The Polar Grit X2 Pro has been unveiled, and the updates Polar has made should see it compete with the best sports watches on the market. The AMOLED watch has a durable design tested to military standards and is packed full of the best features Polar has to offer.

These features include topographical maps with turn-by-turn directions from Komoot (the ability to sync with Strava routes is also on the way), dual-band GPS tracking with a new signal-boosting antenna under the watch’s bezel, and a handy built-in flashlight.

Many of these features were introduced on the Polar Vantage V3, which came out in late 2023, but the Grit X2 Pro sets itself apart with some unique features such as vertical speed and average ascent speed—useful stats for those running and hiking in the mountains.

The Grit X2 Pro comes preloaded with maps for Europe and the US, with other regions available to download for free, and it will show a breadcrumb trail of your route during activities, a useful feature for retracing your steps that has been strangely absent since Polar first launched maps on the Vantage V3.

The 1.39in AMOLED touchscreen is the same dimensions as the display on the Vantage V3, while using sapphire crystal to be more durable than the Vantage’s gorilla glass display. It will be a major upgrade for the Grit X2 Pro and the battery life on the watch is still strong despite the new display. The Grit X2 Pro will last up to 10 days in watch mode and offers 43 hours of activity tracking in its performance mode using dual-band GPS, with an eco training mode extending the battery life to 140 hours.

There is also a built-in compass on the watch and an array of sensors to track things like your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation. The Grit X2 Pro can also take an ECG (though it’s not medically certified) and measure your skin temperature.

The Polar Grit X2 Pro will be available to pre-order on the Polar US and Polar UK websites from today until Tuesday, April 2, with the watch then going on general sale on Wednesday, April 3. 

The standard steel version of the watch comes in black or gray and costs $749.90/£649, while the titanium Polar Grit X2 Pro Titan is $869.90/£749. 

Even the best Polar watches have fallen short of the standards set by Garmin in recent years, and Coros’s watches have also caught up with and then overhauled Polar’s. So Polar needed to aim high with the Vantage V3. It has duly done that, making an AMOLED watch with features including maps and multi-band GPS.

The Polar Vantage V3 is one of the best sports watches and certainly the best Polar has made, though I wish the price wasn’t so high. For the money the Garmin Forerunner 965 is simply a better watch with more features, while the new Suunto Race is also an excellent AMOLED sports watch and is much cheaper (£100+ cheaper) than the Vantage V3.

Polar Vantage V3 Review: Price And Availability

The Polar Vantage V3 launched in October 2023 and costs $599.90 in the US and £519 in the UK. The price has risen compared with the Vantage V2, which cost $499.99/£449 at launch, which is justifiable considering the V3 is a major upgrade on the V2. However, what’s a concern is the fact the V3 is the same price as the Garmin Forerunner 965 in the US (though cheaper in the UK), and more expensive than the Suunto Race, which is $449/£389 for the steel version.

How I Tested This Sports Watch

I’ve been testing the Polar Vantage V3 for a month, during which time I used two watches because the screen on the first had a problem. During the month, I tested the Vantage V3 against other top sports watches including the Suunto Race and Garmin Epix Pro, and I’ve also tested most of Polar’s range in the past, including previous Vantage generations. Here’s my Polar Vantage V2 review and Polar Vantage review.

Design And Hardware

Garmin has shown with the Epix Pro, Forerunner 965 and Forerunner 265 watches that it’s possible to make brilliant sports watches with AMOLED displays without the battery life suffering too much, so it was inevitable other brands would follow suit. 

Polar’s first AMOLED watch was the Ignite 3, but the Vantage V3 should be seen as its first proper sports watch with an AMOLED display—and it’s fantastic. The 1.39in touchscreen is bright and clear in all conditions, and responded quickly to touches and swipes during my testing. You can set the screen to always-on, although this just shows a basic analogue watch face rather than a dimmer version of your chosen watch face.

In general, the watch is attractive and lightweight, weighing 57g with the silicone band it comes with. It has an aluminum case and bezel that you can get in black or silver, and has five buttons for navigating features, if you prefer to use them instead of the touchscreen.

Polar has upgraded the GPS chip and heart rate sensor on the watch compared with the Vantage V2. The V3 has multi-band GPS, which should result in more accuracy (though it didn’t with the Polar Ignite 3’s multi-band), and has a new Gen 4 optical heart rate sensor, also aimed at increasing accuracy. Other new sensors allow the watch to take electrocardiogram (ECG) readings (though it’s not certified as a medical device) and measure your skin temperature and blood oxygen saturation. 

The Vantage V3 is waterproof to 50m and has a barometric altimeter. You can pair external sensors to the watch using Bluetooth, but not ANT+.

Sports Tracking And Training Analysis

For all the watch’s new features, the sports tracking and training analysis remains the same as on the Vantage V2. While a few updates would have been welcomed—you can show only four stats on a data screen during activities and the structured workout builder is clumsy compared with those of Garmin, Suunto and Coros—it’s still an excellent multisport watch.

Most sports modes you could want are available, with the notable exception of a proper track run mode, which is available on Garmin, Coros and the Apple Watch and uses algorithms to log more accurate distance and pace when running on a 400m track. The Polar track mode just uses GPS, so it isn’t as accurate on a tight loop like a track. 

Your data feeds into Polar’s detailed training and recovery analysis. You can use the sleep tracking on the watch to supplement your recovery advice through Nightly Recharge, or take orthostatic tests each day using the Recovery Pro feature. These tests used to require the use of a heart rate chest strap but can now be done on the watch using the ECG hardware. You can’t use Recovery Pro as well as Nightly Recharge to judge your recovery; the watch makes you choose. I prefer the automatic Nightly Recharge feature as opposed to making time to take the tests regularly.

It takes a few weeks for the training analysis to be useful, as the Vantage V3 needs time to get used to how much you train. There are graphs and details of your training load in the Polar Flow app, and there’s a widget on the watch giving basic information, plus more detail on the Polar Flow website. I’d prefer more info on the watch, but others will enjoy diving into their stats on a website.

GPS And HR Accuracy

The addition, in recent years, of multi-band GPS to sports watches has resulted in the most accurate trackers ever, but not all multi-band is created equal. Garmin and Suunto devices with multi-band are highly accurate. The Polar Ignite 3, however, was not.

Fortunately, Polar has fixed this with the Vantage V3, which is the most accurate Polar watch I’ve tested. Throughout my testing I compared it with the Garmin Epix Pro and Suunto Race and while I’d say the Polar made a few more errors than those watches—smoothing corners or veering of course more often—it’s still an accurate GPS tracker. 

The heart rate accuracy wasn’t good for me, however. I saw significant errors on most runs, with readings both higher and lower than that on a chest strap. This skews the training analysis you get from the watch, and your activity tracking, so I eventually paired a Polar H10 to the Vantage V3 for improved accuracy.

Navigation

The Vantage V3 has color maps which you can use offline once you’ve loaded them onto the watch. To do this you need to download the areas of the world you want on the Polar Flow website and then drag and drop them on the watch. It’s complicated, but you won’t need to do it often and it’s faster than downloading them wirelessly because map files are large—the Vantage V3 has 32GB of storage to accommodate them.

Once they’re on the watch you can add maps to any activity that uses GPS, and you see a map screen among your data screens. Strangely, you don’t see a track of where you’ve been in an activity unless you have a route loaded. With any other brand that has maps, a trail is laid, which can be handy for retracing your steps; with Polar you just see a pointer to show where you are at that moment. Hopefully, this is something Polar will add to the watch in due course.

To add routes you need to get them into the Polar Flow app or website and then select them as a favorite you want to see on the watch. You can manually add any route created with a third-party app or website, but if you want turn-by-turn directions you need to use Komoot, which syncs routes automatically across to Polar.

I used several routes on the watch, with and without turn-by-turn directions, and it is easy to follow them with the maps on the bright AMOLED display. The watch also shows the elevation profile for your route, though it doesn’t have anything as smart as Garmin’s ClimbPro, which analyzes each climb and descent on your route and shows them individually when you’re tackling them so you can judge your effort accordingly.

