Suunto X-Lander Military - Review

Suunto X-Lander Military Limited Edition

The Suunto X-Lander watch is the combination of an altimeter, barometer, compass and watch - the same features as the award-winning Suunto Vector, but with a mineral crystal glass face, carbon fiber back, and a leather or polyurethane band.

The X-Lander offers necessary and useful features for every outdoors-person in a way never seen before. It's a top class device that will withstand severe variations in weather, and has proven its unique accuracy, versatility and reliability in a great number of tests.

Three Styles Available:

Traditional positive face and polyurethane strap
Black negative face and leather strap
New! Military Edition - Black negative face, black aluminum housing, blue backlight, durable rubber strap, water resistant to 30 m/100 ft

ReviewI purchased my first Suunto this week from www.suuntowatches.com and would like to share my preliminary experiences with you regarding the XLander Military Edition (negative face).

The purchasing experience was teriffic. Suuntowatches.com has a fantastic website and they processed my order immediately. Within an hour of placing my order, I had received a shipping confirmation e-mail, complete with FedEx tracking number. I called Suuntowatches.com to confirm the shipping information (the details didn't indicate that the watch shipped was the Military Edition), and they answered the phone immediately and were extremely helpful and friendly. I always fear buying from someone "new," but Suuntowatches.com was absolutely fantastic to work with.

Two days after I placed my order, the watch arrived via FedEx (no charge for 2Day shipping, another plus!). The watch was well packaged - double boxed, and padded with some of those nice big "air bags" thingies.

The Suunto box is a plain white cardboard box. When you open the lid, the watch is positioned to the left of the box, and is sitting in a "slot" that's cut into the inside "shelf" of the box. I removed the watch and opened the "shelf." I found the thick instruction book, along with a quick reference card.

The watch was not set to the correct time or date when I received it - it showed April 27, 2000 and a time of 4:36am. All units were set to metric.

I browsed through the manual and quickly figured out how to set the time, date, how to change the units of measurement, and how to calibrate the compass. Total learning time was about 10 minutes.

The biggest difference with the Suunto controls (when compared to other watches such as the GShock and Pathfinder) is the location of the "Mode" and "Select" buttons - "Mode" is located at the 2:00 position; Select at the 10:00 position. The "lower half" buttons (7:00 and 5:00) are the "-" and "+" buttons, respectively.

The negative display is extremely readable (to me). I worried about it when I first saw it, and was concerned that I might not be able to easily read it, but those fears quickly disappeared. I've not yet encountered a situation where I couldn't easily read the display. The backlight is activated by holding the "mode" button down for about 2 seconds, and lights with a green hue.

A quick interjection about dimensions -- the watch is LIGHT - much lighter than my Casio Pathfinder PAW1200-1V. It's hard to believe the case is aluminum - it's finished so nicely that it seems as if it's made from plastic. It also seems to wear a little smaller than I had expected it to. Comparing it again to the PAW1200-1V, the Suunto is only slightly smaller. The Triple Sensor on the Casio gives the Casio a slight "edge" in size. The glass face is a welcome addition to the Military edition; I was worried about the plastic face of the Vector, which is one of the reasons I decided to "upgrade" to the XLander.