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Suunto Vertical 2 Review | Testing GPS Navigation on a Snowy Oyama — An Honest Take on a Hiking Smartwatch

2026.03.06

How much use is a GPS smartwatch for hiking, really? Here's my honest answer. The watch is the Suunto Vertical 2 — my first smartwatch in about ten years — and I wore it every day for a fortnight, in the mountains and around town, before writing this.

The testing ground was Oyama (1,252 m), the sacred mountain of the Tanzawa range in Kanagawa. I'd climbed it in spring and summer, but I wanted to walk it in that sharp, clear air, so I deliberately went in winter with snow still on it. Above roughly 1,000 m there was snow, and near the summit it was solid ice — a proper winter mountain. This review focuses on the thing I most wanted to test, the GPS route navigation, and then covers heart rate, sleep, battery and design, with the conclusions stated up front.

The short version: being able to glance at your wrist at every junction and know exactly where you are. That reassurance alone is why I'm not going hiking without it now. I'm not good with gadgets and I still had no trouble, so this should be useful if you're a beginner considering a hiking watch.

Oyama in winter

Oyama has drawn mountain worship for a very long time. It's also called Afuri-san — the "rain-falling mountain" — and as a mountain governing rain and water, people once came here to pray for rain and for good harvests. There's a story running quietly underneath it that you don't see if you just walk up. Knowing it changes how the same view feels, at least a little.

For access, we took the Oyama Cable Car straight up to Afuri Shrine Station, at the shrine's lower hall. It had been clear at the bottom, but stepping off the cable car everything was white, and the day turned out overcast. From the shrine to the summit is about 500 m of ascent, roughly a three-hour round trip without breaks. I think it's an enjoyable mountain both for people who train regularly and for people just starting — but the first section is a near-vertical run of steps, so newcomers may be surprised at how much of a climb it really is.

Someone coming down told us there'd been snow lying from around 1,000 m, and that was exactly right: the higher we went, the more of it there was. Fujimidai, the viewpoint where Mt. Fuji should be, was white in every direction. Even so, a quiet winter walk with light snow falling has its own quality.

What the Suunto Vertical 2 is — a smartwatch after ten years away

I'll be honest, my first reaction, having not worn a smartwatch for a decade, was surprise at how much these things now do. Two weeks in, I still hadn't found the bottom of it.

The design is very pared back: a large face and three physical buttons, and that's it. In use, that restraint turns out to make it easier to operate, and it simply looks good. It works as an attractive everyday watch as well as a mountain one, which was a welcome surprise.

Here's what I tested in the snow on Oyama and found genuinely effective, in order.

The main event: testing GPS navigation on a winter mountain

The thing I most wanted to try was GPS route navigation. The conclusion first: more useful than I'd expected.

Loading a route and starting navigation

It's simple. Start the hiking mode and acquire GPS (it got a fix quickly, even in the mountains). Select the Oyama route I'd loaded in advance from the map, and start navigating. Once you're walking, the screen shows your current altitude, the profile of the climbing and descending ahead, and how far you have left to the summit. Seeing "one third to go" or "300 m to go" as an actual number sounds unremarkable, but the more tired you are, the more it helps.

I left the route on purpose

Since I was there, at the junction where the summit and Miharashidai routes divide, I deliberately took the wrong one — to see how the navigation would respond. After a short distance the display made it unmistakable that I was off route. That's genuinely useful. Up to now, every time I thought I might be going wrong I'd take out my phone, open the map and confirm; now it's a glance at my wrist.

Knowing where you are at every junction

What earns its keep on a real hike is exactly this: at each junction, look at your wrist, walk on a little, look again. That alone tells you where you are. Removing the take-out-the-phone-and-open-the-app step lowers the risk of going wrong by a surprising amount, and it makes pacing easier too. If you're a beginner who isn't yet confident reading a map, you're the person who'll benefit most from this feature.

