I went with Suunto (Finland) and I'm very happy with it. The sapphire glass really does not scratch whereas my old garmin had many scratches after a few weeks of wear (I am clumsy).
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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I went with Suunto (Finland)
Chinese-owned though.
Oh and the activity tracking is great. The model I got (vertical) has about 2 months of battery, which is vastly better than most watches.
Oof, the privacy on the Suuntos isn’t great apparently, or at least their privacy policy isn’t. Your health data gets sent all the way to China it seems. If I assume Suunto Oy is still Finnish (it does have a Finnish address), all their affiliates listed in their privacy policy are Chinese.
Digging further, they’ve apparently been sold to Liesheng in 2022. Liesheng used to be known as “Blue Mi”, ie a subsidiary of XiaoMi, which was created to focus on vital tracking.
Oooooh. Thank you for sharing that. I was not aware of that.
Thanks for sharing! 2 months of battery life sounds amazing!
It’s a bit unfortunate that 28% of their products are manufactured in China, and, I haven’t checked, idk how transparent are they wrt this info on their product. But I will keep an eye out!
Came across gadget bridge a while ago, I don't have anything that works with it, but you (or someone else) may have some luck!
Ooh, I’d give that a try… if I actually have a Garmin.
I’m gonna bookmark this tho, just in case I can somehow get a Garmin off someone else.
Thanks for sharing!
Whoops, I understood the original post as you were looking to replace an existing Garmin. They have other supported brands, I just linked you directly to the Garmin page. Hope it can be of some use!
All good! And ohh! I didn’t click to the other pages and I didn’t even notice! Thanks for letting me know about this. Pretty cool project!
Withings? It’s French.
I meant to reply after looking into Withings but I forgot about it. Thank you for sharing about Withings!
Withings looks good. Privacy policy (iirc) lists all of the third party services it uses that may hold customer data, and not many of them are from the US either (and when they do, it’s meant for US customers). Didn’t sound like they share much with these services either.
It’s a bit of a shame that you need a subscription for the health and fitness improvement stuff (via Withings+), but it does look like you get all the regular metrics with just having the watch.
I do wonder if those data can be exported without having to go through Apple Health or Health Connect, but I guess I’m not gonna holding my breath there.
I wanted to avoid Garmins new paywall model. The avoidance of sending money to the US is a bonus. Changed 645 for Suunto Race S. Tip - you can download the Suunto app and use it for an activity or two to see what it does - obv you don’t get much data. There is ecosystem shock when you change from Connect (not connect plus because fuck Garmin) but you get over it. Maps are amazing.
Woooow, I did not know about this. Many of these devices easily cost $600+ new and they want us to pay a subscription fee? Also, they can't even provide data export in a useful consistent and nonshitty format.
I get great utility out of my Garmin watch and Bike Computer, but there are a lot of alternatives now and we may even be able to cobble together a solid open source stack to replace Garmin/Strava/Trail Websites sometime in the next few years.
I'm not in the market for a new device yet, but when I change, I will be sure to give the alternatives a shot.
Someone else mentioned a Suunto so I did some legwork.
https://lemmy.ca/comment/15885602
TLDR, it’s Chinese-owned
I think Polar is still from Finland?! I have no experience with the watches. I am using a Suunto myself. Made in Finland, however the company is now owned by a chinese company
I can’t say I’ve found much about Polar’s status as a company, but there seems to be a few Reddit posts talking about some kind of financial woe at the company. Hadn’t seen info about its ownership tho, or if there’s been changes.
And yeah, someone else mentioned Suunto, and I did find out that it’s now Chinese-owned, by what seems to be originally a XiaoMi subsidiary.
I think you'll find that regardless of where the parent company is based, manufacturing is going to take place somewhere problematic....
That’s my guess too :’) But since idk if someone out there is somehow aware of options, I figured it doesn’t hurt to ask
Got my fingers crossed for you buddy!