Well, spurred on by your suggestions on my previous post that I treat myself I did just that and ordered a Suunto Core All Black watch. I’ve been u’mming and a’arghing for a while on buying a ABC watch. Since I ditched my Garmin GPS I do miss the convenience of having an altitude reading (a useful aid to navigation) and the built-in compass will serve as a handy back-up for when I next lose my hand-held compass.
There are some active forums for Suunto watches and it is well-documented that earlier versions of the Core suffered from reliability problems but these seem to have been resolved with the later firmware.
The hardest decision was choosing from the umpteen colours/styles of the Core, but I couldn’t resist the stealth looks of the All-Black despite the negative display being allegedly less readable than a positive LCD display. I’m hoping it will arrive tomorrow and I’ll have a play and report back!