Polar doesn’t have “routable” maps like Garmin, which allow you to create routes on the fly rather than just follow trails loaded over the map, but the new navigation features are still a plus point for the Vantage V3.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Vantage V3 tracks the usual daily activity stats like steps, active calories and floors climbed. However, it does steps in an unusual way—any activity adds steps. So bike rides and swims, or vigorous hand waving, will add to your step target, which means the totals you get from the Vantage V3 are higher than from other watches. The watch also breaks down your calories burned by your metabolism, your general activity and any training done that day.

There are three activity levels you can set as your general goal and these are designed to suit different lifestyles, with level 1 being for mostly sedentary people and level 3 for active people. The goals are based on active time and intensity, so to hit 100% of level 2, for example, requires nine hours and 19 minutes of low-intensity activity, two hours and 48 minutes of medium intensity, or one hour and 13 minutes at high intensity.

The watch’s sleep tracking is detailed and accurate as far as I can tell, but only when it actually logs a night of rest. My sleep is broken up at the moment owing to a rambunctious six-month-old and, on several occasions, I didn’t log enough continuous sleep to get my Nightly Recharge information from Polar.

If you have a more consistent bedtime schedule, Polar’s sleep tracking is useful in the detail it provides, and more accurate than what I’ve experienced with Garmin watches. You also get a Boost From Sleep graph for the next day that shows when you’re going to have the most energy. It’s a good idea and could be used to time training sessions, although if you’re sleeping well it looks similar each day, and when not sleeping well it’s just depressing to see you have no periods with significant boost from sleep, which I had a couple of times.

Overall, I think the Vantage V3 is a good sleep and activity tracker, though it’s a shame it doesn’t have any kind of “training readiness” stat, which I find useful on Garmin watches.

Smart Features

The Polar Vantage V3 offers notifications, has a weather forecast widget, and can control music playback on a linked phone, but it’s otherwise not a smart device. There’s no music storage or NFC payments and throughout my testing it struggled to stay linked to my phone reliably, which scuppers notifications. It looks great with its AMOLED display, but if you want smarts you’re better off with Garmin, or even Coros devices, let alone true smartwatches with app stores and cellular (phone connection) like the Apple Watch.

Battery Life

With any AMOLED watch the battery life is a concern, and I found when I enabled the always-on screen and used the Vantage V3 for runs every day it lasted only three or four days on a charge. With the always-on screen turned off outside of activities, it lasts a week, but still needs charging more often than the Forerunner 965 and Suunto Race with always-on enabled on those watches.

The GPS battery life is strong at more than 40 hours, even when using the most accurate multi-band mode. This matches well to rival watches, but it’s outside activities where the Vantage V3 seems to drain much faster than watches like the Race and 965—perhaps because the more detailed sleep tracking Polar offers requires more intense use of sensors overnight.

I’d say the battery life is good enough for an AMOLED watch that does as much as the Vantage V3 in terms of sports and general activity tracking, but you can get more juice from rivals.

Is The Polar Vantage V3 Worth It?

I really enjoyed using the Polar Vantage V3 and it’s a great sports watch, but it’s also a hard sell because there’s nothing here that I think Polar does significantly better than Garmin, or Suunto with the Race watch—and you get more features on top Garmins.

With the Vantage V3 the same price as the Garmin Forerunner 965 in the US that’s an easy choice. The Garmin is a better sports tracker in my experience, and has extra features like music storage, NFC payments and improved navigation, and lasts longer on a charge.

The Suunto Race is another strong alternative with an AMOLED screen that’s cheaper even if you opt for a titanium model with a sapphire screen, which will be more durable than the materials used on the Vantage V3. The Race has its own problems but has better battery life than the Polar and more impressive GPS accuracy, and Suunto has been smart in undercutting Garmin and Polar with its pricing.

Garmin and Polar make some of the best sports watches and are established as the two biggest brands for the seriously sporty, though Coros has made inroads into that market of late, and Suunto has a dedicated following too.

If you’re choosing between Garmin and Polar, you have decisions to make at pretty much any level—whether you’re a beginner looking for your first watch or an athlete needing the best of everything. Here, I’ll go through the key differences between the brands, though from the outset I’ll say that Garmin is clearly the better pick for most people right now.

How I’ve Tested These Watches

I’ve been testing sports watches from all the major brands for several years and have reviewed almost every device in Garmin and Polar’s current ranges. When testing watches I use them for two to three weeks, tracking all of my everyday activity and sleep, as well as my workouts, with my main sport being running—I usually log around 50-70 miles (30km-43km) a week. I check the accuracy of the GPS and heart rate sensor on the watch, looking at the usefulness of the training analysis and smart features, such as navigation, as well as battery life.

Garmin vs Polar: The Range

Garmin makes a lot of watches and its range can be confusing to navigate. There are the Forerunner watches, which are mainly aimed at runners and triathletes, while the Vivoactive and Venu watches are designed to feel more like smartwatches and to be suitable for general activity and workout tracking.

The upper echelons of the range contain the Fenix, Enduro and Epix watches, which are packed with the brand’s top features, and have more rugged, outdoorsy designs than the Forerunners, while also offering longer battery life. There is also the ultra-expensive Marq range, which has watches with distinctive designs, though these mostly run the same software as Garmin’s other top sports watches.

Whichever Garmin watch you get, the core user interface and sports tracking has many similarities. The foundations are always strong, and you fine-tune your choice based on the features you deem essential and the price you’re willing to pay.

Things are simpler with Polar’s range, which contains fewer watches. The budget option is the Unite, a basic fitness tracker, while the Pacer and Pacer Pro are the cheaper sports watches available.

The Polar Ignite 3 stands out in the range because of its AMOLED screen, which makes it the best-looking Polar available, and it also has good sports tracking. At the top of Polar’s tree are the Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro sports watches: The Grit has a hardier design for outdoor adventures, while the Vantage V2 is sleeker and lighter for those focused on performance. (The Vantage V3 has been announced but I have yet to test it.)

There are older Polar watches available as well, like the Vantage M2 and Grit X. The Vantage M2 has effectively been replaced by the Pacer Pro, which has more features and is cheaper. The Grit X is still worth investigating as a cheaper alternative to the Grit X Pro, though the latter has extra features.

Design

For the most part, Garmin and Polar stick to a similar formula for their sports watches, which have plastic bodies and three to five buttons. However, the amount of buttons varies, and the smartwatch-style devices in both ranges have fewer. Touchscreens are becoming more common across the ranges, and both brands have watches with bright AMOLED displays, as well as some with the classic LCD screens that are better for battery life.

In Polar's range the Ignite 3 is the only watch with an AMOLED display, while Garmin has the Venu and Epix ranges, plus the Vivoactive 5, Forerunner 265 and Forerunner 965 watches, and the Marq 2.

Garmin also has many watches that use metal in their design, with steel or titanium bezels and case backs. Most of these are found in the Fenix, Epix, Enduro and Marq ranges, though the Forerunner 965 has a thin titanium bezel on its otherwise plastic design. Within Polar’s range the Grit X Pro Titan and Polar Ignite 3 Titan models have titanium bezels, while the standard Grit X Pro has a steel bezel, and the Vantage V2 has an aluminum case.

Overall, Garmin’s devices look more modern than Polar’s. Many Polar watches have a thick black bezel that surrounds the screen and makes them look somewhat dated. 

Sports Tracking

Both brands successfully manage the basics of sports tracking, with lots of customisable sports modes and a structured workout-builder, and offer training plans you can follow from your wrist, along with suggested workouts each day.

One area where Garmin has moved ahead in recent years is GPS accuracy. Garmin has many devices that offer multi-band GPS, and its watches with this mode have proved the most accurate for distance and pace tracking of all the brands I’ve tested. 

Polar only has one watch with multi-band GPS, which is the Ignite 3, and in my testing it didn’t perform well for GPS accuracy, delivering frequent errors during runs. I hope Polar will address this with the next generation of the Vantage V watch, because currently Garmin’s superiority is clear.

With regards to heart rate accuracy, the optical sensors in both brands’ watches are good most of the time, though I still spotted errors and lag compared with the readings from a chest strap. Garmin launched a new heart rate sensor with the Epix Pro and Fenix 7 Pro watches and this has proved more accurate during my testing, but with both brands I’d opt for an external chest strap or armband to get the best results on heart rate. 

One notable difference between them is that Garmin watches link to external sensors via Bluetooth and ANT+, while Polar’s latest watches use Bluetooth only.

