Suunto
Finland, 1936 — an orienteer who worked out how to fill a compass with liquid, a factory still in Vantaa, and an owner in Guangdong since 2022.
Tuomas Vohlonen was a Finnish orienteer who got tired of a compass needle that would not settle, and in 1936 he worked out how to mass-produce one filled with liquid. Ninety years later Suunto still makes those compasses in Finland, alongside dive computers and some of the best outdoor watches available. The thing to know before you buy the Finnish story is that Amer Sports sold Suunto to Liesheng, a Chinese technology company, in 2022. The factory stayed in Vantaa. The ownership did not stay in Finland.
- 1936Founded by Tuomas Vohlonen after inventing his liquid-filled compass process
- 2022Amer Sports announced the sale of Suunto to Liesheng
- 1996Suunto acquired Recta, the Swiss precision compass maker
What we'd reach for
- MC-2 compassThe mirror sighting compass most people should own. Declination adjustment, clinometer, and a mirror that doubles as a signal.
- KB-14 and Recta compassesPrecision sighting instruments from the Recta line Suunto bought in 1996. Surveyors and foresters, not hikers.
- Suunto VerticalThe flagship outdoor watch — offline maps, dual-band GNSS, and solar on the titanium version.
- Suunto RaceAMOLED, dual-band positioning, and the model that made Suunto competitive with Garmin again.
- Suunto 9 Peak ProThe thin one. Endurance battery in a case that does not look like a brick.
- Suunto CoreAltimeter, barometer, compass, no GPS. Still in the line after fifteen years because it does one thing and the battery lasts a year.
- Suunto OceanA dive computer and an outdoor watch in one, which very few brands attempt.
- Suunto D5The dedicated dive computer line, with a color display and user-changeable straps.
Tuomas Vohlonen was a Finnish orienteer, which means he spent a lot of time running while trying to read a compass that would not sit still. In 1936 he worked out a manufacturing process for filling a compass capsule with liquid so the fluid damped the needle, and founded a company to make them.
If that sounds familiar, it should. Three Swedish brothers arrived at the same idea from the same sport at roughly the same time, and Silva was founded in 1933. Scandinavian orienteering produced both of the companies that made the modern compass work, three years and one border apart.
Who owns it now
On 10 January 2022, Amer Sports announced it had agreed to sell Suunto to Liesheng, a Chinese technology company founded in Guangdong in 2015.
Amer’s statement said Suunto would continue to operate from Vantaa, Finland, and that the brand, products, services, business relations and employee status would remain unchanged after the transaction.
Both halves of that belong on the page. The sale happened; the continuity commitment was made publicly and specifically. Suunto still says its headquarters and factory are in Finland, at Tammiston kauppatie in Vantaa.
What we won’t do is let it be described as a Finnish-owned company, because it isn’t one, and the Finnish heritage is exactly what the brand is bought on. If you are choosing Suunto over Garmin partly on where the money goes, that is the fact you need.
Nor will we tell you what any specific product’s country of origin is. “HQ and factory in Finland” is a statement about the company. It is not a per-product guarantee, and Suunto now spans watches, compasses and dive electronics — three very different supply chains.
The Recta line nobody mentions
In 1996 Suunto bought Recta, the Swiss precision compass maker.
That acquisition is why Suunto has a genuinely serious instrument line sitting underneath the consumer compasses. The KB-14 is a sighting instrument for surveyors and foresters — you read a bearing to a fraction of a degree through an optical prism, not by eyeballing a needle against a card. It is the sort of tool that gets bought once by someone whose job depends on it.
Most write-ups treat Suunto as a watch company with some compasses. The compass side has a Swiss precision-instrument business inside it, and that is the more interesting half.
Against Garmin, honestly
These two get compared constantly and the answer is not complicated.
Garmin is broader. More models, better maps, a deeper ecosystem, and things Suunto simply does not make — satellite communication, dog tracking, marine chartplotters, aircraft panels. If you want one company to cover everything, it is Garmin, and it is not close.
Suunto is narrower and knows it. The watches are excellent, the interface is cleaner, the industrial design is better, and the battery life on the Vertical is genuinely strong. Where Suunto wins outright is diving — it has been in dive computers for decades and Garmin has not.
The other real difference: Suunto still makes analog compasses, and Garmin never has. A brand that sells you a satellite watch and a two-hundred-gram piece of liquid-filled plastic that works with no power at all is a brand that understands both halves of navigation.
One note on the dive line
Dive computers are life-support equipment and the standards that apply to them are not the standards that apply to a running watch.
We have not verified which specific certifications each current Suunto dive product carries. Before you rely on any dive computer — this brand or any other — check the model’s own documentation rather than the brand’s reputation. That is the one category on this site where “it’s a good company” is not a sufficient answer.
Where Suunto fits
Serious compass work. MC-2 for anyone navigating properly, KB-14 or Recta for anyone doing it professionally.
Mountain and endurance. Vertical and Race are the flagship watches and both are competitive at the top of the category.
Diving. D5 and Ocean, and the reason a diver would choose this brand over Garmin.
The watch that isn’t a computer. Suunto Core has no GPS, gives you altimeter, barometer and compass, and runs for a year. Fifteen years in the line and still the right answer for some people.
Not for: anyone who wants the deepest ecosystem, satellite SOS, or the widest model range — that is Garmin. Not for anyone buying on the strength of Finnish ownership, which ended in 2022. Not for a buyer who needs verified per-product country of origin, which isn’t published.
Why we rate them
They invented it too. The liquid-filled compass has two independent origin stories in Scandinavian orienteering, and this is one of them.
Recta is still in there. Keeping a Swiss precision-instrument line alive for thirty years, for a customer base of surveyors and foresters, is not a commercial decision. It is a decision about what kind of company you are.
They kept the compasses. A company that now sells AMOLED touchscreens could have quietly dropped the analog line years ago. It didn’t, and Suunto Core is still there for people who want an altimeter and no notifications.
The 2022 sale was announced plainly, with a specific commitment about Vantaa attached to it. We would rather report a clear disclosure and let you weigh it than find out three years later from a supply-chain change.
When the navigation has to work underwater, or has to work with no power at all, we reach for Suunto.