72 moves in I will now give a review of the ambit3. I used it with BMX, at the gym and for walking.
First impression
The design was bigger and heavier than I imagined, personally, I like it. It feels good around my arm.
The first time I use the ambit3, however, was a bit of a failure. Where on a 2 day race and on the second day the watch couldn’t find the GPS and the sync to computer didn’t work. This continued for two weeks, on and off. After getting a tip that I should sync it with my phone and after that it has worked great with both sync and GPS.
Then I bought a cadence meter, RPM from Wahoo, this one is awesome, it does what it should.
Unfortunately at first the connection did not work between the ambit3 and the cadence sensor. I looked around on the internet and saw that more people had this problem, so I contacted the Wahoo fitness support and got really good support from Tyler Harris over there. After a week or so they found that it was the firmware in the ambit3 that was causing the problem. It got fixed quickly by the help of Wahoo fitness support and the watch and settings now where as I wanted.
Movescount
Is the place where you upload your data, create apps or use others (there is a large app library) and get graphs and so on. It’s simple and easy to understand but to read the data requires some experience, I’ve noticed. It lacks some functionality that would benefit me and my bmx riding so I’m writing a document on that and will send it to the Suunto team and see if they like the ideas.
At the track – BMX
In movescount you add features to match your workout. For example I created an app that I call “Bmx Racing” in which I have put all the stuff/functions I want to get out and use. Maximum speed, heart rate, maximum heart rate, speed, cadence and other nice stuff.
When I ride my bike at the track, I start the ”Bmx racing” training mode and then used the button “Back Lap” which marks the data that this starts the next lap. Perfect when riding a certain line at the track over and over again. You get marks that you use in movescount when you come home.
At the gym
I’m like to train and rest with the help of my pulse instead of time. Here I just use the pulse/HR.
Walking
Nothing fancy here, I use km/h, distance, average speed. Basically It’s like runkeeper in a watch, start and stop … Then you can just add whatever app you want here, if you wanna know how many soft drinks you’ve burned, etc.
Overall
The ambit3 has an activity tracker that keeps track on your daily activity and calories aside of your workout. The feature that I really like is the recovery time. Once you have trained, it will estimate how long it take until you are fully recovered, cool. I also use their HR belt, it’s slim and tight and has not come loose in any way.
The HR-belt also works when swimming but this is something I haven’t tried. The watch uses Bluetooth SMART and you can connect, sync and control it with a smartphone. You can also see your incoming calls and sms on it.
Overall I’m satisfied with this purchase and will stick with it for a while!