Training Analysis

Polar once led the way for training analysis, but in recent years this is another area where Garmin has moved ahead. Polar’s training analysis is still extensive and useful, though you need to use the Polar Flow website to get the most detail on your training load and recovery, but Garmin offers the same features and more.

One of the major additions to Garmin watches over the past two years is training readiness. This is a simple rating out of 100 that says how ready you are to train, based on factors including your recent training and sleep, and heart rate variability. It’s a great distillation of the data being tracked by the watch that’s clear and easy to use. The underlying data is available too, if you want to dive into more detail.

Garmin has added interesting new ratings to its top watches in hill score and endurance score, which rate your proficiency in those areas. I’ve found Garmin's VO2 max estimates and race predictions to be more accurate than Polar’s, which tend to be somewhat optimistic for me. I will say, though, that Garmin is less accurate with some tracking than Polar, notably sleep, and this feeds into other training analysis.

Smart Features And Navigation

Garmin has also moved ahead of Polar in smart features. While Garmin doesn’t have access to an app store as impressive as Apple’s or Google Play, it offers a range of watches with key smart features like music storage and NFC payments. Its music watches can link to streaming services including Spotify and Amazon Music, and the Garmin Venu 2 Plus and Venu 3 can make calls.

By contrast, Polar’s smart features are limited to mirroring notifications, showing a weather forecast and controlling music playback on a connected phone. Garmin also has its Connect IQ app store, which for now mostly contains watch faces and extra data fields, but has useful third-party apps including a parkrun barcode app, so you can have it on your watch.

Garmin leads the way on navigation features. Its top watches have fully routable color maps with turn-by-turn directions and extra features like ClimbPro, which analyzes all the climbs and descents on your route so you can judge each one. You pay a lot for a Garmin watch with maps: Its mid-range watches have breadcrumb navigation, with a line and pointer on the watch to follow, plus a back-to-start feature.

Polar offers breadcrumb navigation with turn-by-turn directions on several of its watches, which is good enough in most situations, and it has a back-to-start feature, though it doesn’t have maps on any watch yet.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

All Garmin and Polar watches track everyday activity and sleep. For activity, your steps, calories burned and active time are recorded. With Garmin you can set a step goal or have it automatically adjust to your activity levels, so the target is always appropriate for you. 

With Polar you choose from three overall activity targets, and each day aim to hit 100% of that goal. The targets combine all your activity and the three levels are aimed at different levels of activity, where the hardest goal should be a challenge—even for those running every day, in my experience.

Polar’s sleep tracking is more advanced than Garmin’s, and more accurate. With Polar you get a detailed breakdown of your sleep focused on three areas (amount, solidity and regeneration) and Polar graphs out the day after your sleep, showing when you’re likely to be most alert and giving you a sleep window to aim for the following day.

Garmin graphs out your sleep stages through the night and gives you a sleep score, and the accuracy of its tracking has improved of late, but I’ve often found Garmin logs periods where I’m awake but lying still as light sleep, and so overestimates my total sleep. I’ve tested some Polar watches that haven’t logged any sleep at all, though when they do it’s usually more in line with how I actually slept than Garmin’s logs.

Battery Life

The battery life on Garmin watches varies throughout its range. Some of the Fenix and Enduro watches last weeks on a charge. It also has several watches with solar panels, which can extend the battery life considerably in the appropriate conditions, though these are not that easy to find if you live in the UK and mostly work indoors.

The longest-lasting watch is the Garmin Enduro 2, which can go three weeks between charges even with heavy use. How long the battery lasts depends on factors such as whether it has an AMOLED screen and whether you use multi-band GPS, which is the most power-intensive mode. Smaller watches like the Garmin Forerunner 55 last around a week.

Polar’s watches don’t vary much in battery life, and in general offer far less than Garmin. The Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro will last five to seven days with my use, while the Polar Ignite 3 with its AMOLED screen lasts just one to two days if the screen is always-on, and three to four if not. Polar watches drain faster at night than Garmin, perhaps because of the extra detail they offer for sleep tracking.

With regards to GPS battery life, Polar’s top devices offer about 40 hours of tracking (without multi-band). Garmin’s devices vary depending on the watch size and GPS mode, but the Enduro 2 offers 110 hours of GPS-only tracking, or 68 hours of multi-band.

Verdict: Best Garmin and Polar Watches To Buy

If you want to buy a Polar watch, the Pacer Pro is the model to go for, since it has all the key features you get from the Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro watches and costs less. However, for a similar price you could get the Garmin Forerunner 255, which is a more accurate and accomplished watch.

I’d say this is the case throughout the two ranges, with Garmin offering better options at every price. The Garmin Forerunner 55 is the best beginner running watch, though if you find the Pacer Pro in a sale for a similar price it is a full multisport watch, whereas the Forerunner 55 doesn’t have a triathlon mode.

If you want a sporty watch with some smarts, Garmin is the clear pick, whether you opt for a Venu or an AMOLED Forerunner, like the 265. The best mid-range multi-sport watch from either brand is the Forerunner 255, or the 265 if you are happy to pay more for an AMOLED screen.

At the top end of the range, Garmin leads once more: Every watch from the Forerunner 955 and 965 up offers all its best features, many of which you won’t find on any Polar watches, like maps, music, training readiness and multi-band GPS. The Forerunner 955 or AMOLED 965 are good value for a top-end watch, while the Epix, Fenix and Enduro ranges offer more rugged metal designs and longer battery life.

Polar has launched the latest generation of its flagship Vantage sports watch. On paper the Polar Vantage V3 offers a host of exciting hardware and software upgrades on the Vantage V2. I’ve yet to start testing the watch, but it’s safe to say if the Vantage V3 lives up to its promise in practice, it will be one of the best sports watches and a rival to the Garmin Epix 2.

I say a rival to the Epix, rather than the Garmin Fenix, because the Vantage V3 has a bright 1.39in AMOLED touchscreen rather than an LCD. This reduces battery life, but Polar says the Vantage V3 will still last up to eight days on a charge, and offer an impressive 47 hours of training time using dual-band GPS tracking, and up to 140 hours if you take advantage of all the power-saving options.

The Vantage V3 has an attractive design, with an aluminum bezel surrounding the curved Gorilla Glass display, and Polar has also upgraded the hardware on the back of the watch, claiming the new Gen 4 optical heart rate sensor on the watch is more accurate than ever before. 

The sensors on the watch, which are now packaged into the “Polar Elixir sensor fusion platform”, allow it to take ECG readings and check your blood oxygen saturation, and it also monitors your skin temperature at night. 

Another exciting update is that the Vantage V3 offers dual-band GPS tracking, which should lead to more accurate distance and pace measurements during outdoor activities. A note of caution here, however, because the Polar Ignite 3 has multi-band tracking and in my experience its GPS accuracy is middling. Hopefully the Vantage V3 can rival Garmin and Suunto’s multi-band GPS accuracy, which is excellent.

One area where Garmin has been streets ahead of its rivals for years is navigation, but the Polar Vantage V3 aims to start closing the gap with the addition of offline topographical maps. It will also offer turn-by-turn directions for routes made through Komoot. 

The Vantage V3 is still primarily a sports watch, and doesn’t offer smart features like music storage or NFC payments, which you do get on Garmin watches. However, if the new sensors and GPS prove to be highly accurate, the Vantage V3 will be a major player in the high-end watch market.

You can pre-order the Polar Vantage V3 from today. It comes in three colors—black, blue and apricot—and will ship from October 25. The watch costs $599.90 in the US and £519 in the UK, and you can buy a bundle consisting of the watch and the excellent Polar H10 chest strap heart rate monitor for $649.90/£559.

Polar makes some of the best sports watches, with a range of devices to suit many budgets and users. Whether you want a stylish fitness tracker to record workouts and activity or a multisport watch to track outdoor adventures, Polar has a watch for you.

In recent years, Garmin has had the edge over Polar in producing better sports watches across the price range, while Coros is also worth exploring for cheaper devices. However, there’s no doubt Polar still makes great watches and you can often scoop them up for a good price in sales.

