it really pushes me to break from their brands. In contrast, from what I have seen so far, Garmin endures, rather than goes out of its way to please a certain individual and his entourage.

A Desire to Support Local

While the US treats the world like an enemy, rather than a friend, I feel like supporting local companies and products. I feel like supporting infomaniak for some things, and Suunto for others, and Rivella for more, and Galaxus for yet others. I want to cut my reliance on the US.

Suunto and Komoot

Suunto is Finnish, although owned by a Chinese company, and Komoot is German, Both are local to our continent, and yet we automatically gravitate towards the US centric apps and devices, rather than local ones. This is a normal part of life, but in the current circumstances it is absurd. We should support local, to Europe, projects.

Privacy

For a while Strava had better privacy than Komoot. I noticed that we can now give an address and an area will be masked automatically, to hide where we live, work, or where we start activities from a place where friends, or family might live. That’s useful, because it means I don’t need to crop an activity before sharing it. That saves time.

And Finally

In the end I like to bounce between apps and platforms so I look for excuses to slide from one to the other. In essence Strava and Komoot are fed automatically, whereas Apple Fitness, Garmin and Suunto need to be fed data directly. This means that Strava and Komoot are safe, although I will pivot to Komoot in future. I don’t want to stick with Garmin, and Strava, if they both suffer from cost creep.