Seeing your body's condition, on the climb and off it

Because Oyama starts with those steep steps, my heart rate went straight up. The Vertical 2 shows the zone in yellow when it climbs, so it was immediately obvious how hard I was working. Heart rate rises far more sharply hiking than it does training in a gym, and that's both why it's tiring and where the sense of achievement comes from.

Day to day, three things get the most use:

• Sleep log: even after what felt like a full night, if deep sleep was short or my heart rate was high, it tells me to take it easier today. Having an objective read on my own condition is a help.
• Sport log: I dance and lift at the gym as well as hiking, and it records all of it. Being able to look back at intensity and heart rate and decide "that was too much this week" or "there was more in the tank than I thought" is useful.
• Stopwatch: I use this at home more than anywhere. Timing cooking, timing small jobs. A simple function that comes up constantly.

Less about flashy features, more about knowing your body and your time properly rather than vaguely. That's how it feels to use.

Battery, LED light and alerts — the small things that matter on a mountain

Battery life was my long-standing worry in the mountains. When I navigated with my phone alone, I carried a power bank and charged repeatedly. With the Vertical 2 the watch's own battery lasts extremely well, and my phone's battery stops draining too. That's a large practical difference.

The LED light turned out to be more useful than I expected. It has stepped brightness levels and it's genuinely bright. Being able to light up what's in front of you at a hut without digging out a head torch is a small but real convenience.

There are also alerts for changing weather and for sunset. Weather and time matter a great deal in the mountains, and having one more input to base a decision on is reassuring. All of these small supports add up to acting calmly, in the mountains and elsewhere. For me it's a watch for peace of mind.

Design and usability — easy even if you're not good with gadgets

To repeat myself: I really like the minimal design of a large face and three physical buttons. It manages to look good and be easy to use at once.

More than anything, I'm not good with technology and I still learned my way around it by pressing buttons until things made sense. There's no daunting setup to brace yourself for; it's straightforward, and it's honestly fun to handle. For a tool, that matters.

Route notes: Oyama in winter

Finally, the day itself with the numbers.

• Area: Oyama (Tanzawa, Kanagawa Prefecture; 1,252 m — the summit marker reads 1,251 m)
• Route: Oyama Cable Car → Afuri Shrine Station (lower hall) → Omotesando trail → summit, and back
• Distance: about 7 km / cumulative ascent: about 582 m on the way up (read off the watch afterwards)
• Walking time: roughly 3 hours return without breaks
• Points of interest: the *Meoto-sugi*, a pair of auspicious old cedars; *Tengu no Hanatsuki*, a rock said to have been pierced by a tengu's nose; and Fujimidai, which looks out to Mt. Fuji in clear weather
• Winter notes: it gets sharply colder above 1,000 m, and I added a hooded layer. The summit area was glazed with ice, so I put chain spikes on for the descent. On snow or ice, always carry traction of some kind — chain spikes or light crampons

It's a mountain I'd recommend to beginners, but snow and ice raise the difficulty. Take your gear and the weather seriously, and plan with room to spare.

What I concluded

Coming back to smartwatches after ten years and using the Suunto Vertical 2 in the snow on Oyama, the thing I valued most was the reassurance of the GPS route navigation. Even when I left the route on purpose, its behaviour was unambiguous, and at every junction a glance at my wrist gave me my position and the distance remaining. That alone removed most of the "am I on the right path?" anxiety that runs under a day's hiking.

On top of that: heart rate, sleep and sport logs that make your condition visible; freedom from worrying about battery; and small features like the LED light and the alerts that genuinely earn their place on a mountain. And it's still simple to operate and good-looking enough for everyday wear. Testing it in hard winter conditions is what made the quality of it obvious.

There was no view from a white summit, but it was a day full of the satisfaction of having walked in snow again this year. Tiring, and thoroughly enjoyable. If you're looking at a GPS hiking watch, I can recommend this one without reservation. I hope it makes your next step out a safer and better one.

※ This article is based on a video produced with the support of Suunto.

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