How I Test Polar Watches

I wear each Polar watch I review for Coach for several weeks and use it to track all my everyday activity, workouts and sleep. For sports watches, I check the GPS and heart rate accuracy during runs and cycles in particular. I’ve tested most of Polar’s current line-up, along with older watches going back to the Polar M430, which I loved. I’ve tested a wide range of sports watches from other brands like Garmin, Suunto and Coros.

The quick list

There are full reviews of all the watches below. However, this section is a one-stop shop for those who need a headline recommendation.

The Best Polar Watches 2026

Best Value

The Pacer Pro undercuts the price of the top-end Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro watches while offering all the key sports tracking features, as well as breadcrumb navigation. The Pacer Pro is a less attractive watch than the Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro, which use more metal in their designs, though it’s slimmer and lighter.

There is also the Polar Pacer to consider if you’re hunting for a watch based on value, since it is cheaper than the Pacer Pro. The latter includes useful extras like navigation, a barometric altimeter and running power measurements, so for my money, the Pacer Pro is the better-value option.

Read more in my Polar Pacer Pro review

Best Fitness Tracker

The Polar Ignite 3 is a gorgeous watch that does a great job of tracking your sleep and everyday activity, even if its sports tracking proved inaccurate during testing. The AMOLED touchscreen is colorful and while it hits the battery life quite hard—I had to charge the watch every day or two when the screen was set to always-on—it’s by far the best display within Polar’s range.

Although the Ignite 3 offers multi-band GPS tracking and has all of Polar’s usual sports modes, if you are looking for a running or triathlon watch it falls short of the standards set by the Pacer Pro, Vantage and Grit watches. The Ignite 3 works best as a general fitness tracker that can record workouts. There’s also a titanium version that looks even more stylish and is more rugged thanks to the titanium bezel, but it costs a bit more.

Read more in my Polar Ignite 3 review

Best Sports Watch

The Polar Vantage V3 is a notable upgrade on the Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro with regards to features and design. The lightweight aluminum watch has a bright AMOLED display that reduces battery life, yet makes it far more enjoyable to use the watch day in, day out. It also has multi-band GPS and, unlike on the Ignite 3, I found this to be accurate with the Vantage V3 and an improvement on Polar’s other watches.

Polar has added color maps to the V3, which make it easier to follow routes on the watch. These new features add to the already-impressive sports tracking and training analysis you get on all Polar watches. The Vantage V3 is one of the best sports watches available from any brand, though the Garmin Forerunner 965 retains the edge as an AMOLED sports watch.

Read more in my Polar Vantage V3 review

Best Adventure Watch

The Polar Grit X Pro has the same features as the Vantage V2, but in a more rugged, outdoorsy design. It has a sapphire glass display, and the Titan version of the watch has a titanium bezel. The chunky look and feel of the watch will appeal more to those spending hours in the great outdoors for their activities, while the sleeker, lighter Vantage V2 will appeal more to those chasing fast times in runs and triathlons.

Read more in my Polar Grit X Pro review

Best Budget Watch

The Unite is a basic fitness tracker that has a couple of Polar’s best features: detailed sleep tracking, and training suggestions each day based on how well recovered you are. However, it doesn’t have GPS, so it’s more for those who train indoors. Its battery life is also short at just four days, which will come down if you track a couple of workouts in that time. 

If you’re looking for a good budget Polar watch for running and cycling then the Polar Pacer is a better option. But if you just want a cheap watch that will track everyday activity and gym workouts, the Unite will do the job.

Read more in my Polar Unite review

The best heart rate monitors for accuracy are chest straps, but many people find them awkward or uncomfortable during longer activities. Armbands like the Polar Verity Sense are a great alternative since they are more accurate than using a wrist sensor, and the Verity Sense is the best arm strap heart rate monitor I’ve tested.

It’s accurate, connects easily to watches and other devices, and has internal storage so you can track workouts on the Verity Sense and then sync them to the Polar app later. 

Polar Verity Sense Review: Price And Availability

The Polar Verity Sense originally launched in early 2021, with an updated version coming out in May 2023. It costs $99.95 in the US and £86.50 in the UK. Polar has a cheaper armband in its range, the OH1, which costs $59.95/£51.50.

Design

The Polar Verity Sense is a plastic coin-shaped optical heart rate sensor that sits in an adjustable strap, which you can wear on your upper arm or forearm. I’d recommend the upper arm for increased accuracy. You can also wear the sensor in a clip that’s attached to your goggles to track heart rate from your temple during swims.

It’s a small and light sensor—3cm across and weighing 5g without the wristband, and 19g with it. The Verity Sense has a WR50 water-resistance rating (up to depths of 50m) and has 16GB of internal storage, which can record up to 600 hours of workouts.

The Verity Sense connects to external devices via Bluetooth and ANT+. It can connect to two Bluetooth devices at once, and support unlimited ANT+ connections. It has a broadcast range of 150m, which is double the range of the Polar OH1.

There is one button on the top of the sensor that you use to choose the recording mode you want at the start of a session. The first is broadcast HR mode, which is used to connect the Verity Sense to watches and other equipment. The second is recording mode, which you can use to track a workout on the Verity Sense to sync with an app to check your stats later. The last mode is for swimming.

The Polar Verity Sense has up to 30 hours of tracking on a charge, which is 18 hours longer than the Polar OH1. The charger is a small circle the sensor clips into, with a USB plug built in. It’s small and I found it easy to misplace between charges.

A one-size-fits-all fabric strap is supplied with the Verity Sense. This is easy to adjust before you put the strap on, though tricky to do while wearing it. The strap has been adjusted to make it harder for it to flip over accidentally during training sessions. There is a velcro clip to unhook the strap and attach it when in position, but I found it hard to secure one-handed. Instead, I just pulled the elastic strap up my arm without unhooking it.

Polar hasn’t changed much with the 2023 version of the Verity Sense, which adds the ability to use personalized heart rate zones when using the sensor in swimming or recording mode. New red and black bands were launched, made with recycled and bio-based materials, to join the original gray band in the range.

The Verity Sense records your lengths when swimming but otherwise is just a heart rate sensor. This does make it different to something like the Whoop band, which will do things like estimating your readiness to train and track your sleep.

How I Tested This HR Monitor

I’ve tested the original Polar Verity Sense and the updated 2023 model. I run most days, as well as doing workouts like strength and yoga sessions, and indoor cycling. During testing I used the Verity Sense at the same time as a chest strap to compare its accuracy. I have also tested other heart rate armbands like the MyZone MZ-Switch and Polar OH1.

Sports Performance

When you turn the Verity Sense on, you have a few seconds to select the mode you want to use by clicking the button. It defaults to broadcast HR to other devices, so you can ignore this if planning to connect it to a watch, but you need to click it to change it to recording or swimming mode. If you don’t manage to select a mode in time you have to turn the sensor off and on again because you can’t change mode once it’s locked.

In the standalone recording mode the Verity Sense doesn’t crop the recording time to just the actual workout, so unless you start it up just as you begin your training it will record extra time at the start. It’s a useful mode for sports where you don’t want to wear a watch, and you can see your heart rate live using the Polar Beat app, or just sync your workout to the Polar Flow app later to check your stats. 

I mostly used the Verity Sense in broadcast mode, and both versions of the sensors connected easily with a range of watches, as well as my laptop and tablet when using cycling apps like Zwift or Rouvy. I wore it on my upper arm for the most accurate results.

I usually wore another watch connected to a chest strap to check the accuracy of the Verity Sense in real time during workouts, as well as looking at the graphs afterwards. The Verity Sense nearly always matched perfectly to a chest strap’s readings, especially during workouts done at a steady effort level.

In interval sessions with spikes and drops in heart rate the Verity Sense’s readings would lag slightly behind a chest strap, which you would expect from optical readings as opposed to to a chest strap using electrical signals directly from the heart. During a long hills session I saw the Verity Sense’s heart rate readings take a few seconds to catch up at the start of each rep, then they came down more slowly at the end.

I experienced no major errors using the Verity Sense, though, and it’s accurate enough that I’d be happy to use it instead of a chest strap if I did find using the latter annoying. I find chest straps comfortable and the longer battery life from single-use coin batteries they offer is more convenient for me than recharging the Verity Sense. 

I’ve not swum with the Verity Sense yet. To use that mode you need to set the length of the pool you use in the Polar Flow app and attach the sensor to your goggles using the provided clip. The Verity Sense records the lengths you do by noting when you make a turn in the pool. It can link up with the Form swim goggles to show your HR live during swims.

