By Teddy Ruxpin from Toronto, ON, Canada on 3/2/2008

I bought the Suunto t1 to replace a Timex HRM that was damaged beyond repair after two years of use. The t1 is probably more accurate as a HRM since it takes into account age, height, weight, and fitness level. The Timex only looked at weight and the calories burned were always overestimated in my opinion. I looked at Polar HRMs, but they look brick ugly. The t1 watch looks great, is lightweight, displays all the info I want during a workout without having to cycle through the buttons like on the Timex, and the HRM is coded to reduce interference from other HRMs. Info displayed during a workout always includes HR & workout time. Additional info that can be displayed includes any one of the following: calories burned, average HR, peak HR, time. As a watch, it can display one of the following below the time: the date, day of the week, seconds elapsed, or nothing. Batteries for both the watch and HRM are user replaceable by using a coin to twist open the casing.

On the negative side, the clear plastic watch face cover is vulnerable to scratches, the white/grey numbers on the black face are hard to read at times without using the backlight, and the chest strap may be too small for larger people. Suunto sells a separate strap for large people and a smaller one as well. While the dot matrix style of display allows for more information to be displayed, the text can be quite small so some people may find the extra information difficult to read. Finally, the alarm sounds for the HR zones or limits are softer than on the Timex so they can be hard to hear in a noisy environment if you like using the alarms.

As an aside, this watch is WHITE plastic with a BLACK strap. It looks like it is metallic in in the photos. Still looks stylish to me, though.