SUUNTOCompass M-9 NH, Northern Hemisphere, With Velcro Wristband, SS004403001,Black

I was optimistic if this little compass would achieve what I needed as Suunto is a recognised good company for quality products. I was not disappointed, I have tried a few compasses recently and they all have bad defects, the one major problem is accuracy and how easy it is to take a quick reading when you are on the move or coming to a standstill, waiting for the needle to settle.In the pic, I had to re magnetsie the needle to make it more receptive to north and its OK but still quite a bit out unless you fiddle with it, even the phones GPS is erratic but eventually they all settled to true north as I have already found using Google earth.This compass is great, its about 3-5 degrees out at any one time but generally its quick to maintain N when viewing it on my cuff like a watch. I had two map compasses with me today, just to check both accuracy and time taken to settle, the button compass beat both quite easily.In fact during my orienteering course today, after three checkpoints I kept with the Suunto and used just that for the rest of the day, it was accurate enough to orientate the map and get me heading in the right direction.Its small and compact, the clip was strong enough to stay on my cuff with twigs and low branches brushing against me the whole morning and just generally walking/jogging along.I didnt use the bezel once, didnt need to, its a bit stiff to begin with but loosens after a few twists but unless I'm taking a bearing to the next point of reference in difficult terrain, its not really applicable.

Even though my watch does not have a metallic wristband, still caused a deviation of around 4°W which was a bit less than half of a division on the rotating ring (Not to be mistaken by declination or variation which is the angle between geographic and magnetic North).So, the deviation caused by the watch added to around 1°W local variation (depending where you are in the UK) it added up to 5°W which is just half of one division (10°) on the rotating ring.Taking those factors into account I can say this compass is pretty accurate. For just walking around I wouldn't even bother adding 5° to my true heading to find my compass heading but would probably be useful to add those factors if you needed to do some triangulation.Then again, unless you have bionic eyes and can divide the space between 2 marks on the ring in 10 parts, I'm pretty sure your triangulation won't be accurate and this won't be the right tool for this purpose, but in a real emergency.. who knows.. at least you would know roughly where you are.The build is solid, there's no bubble in the liquid, the needle is fast, the cardinal points are phosphorescent (they glow pretty nicely in the dark).The rotating ring clicks but the interesting thing is that it doesn't move every 10°, but rather every 7.5°, which means the lines only align perfectly with the arrow every 30° which is not really an issue.Something else to keep in mind... it is unusable inside my car as it only points to one direction probably due to the metallic body or some other magnetic fields.That won't happen on a bicycle though but if you just want to have a glance at your heading whilst riding just make sure you're not in a corner or accelerating or decelerating because as the compass is balanced (North Hemisphere in this case) the centre of gravity of the disc is offset from the pivoting point and that will cause turning and acceleration errors due to inertial forces acting on the centre of gravity.In summary it is nicely built, it's quite small which is what you want when having something attached to your watch and at the same time doesn't look cheap, so it doesn't spoil the look of your watch either.Verdict:I'm happy with it and I would recommend it.

There are times when you need a hasty direction check that doesn't have to be accurate to the degree. This tiny compass clips onto one's wristwatch strap and so is always ready. It's easy to use and there's even a bezel if you want to mark your azimuth. But... the compass itself is held into the base by a single drop of adhesive and after about a year (or less, if you're active) the compass falls out, leaving an empty retaining clip. My advice is to ease the compass out and apply four tiny drops of superglue (one for every 90 degrees) into the base, then re-seat the compass. Be careful not to use too much superglue, because this can prevent the bezel from rotating.

I bought this to attach to my Seiko Tuna dive watch to use freediving. I wanted something to help get my orientation to the shore while on the seabed when there was no current or bottom features to see in poor vis. Unfortunately the rubber strap on the watch was too thick to fit the slit in the Clipper compass properly, it will attach but it won't snap closed. That in itself is not the compasses fault, just a mismatched combination. More worrying was the "clicks" on the compass bezel. When the "pawl" of the "ratchet" was at the West position it was quite tight and when it was at the East position it was extremely loose. It's like as if the bezel was slightly eccentrically mounted and there was a slight wobble as it turned which caused a loose and tight spot 180 degrees opposite each other. The friction to stop the bezel getting knocked was extremely low and it could get disturbed easily - this is supposed to be a premium, well respected mini-clip-on compass but the quality control was very poor on mine. Granted, it'll still serve it's purpose to orientate me as I wished just by looking at the direction the compass is pointing but I could have bought just a cheap one for that purpose. The last Suunto Scuba compass I bought was rubbish too, cheap feeling plastic, when the compass card inside was held level the actual compass itself needed to be crooked/off level and to top it off the strap closure method was total crap. I won't buy Suunto again, they're over rated rubbish.

It's a great bit of kit, fits on your watch strap perfectly with the confidence of not coming off. I trust this great little compass in the field. Thanks.