It can’t link to a watch in the water, however, and you can’t download the HR data from the Verity Sense to a swimming workout tracked by a Polar watch in the app after you’ve finished. That’s something you can do with Garmin. Data from one of its chest straps is downloaded to a swimming workout recorded by a Garmin watch once you sync everything with the app.

Battery Life

I tend to do around seven or eight hours training a week, mostly running. The Verity Sense lasted me three weeks on a charge before I’d get antsy and plug it in. That’s because there’s no way to check its battery level apart from charging it, when the LED light on the bottom will change color depending on the battery level.

Going weeks without charging the sensor is convenient, but at the same time means that once a month I’d have to find the charging dock, which was always harder than it should be (my fault, obviously). I found it less convenient to do this than replacing a coin battery in a chest strap once every six months, which is how long the Polar H10 strap lasts me.

Is The Polar Verity Sense Worth It?

If you want an armband heart rate monitor then the Polar Verity Sense is the one to get. It has useful upgrades on the Polar OH1, notably battery life and the improved strap, and is cheaper than the MyZone MZ-Switch, though the latter has the benefit of being used as a chest strap as well.

I’ve no concerns with the accuracy of the Verity Sense, which performs exactly as well as you would expect it would, linking easily to other devices and going weeks on a charge. While it’s expensive, it’s often available in sales. 

If you don’t have a problem with using chest straps, they’re still the best option available in my opinion, since they are more accurate than arm bands and cheaper. Even the best I’ve come across—the Polar H10—costs less than the Verity Sense, and you can get more advanced chest straps that will also track things like running dynamics as well as heart rate.

When I tested the Polar Ignite 3, I concluded it was very close to being one of the best sports watches. It looked great, with a slim design and bright AMOLED screen, and was packed with Polar’s best features for sports, activity and sleep tracking.

Unfortunately, a few performance problems kept cropping up and undermining my enjoyment of it, and chief among these was the watch’s poor GPS accuracy.

Given that it was the first watch from Polar to offer dual-band GPS tracking, which should result in an improvement in accuracy (it does with dual-band watches from Garmin and Apple in particular), this was very disappointing.

So my big hope for the new Polar Ignite 3 Titanium is that the new design of the watch somehow improves its GPS performance. I’m not claiming to have any idea of how that might work, but GPS is a fickle thing, and factors like a watch’s materials and antennae design play a part in how well it works. So there’s a chance Polar has managed to improve the accuracy of the titanium model.

If not, then there are at least some other new upgrades to enjoy on the watch, not least the titanium bezel which improves both its look and its durability. Polar has also introduced two new features with the Ignite 3 Titanium: skin temperature measurements and a work-rest guide for interval workouts.

These new features will also be available on the Ignite 3 via a software update, and the skin temperature measurement is a particularly useful upgrade. Each night the watch will measure your skin temperature and compare it with your baseline from the last 28 days—unexpected rises in particular can be a sign of illness. 

Skin temperature is often used with women’s health tracking features on watches. Polar doesn’t yet offer these features, but it says women can use the nightly readings to help inform which stage of their cycle they’re at. I would guess that Polar is likely to start offering women’s health features soon, though, to make the most of the new skin temperature-sensing feature.

The other big new feature is the Work-Rest Guide, which advises you on how long to rest between sets during workouts to get the best results from it, based on your heart rate. I imagine this will start with making sure your heart rate drops enough between sets to allow for proper recovery, but it will be interesting to see if you can tailor this feature to suit your aims for the workout—making sure you don’t relax too much during supersets would be useful, for example.

I will be putting the new watch to the test for a full review as soon as possible, with all my fingers crossed that the GPS performance does improve. The Polar Ignite 3 Titanium costs $369.95/£324 or $399.95/£349 for the watch with an extra bronze leather band alongside the standard black silicone one. Given it has a titanium bezel the rise in price over the Ignite 3, which costs $329.95/£289, seems fair.

It’s fair to say we weren’t impressed with Casio’s first sports watch. Our review of the G-Squad GBD-H1000 found it was uncomfortable to wear, tracked nothing but running and was far from user-friendly.

Fortunately, Casio has overhauled the watch, adding more sports tracking to the new G-Squad GBD-H2000 and integrating excellent training and sleep analysis software from Polar, the company whose wearables include some of the best running watches going.

The G-Squad GBD-H2000 is slimmer and lighter than the GBD-H1000 while still retaining the distinctive look of a G-Shock watch. While the sleeker design is welcome, what we’re most excited about is the upgraded sports tracking. The new watch tracks swimming, cycling and gym workouts as well as running, and offers useful insights into your training through the integration of Polar features.

These include cardio load and cardio status, so you can see if your training load is balanced and making you fitter, as well as Polar’s Night Recharge feature, which tells you how well recovered you are in the morning so you can adjust the intensity of your training accordingly. 

Other Polar features on the watch include Running Index, which is a VO2 max estimate based on your running fitness, and Fuelwise analysis that shows whether you mainly used fat or carbs as fuel during your workouts.

It remains to be seen if these new features will make the Casio G-Shock GBD-H2000 a match for the best sports watches from Garmin, Coros and Polar itself, but appropriate hardware specs are all present and correct. The GBD-H2000 is rugged and waterproof to 200m and has the key sensors needed, including an altimeter.

One thing that might have been sacrificed to make these improvements is battery life, since Polar’s analysis features can be power-hungry judging by the relatively short battery lives of its own watches. The GBD-H2000 is also a smaller watch with a slimmer battery than the GBD-H1000, which impressed us with its longevity during our testing. 

Casio says the GBD-H2000 will last around two months in watch mode, or 14 hours of sports tracking using the most accurate GPS setting. You can also extend the sports tracking to 19 hours with less accurate GPS tracking, and in power-saving mode the GBD-H2000 will essentially last forever in watch mode, especially in sunny environments because it has solar panels on the face.

We’ll be testing the battery life and everything else on the watch as soon as we get our hands on it, but on paper the Casio G-Shock GBD-H2000 looks like a major upgrade on the GBD-H1000. The watch will be available from 10th March and costs £379 in the UK.

Polar has long set the standard with its heart rate monitors, and in our experience the H10 is as good, or better, than anything else on the market. The lack of obvious errors leads us to believe it’s the most accurate device available. It’s undoubtedly one of the best heart rate monitors, but unless you find it in a sale the Polar H9 is better value for most people. And, if you’re willing to spend more, the Garmin HRM-Pro Plus offers more advanced features, like running technique metrics.

Polar H10 Review: Price And Availability

The Polar H10 launched in early 2017 and has an RRP of $89.95 in the US and £76.50 in the UK, though you can usually find it in a sale somewhere for less. Polar also has the cheaper H9 strap, which costs $59.95/£51.50. 

Design

There are six strap colour choices with the Polar H10, and two strap size options – M-XXL (67-95cm) and XS-S (58-71cm). You can also buy an extra large strap (82-140cm) by itself.

The pod clips securely into place with two buttons and the strap closes with a clasp. The soft fabric strap has a long smooth section that sits against the skin and contains the electrical sensors. There are also small silicone circles on the strap to help it stay in place during activities, and you can adjust the length easily to get a snug fit.

You can connect to other devices via Bluetooth Smart (two connections) and ANT+ (unlimited connections), as well as 5kHz analog heart rate (unlimited connections). The latter can be useful to connect to cardio machines. The H10 uses a CR2025 coin battery that you can easily replace by taking off the back cover on the pod.

How I Tested This Heart Rate Monitor

I have used the Polar H10 heart rate monitor off and on for several years, testing two H10 straps in that time (I lost the first). I run almost every day and have also used it for cycling, strength workouts and yoga sessions. I have also tested the Polar H9, along with Garmin and Wahoo’s latest sensors.

Sports Performance

The H10 gets a big tick for reliability from us. It’s best to wet the electrical sensor strip before starting a workout – dab some water on or moisten it somehow – to ensure the sensor locks onto your HR from the off. But even if you forget to do that, the H10 is as reliable as straps come, always matching my expectations of where my heart rate should be, and I often use it as the benchmark to test the accuracy of optical heart rate monitors.

