the X9i fared much worse

This is somewhat mitigated, however, by the free download that lets you export traces to Google Earth. There are some gotchas here, too, though -- you can only download from the watch to Google Earth, not via the Suunto software. Minor but annoying.I've included screenshots (below) from a couple of traces thus downloaded into Google Earth. The smooth trace along highway I-5 was taken with myself as a passenger, holding the X9i flat and above the window line of the car in 1-second mode. Works fabulously.The second trace was from a friend who volunteered. He has a daily walk route, and we strapped the Suunto onto him like tagging a deer. As you can see, while walking, the X9i fared much worse, with large amounts of error and a fix that jumped around quite a lot. I would guess that the motion of the wrist makes it much harder for the watch to get and maintain a fix. Of course, the watch is primarily made for hiking, so this could be a problem.The battery is one of the limiting factors of the Suunto X9i, so let's dive into that. The watch allows you to set GPS sampling rates of:1 per second.1 per minute.Manual on-demand.For these rates, the battery lifetimes are, respectively:5 hours.12 hours.2-5 months (no GPS usage).That's not bad, but it does circumscribe how you can use the watch. For example, don't plan on a super-detailed trace of your two-week hiking trip unless you have a solar USB charger along. Depending on how you want to use it, battery life may or may not be an issue, but its definitely something to consider. The watch recharges when you plug it into a USB port or charger.