Suunto : S6

Review:
Suunto has been making watches for a long time, and the S6 is specifically made for the snow sports market. There are several cool features in the watch, but the one that sets the S6 apart from ordinary watches is a ski/board altimeter, which can track the altitude of your descents, and graph them on your computer. In addition to the altimeter, the watch has a built in compass, multiple alarms, and can use the altimeter to calculate weather changes instead of altitude. It is also depth rated to 330 feet.

The Suunto S6 is a masterpiece of a watch. After months of use it shows absolutely no wear on the plastic body, the rubber bands, or the bezel surface. The watch bands are a high-quality soft rubber that is smooth and soft to the touch, but still strong. The buttons have a firm push that means they rarely get bumped in on their own, but Suunto was also nice enough to include a "lock" feature that prevents unwanted button presses.

The altimeter is the feature I want to focus on, because it is the one I've used the most, and it's the reason to buy the watch. First you need to calibrate the altimeter. You can do this from either a known barometric pressure, or a known altitude. Most resorts post their altitude somewhere, so it's pretty easy to set that way. Otherwise go to a weather website and find out the current pressure. Once you have the altimeter calibrated, simply start the log book when you start riding, and stop it at the end of the day. Underneath all of your layers, the S6 will use changes in air pressure to calculate your ascents and descents, and when you get home at night you can transfer the logs to your computer. The default settings have the watch take samples every 10 seconds, which gives you a pretty good idea of your descent. However, if you really want to see the detail, you can bump it up to a sample every second; this setting is detailed enough to show you the altitude changes resulting from airing off kickers.

From the computer you can view them in graph format, compare runs, and print them. It is so cool to see a chart of your days' runs. The software is easy to use and get used to, and although it was a bit finicky, they released a software patch that cleared up all the issues I had. The only other thing I could add here is that to connect to the computer it uses a serial connection instead of USB; not a big deal, but USB would significantly shorten the amount of time it takes to download your logs.

The price tag is definitely prohibitive, but this is a watch that will last for several years, and it has some pretty cool features.