It’s also a comfortable strap and I’ve never had any problems with it slipping or rubbing when using it for long runs, and don’t recall any dropouts in connection with whatever watch or treadmill I had the H10 linked to.

The H10 also links to Polar’s apps – Polar Flow and Polar Beat – and you can use it to track workouts with the apps as a standalone device. If you take your phone with you you’ll get a map of your activity, or you can start the workout on your phone then leave it behind and the H10 will track your workout and you can download the data when you come back to your phone. You can only store one workout at a time on the sensor, though.

Even if you don’t intend to use the apps to track workouts it’s worth linking your H10 strap to one of the apps to check for updates and change the settings on the strap. ANT+ connections and the ability to link it to two Bluetooth devices aren’t turned on by default so you need to change the settings to use those features.

The H10 doesn’t offer any of the extra stats you can get from more expensive heart rate monitors. The Garmin HRM-Pro Plus, for instance, offers running technique stats like ground contact time and vertical oscillation, as well as indoor pace and distance – so you can use the strap to track treadmill runs and send your pace to apps such as Zwift.

Battery Life

Polar says the H10 will last for up to 400 hours of workout tracking. I found that it fell short of that and I usually needed to change the battery after six to eight months of use, which would be – as a rough estimate – something like 250 hours. 

It’s still a long time of course and it’s easy to change the CR2025 coin battery using a screwdriver to open up the back of the pod, or your nails if they’re long and strong.

Polar H10 vs Polar H9

The Polar H9 strap launched in January 2020 as a cheaper alternative to the H10. It offers the same accuracy but has a marginally less comfortable strap with a hook closure that doesn’t have the silicone spots for a more secure fit, though I didn’t have problems with the H9 on that front.

You can only connect to one device at a time via Bluetooth with the H9, though it has ANT+ for unlimited connections, and it doesn’t have on board storage for workouts so you need to have your phone with you to track your training sessions.

Given that most people will link the H9 to another device, like a watch, to track workouts the lack of storage isn’t really a problem, nor is the single Bluetooth connection – unless you have a raft of sensors you want to pair that don’t have ANT+.

Overall, the H9 is the smart pick of the Polar pair since it’s cheaper and just as accurate.

Is The Polar H10 Worth It?

Although the Polar H10 is pretty much faultless, the H9 is the better value pick despite being marginally less comfortable. Unless you need the niche extra features on the H10.

Outside of Polar, the best heart rate monitor if you’re happy to spend more is the Garmin HRM-Pro Plus ($129.99/£119.99) because of the extra stats it tracks, though these only benefit people who use a Garmin watch. I’ve found it just as accurate as the H10, and it syncs data to workouts recorded on Garmin watches after swims where the live HR data won’t transmit through the water.

Another option is the Wahoo Tickr X, which also tracks running technique stats and is cheaper than the H10 and the HRM-Pro Plus, at $79.99/£64.99. I haven’t tested the Tickr X but did have the occasional accuracy issue with the cheaper Wahoo Tickr, which doesn’t have the running stats, and I didn’t find it as comfortable as the Polar and Garmin straps.

This review was first published in January 2023, then updated in July 2023 after the release of the Polar Ignite 3 Titanium. 

The Polar Ignite 3 is a big upgrade on the Polar Ignite 2, starting with the design. The new AMOLED screen is gorgeous, and the Ignite 3 looks like a more high-end watch in general. It also has under-the-hood improvements like dual-band GPS and a faster processor, plus a more intuitive user interface. 

On paper the Ignite 3 looked like a fantastic watch, even with a price rise on the Ignite 2. However, in practice I have found it a frustrating watch to use. The software lags and the GPS accuracy during outdoor activities is very poor at times. For now there are certainly better options available elsewhere, whether you’re looking for one of the best fitness trackers or a fitness smartwatch.

Polar Ignite 3 Review: Price And Availability

The Polar Ignite 3 launched in November 2022 and costs $329.95 in the US and £289 in the UK. That’s a big rise on the $229.95/£199.50 price of the Ignite 2, but the Ignite 3 is a considerable upgrade on its predecessor.

Design And User Interface

The Polar Ignite 3 looks fantastic. It is a very thin and light watch, with a 43mm case that’s 9.5mm thick and weighs just 21g (35g with the wristband). It’s a plastic case with a stainless steel bezel and a Gorilla glass screen. The new 1.28in AMOLED touchscreen is bright and much more impressive than the TFT colour touchscreen on the Ignite 2.

Polar has also improved the user interface. You can pick up to four widgets to have on the main watch face, and swipe through a variety of other widgets that provide pretty much all the info you want from the watch, including recent training load, sleep insights and smart features like the weather forecast.

The Ignite 3 also has a faster processor than its predecessor, but unfortunately still suffers from bouts of lag when swiping through menus, and the raise-to-wake function isn’t as speedy or reliable as the same feature on Apple and Garmin watches. With just one button on the watch you are relying on the touchscreen to navigate its menus, and there is enough lag to often make interacting with the watch frustrating.

There is no altimeter in the Ignite 3, which has a WR30 water resistance rating, making it fine for swimming. A key upgrade on the watch is the dual-band GPS tracking it offers, which I’ll come to shortly. 

While the design of the Ignite 3 watch is great, the silicone strap it comes with is horrible. It’s hard to get a tight fit without the strap tugging on your skin and arm hair. If you’re planning on getting the Ignite 3 I’d strongly recommend splashing out on a better band from Polar – there are plenty of options.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

The Ignite 3 offers all of Polar’s usual activity tracking, including steps, calories burned and active time, all of which contributes to an overall activity goal. You can choose three levels for this, with level one aimed at mostly sedentary people, level two for people who are on their feet most of the day, and level three aimed at the very sporty. 

I’d say the three levels are judged pretty well, and even if you are active the level three goal will test you – as I write this I’m only at 82% of the goal today despite running 10K and taking around 10,000 steps already.

Polar’s sleep tracking has been among the best available from watches in recent years, and it only gets better with the Ignite 3. There is a lot of detail on your night’s rest broken down into six strands that cover things like length, continuity and depths, and the new SleepWise feature shows the boost you’ll get from your sleep throughout the day.

This shows your predicted alertness graphed over time and is tied to your body’s circadian rhythms, so you tend to get a long boost throughout the morning, a dip at lunch and another boost in the afternoon before alertness drops throughout the evening. You also are given a “Sleep Gate”, a suggested 30-minute window when you should aim to fall asleep that day.

It’s interesting stuff, though at the moment you see SleepWise only in the app, and it would be more useful to see your boost ratings on the watch. I’d also say that it’s a feature that might dip in usefulness over time, because the times when you’re more alert become pretty predictable. It’s handy to see your body rhythms graphed out so clearly, though, and the suggested Sleep Gate is also a good prompt to go to bed at the right time to get enough rest.

Sports Tracking

Although the Polar Ignite 3 is billed more as an activity tracker, it still offers sports tracking for more than 100 sports plus Polar’s cardio load training analysis. It’s also the first Polar watch to have dual-band GPS tracking, which is a little odd since this is a feature you’d expect to arrive on one of the company’s sportier watches like the Vantage or Grit ranges.

Dual-band GPS should mean more accurate distance and pace tracking during outdoor activities. However, this has not always proved the case when I’ve tested watches with it. Garmin, Apple and Amazfit’s dual-band GPS watches have been more accurate than traditional GPS devices, but this has not been the case for Coros and Huawei watches with it.

The Polar Ignite 3 is the least accurate dual-band GPS watch I have come across, and it’s less accurate than most single-band GPS watches too. On most runs it came up short compared with other watches, and on the GPS tracks it produced it’s easy to see why – the Ignite cuts corners and weaves around dramatically, straying far from the path I was actually running.

I probably spend too much of my life looking at GPS graphs, but I think the inaccuracy here will be noticeable to any keen runners and cyclists, and it undermines the Ignite 3 for anything more than casual sports tracking.

It’s also not possible to have the screen always-on during activities, and the raise-to-wake feature is not that reliable, so I often had to lift my wrist a couple of times or press the button to see my stats on the move. When on, the screen is nice and bright in all conditions though.

One little feature I do like is that you can slap the screen to take a lap during activities, which is a neat way to get around the fact there is only one button on the watch. The slap worked reliably well for me in recording a lap, though it does look a bit odd when you’re jogging around busy streets.

Unlike the GPS accuracy, the heart rate tracking on the Ignite 3 was mostly very accurate when compared with a chest strap during runs, strength sessions and yoga. It still had the odd hiccup, however, and if you were planning on using the training load analysis on the watch I would be tempted to pair a chest strap to get the best results. Our selection of the best heart rate monitors will bring you up to speed on your options.

Battery Life

Given that the Ignite 3 has a bright AMOLED display and a small case, I expected the battery life to take a hit, but even so I was disappointed by how long it lasted when the screen was set to always-on. I had to charge it every day and a half, even more frequently than the Apple Watch Ultra I was using at the same time. I ended up abandoning the always-on screen feature, and even then I found it only lasted three to four days on a charge, not the five days Polar claims.

Polar lists the GPS battery life as 30 hours, with an option to extend it to 100 hours in a power-saving training mode. Based on my testing the watch would drain at a rate that would see it last more like 20-25 hours when tracking runs using the GPS.

Smart Features

Despite the smartwatch-style screen, the Ignite 3 doesn’t have a lot of smart features to call on. You do get notifications from your phone and a weather forecast, and you can also control music playback on a connected phone, but there’s no app store to call on or music storage, which you can get on smartwatches like the Garmin Venu 2 or Venu 2 Sq.

During activities you can also set up a “back to start” feature to help guide you home, but there isn’t any kind of more detailed navigation available on the watch, which you do get on Polar’s Pacer Pro and Vantage watches.

Is The Polar Ignite 3 Worth It?

The Polar Ignite 3 is a frustrating watch, both in the small annoyances that constantly crop up when using it and in how close it is to being a really great watch. Although the Garmin Venu 2 and Garmin Venu 2 Plus watches are more expensive on RRP, they are often in sales for around the Ignite 3’s price and despite being older they offer a better user experience. The software runs smoothly, the screens are just as impressive (and the battery life is longer with always-on activated), you get music storage, and the GPS tracking is more reliable too.

If you’re looking for good sports tracking in particular then I would definitely look elsewhere, either at one of the Garmin Forerunner range, Polar’s Pacer and Pacer Pro watches, or the Coros Pace 2.

The Fitbit Sense 2 is another option to consider at this price: it’s similar to the Ignite 3 in having great activity and sleep tracking and poor sports tracking. I do prefer the look of the Ignite 3, and it’s a better sports tracker despite the GPS troubles I had, while the Fitbit Sense 2 has more smart features – though the Google Pixel watch would be a better pick if that’s what you’re after from the Fitbit platform.

Polar Ignite 3 Titanium

In June 2023 Polar released a new version of the Ignite 3 with a titanium bezel, which is hardier and even more stylish than the Ignite 3—and a little more expensive too, at $369.95 in the US and £324 in the UK. 

The design is a clear upgrade, though my hope that the changes might result in more accurate GPS tracking has gone unfulfilled. The Ignite 3 Titanium is as poor on that front as the standard Ignite 3.

Two new software features have been introduced with the Ignite 3 Titanium, which have also been rolled back to the Ignite 3. The first is skin temperature monitoring: which the watch measures at night, letting you know in the morning if your temperature has deviated from your baseline.

I saw no notable deviations during my testing of the Ignite 3 Titanium, but skin temperature can be a useful indicator, and sometimes predictor, of illness. If you see a big increase from your norm, you can perhaps expect to feel ill soon (though it’s likely you will already and the rise is just extra data on the state of your body).

The main use of skin temperature is for women to track their health, since it can inform them where in the menstrual cycle they are. Polar doesn’t yet provide these features beyond the skin temperature one, though I expect women’s health tracking to become a more substantial aspect of Polar devices in the future.

The other new addition to the watch is a work-rest guide, which is useful during workouts to optimize your recovery time. This can be used with any sports profile, though Polar automatically adds it to various strength workouts, like HIIT and strength training.

When you activate the work-rest guide in a workout it shows a graph of your heart rate, telling you when to start working, recording your highest heart rate during a set, then tracking your rest and telling you to work again when a target recovery heart rate is reached.

It’s an interesting idea, though you can’t customize the work-rest guide, and Polar suggests it’s mainly suitable for strength training where you’re trying to increase endurance and mass. It’s apparently not suitable for building power or explosive strength, though it can work for interval running where you work at a moderate intensity and then recover at an easy pace.

In its current form the main benefit of the work-rest guide is ensuring you recover enough between sets during strength workouts, and don’t then prolong your recovery longer than you need to. It’s smarter than just using set times for this, though you will need an external heart rate monitor linked to the watch so it can use accurate heart rate data, since the Ignite 3 and Ignite 3 Titanium are prone to errors on this front.

Hopefully, the work-rest guide will develop so you can customize it. You can create phased workouts on the watch with heart rate targets already, but having a timer set up to buzz at certain heart rates to guide recovery time would be useful.

The first two versions of the Polar Ignite were attractive fitness watches that offered a lot of insight into your sleep and everyday activity, as well as being solid sports trackers, all at an entry-level price.

Polar has built on that foundation with the Ignite 3, which is more expensive but should appeal to more people with its more accurate sports tracking, a more impressive screen and overall design, and even more detailed sleep insights. 

1. The Polar Ignite 3 Has A Proper AMOLED Screen

The LCD screen on the Ignite 1 and 2 was OK, but the 1.28in  (32.5mm) AMOLED display on the Ignite 3 is a considerable step up in how bright and colourful it is. The Ignite 3 is also powered by a faster processor so we’re also hoping the touchscreen will be more responsive than on the old Ignites.

2. SleepWise Will Tell You How Alert You’re Going To Be That Day

Polar has always been at the forefront of sleep tracking with its wearables, offering more insight and actionable advice than others, and the new SleepWise feature takes that even further. 

SleepWise analyses factors like the amount, quality and timing of your sleep, and your sleep-wake cycle, to provide suggestions about how alert you are likely to be throughout the day and the best time to wind down and go to sleep that night.

3. It Offers Dual-Band GPS Tracking

This is a surprise inclusion on the Ignite 3, since dual-band tracking is the kind of feature you’d expect on sports watches such as those in Polar’s Vantage range. At its best, we’ve found dual-band GPS produces the most accurate distance and pace tracking you can get for outdoor activities.

4. It Has Widgets

You can customise the widgets on the watch face of the Polar Ignite 3, which act as shortcuts to information such as the weather, your heart rate data and activity levels. This is hardly a new feature for sports watches, but it’s a way to make the Ignite 3 more enjoyable to use each day.

5. The Battery Life Is Still OK!

All the changes made to the Ignite 3 sounded very power-hungry to us, so we were pleased to see the battery life on the watch is still pretty good. The Ignite 3 will last up to five days on a charge and offers 30 hours of GPS tracking, though we suspect that second number will be lower if using the dual-band GPS. 

Polar Ignite 3: Price And Availability

The Polar Ignite 3 is available from today and costs $329.95 from Polar US and £289 Polar UK. That’s a big rise on the $229.95/£199.50 price of the Ignite 2, but the watch has had a real overhaul.

When most watches launch there is great fanfare about the new features they have, but the most appealing aspect of the Pacer Pro is that it sticks to the Polar blueprint: it offers all the key features you’ll find on the top-of-the-range Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro, while reducing the size and price of the device.

Polar may have inadvertently reduced the appeal of its best running watches considerably as a result, but for consumers it’s great news. The Pacer Pro is a feature-packed multisport watch for £259 and provides competition to the likes of the Coros Pace 2 and Garmin Forerunner 245.

Polar Pacer Pro Review: Price And Availability

The Polar Pacer Pro launched on 13th April 2022 and is available for £259. On the same day Polar announced the cheaper Pacer watch, which costs £169.50 and starts shipping in May. The Pacer Pro comes in considerably cheaper than Polar’s top devices – the Grit X Pro and Vantage V2, which are £429 – and essentially kills off the Vantage M2 by offering more features and a better design for the same price.

Design

The Pacer Pro looks like a sleeker, lighter version of the Vantage V2. It weighs 41g with the wristband and sits snugly and comfortably against the wrist. It has a MIP (memory-in-pixel) reflective colour display, which is brighter than the screens on other Polar sports watches, though still looks dull in comparison with an AMOLED display.

However, it is the thick black ring that runs around the outside of the screen that is the bigger problem, in that it makes the Pacer Pro look outdated. It’s not a device that’s a pleasure to interact with throughout the day, with limited customisation options and an uninspiring look. The Pacer Pro has an aluminium bezel, the chief design upgrade on the all-plastic Pacer.

The Pacer Pro doesn’t have a touchscreen like Polar’s pricier watches, though this is not a big loss given that I’ve always found Polar’s touchscreens to be laggy. The Pacer Pro has five buttons that you use to easily navigate its menus, while a faster processor means there is little to no lag when moving through them.

Polar says it has changed the antenna design on the Pacer Pro to improve GPS accuracy, and the watch can call on two satellite systems at once, though it doesn’t offer all the satellite-system tracking or dual-band GPS that you get on Garmin and Coros’s top watches.

The watch has a barometric altimeter, another significant upgrade on the Pacer, and a redesigned Precision Prime heart rate sensor with two extra LEDs to improve accuracy. The heart rate sensor also has no bumps so the watch can sit more snugly against the wrist. It is waterproof to 50m and compatible with Polar’s quick-change SHFT bands.

Sports Tracking

Although Polar is primarily marketing the Pacer Pro at runners, it is a full multisport watch with triathlon and open-water swimming modes. That’s important, because the Garmin Forerunner 245 is not a triathlon watch, and it’s a major plus for the Pacer Pro in that battle.

There are customisable sports modes for many activities on the Pacer Pro, though one thing to note is that its Track and Field mode is not like the track-running modes on Garmin and Coros watches, which will recognise and snap to a track so you get more accurate distance data. The Pacer Pro track mode is just another running mode so you can set up different data fields to your main running mode if you like.

It’s possible to create structured workouts for different sports and your workouts feed into Polar’s Training Load Pro analysis, which judges the load you’re placing on your cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems to help you train productively without overdoing it.

There is a lot of detail provided on your training in the Polar Flow app and on the website, while the watch makes the key information clear but avoids overloading you with stats. It works well for obsessives and casual users, and I was happy to glance at my training status on the watch occasionally and only dive in for more detail if the analysis deemed I was doing something wrong.

The Pacer Pro also has fitness tests for running, cycling and – in a new addition to Polar’s range – walking. You have to walk briskly for 15 minutes and raise your heart rate to 65% of your max to get a result, but I found it impossible to get my heart rate high enough without running, and running is forbidden in the walking test. It could be simply that this is a test aimed at beginners, though, and regular runners like myself should use the running test instead, though that has always failed for me since it relies on GPS tracking to monitor your pace and this hasn’t proved accurate enough to get a result.

You do get ongoing indications of your fitness without doing the tests, such as the Running Index rating and predicted race times, which are wildly optimistic for me – suggesting I can run a 1hr 5min half marathon is flattering but useless when it comes to gauging a target time. You can also get a VO2 max estimate through the basic fitness test, which involves lying down and relaxing for a few minutes.

GPS And HR Accuracy

For all the talk of GPS and HR accuracy improvements on the Pacer Pro, I saw no significant upgrades in practice when compared with Polar’s other watches during the 300km-plus of running and cycling I did with it. The GPS accuracy was fine, but less impressive than what you get from dual-band devices like Garmin’s Epix 2 and Fenix 7, which are admittedly a lot more expensive.

During runs in particular the Pacer Pro generally came up slightly short compared with the Epix 2, but it was accurate enough overall. It often logged me on the wrong side of the road and cut the odd corner, but the results were on par with similarly priced watches like the Forerunner 245, and you can use it to pace runs pretty reliably.

The heart rate tracking was also in line with most sports watches, in that it was good for the most part, especially on steady runs, but still had enough disastrous days to merit linking up a chest strap to provide accurate data for workouts and to feed into Polar’s training analysis. 

Compared with the readings of a chest strap, the Pacer Pro would lag behind on sharp intervals; on harder, faster runs it sometimes logged too low a heart rate for long spells. I did a 5K race with the watch and while it started off tracking well it indicated that my heart rate suddenly dropped in the latter part of the race, when I can assure you it did not.

Activity And Sleep Tracking

You can set an activity goal on the Pacer Pro and it will log your steps and calories burned each day. The activity goals can be fierce: I have it set at the most advanced level of three and so far today I’m only at 75%, despite a morning walk and a 10K run. 

As always with Polar, the sleep tracking is among the best you’ll find on a wearable. The analysis is detailed without being overwhelming, and you get a snapshot on the watch of your Nightly Charge that covers both your sleep and how your autonomic nervous system recovered overnight (based on things like your heart rate variability). 

The accuracy of the tracking is not infallible but the trends do give useful insight into your recovery, and in general the Pacer Pro tended to agree with the Oura ring, which I rate as more accurate than any other sleep tracker I’ve tried, when rating my overall night’s rest as good or bad.

Based on your Nightly Recharge rating Polar also suggests daily workouts based on your readiness to train. There is no doubt these workouts will get you fitter in a progressive and balanced way, and if you’re inexperienced they are a great guide to follow.

Battery Life

Polar lists the battery life of the Pacer Pro at 35 hours of GPS or seven days of general use, and there is a power-saving mode that can track training for up to 100 hours. I tended to get about five days of use out of the watch, running almost daily.

This is less than you’ll get with most sports watches, which usually last a week at least. Polar’s devices do offer more in terms of sleep tracking and I think this must be why they drain quickly outside of training. The GPS battery life of the Pacer Pro is good and will last 30-35 hours based on the drain I saw during runs, but between training sessions it burns battery faster than a Garmin or Coros watch.

Smart Features And Navigation

There is no music storage on the Pacer Pro, though you can control playback on your phone. It offers weather forecasts and will display notifications, though this will contribute to faster battery drain. There’s also not much watch-face customisation available. It’s all about the sports tracking with the Pacer Pro and those seeking more smarts on a sports watch can find them on Coros and Garmin watches.

You do get breadcrumb trails with turn-by-turn navigation, which is as good as you’ll get on anything in this price range, even if it’s harder to follow than the full maps you get on high-end watches. It also has a back-to-start feature that provides a pointer to your start point – so even if lost you can get yourself home.

Is The Polar Pacer Pro Worth It?

If you’re buying a Polar watch in 2022, the Pacer range is the place to go. The cheaper Pacer sacrifices too many key features for my tastes – breadcrumb navigation, the barometric altimeter, running power measurements – so the Pacer Pro may be worth the extra £90, especially since it has a nicer design with the aluminium bezel. Either way, those two watches offer better value than the top-end Polar watches, losing only niche features like orthostatic recovery tracking and an outdoor dashboard that includes a compass. The materials used on the Vantage V2 and Grit X Pro are more attractive, but for me that’s mitigated by the Pacer Pro being slimmer and lighter.

The main competition from outside Polar comes from Coros and Garmin. The Coros Pace 2 costs £180 and is also a full multisport watch, and while Coros’s app and training analysis platform is not as developed and impressive as Polar’s, I found the experience of using the watch better. The Pace 2 lacks breadcrumb navigation, though, so if that’s a valuable feature for you check out the Coros Apex (42mm £269, 46mm £299), which does have it, along with a nicer design.

Sterner competition still comes from the Garmin Forerunner 245, which despite being an older watch is still the best mid-range running watch. Garmin’s user interface is better than Polar’s across the board, and the 245 Music offers music storage on top of the excellent sports tracking. 

I rate the Polar Pacer Pro’s sleep tracking and training analysis as more advanced than that on the Forerunner 245 – especially the sleep tracking; Garmin watches are poor across the board in this area – but unless those are essential features for you the tracking and general experience of using the Forerunner is better.

Polar has launched two new running watches, the Pacer and Pacer Pro, designed to offer the company’s key sports tracking features in smaller, lighter devices than those in the existing Vantage line.

The Polar Pacer Pro is available from today and costs £259, while the Pacer costs £169.50 and is available to pre-order but won’t ship until May. The Pacer Pro is available now in three colours, with a fourth colour launching in May, and the Pacer will come in four colours. 

Both watches are designed for runners, with the Pacer Pro aimed at more advanced users with extra features like running power measurements and breadcrumb navigation including turn-by-turn directions. The Pacer Pro also has a barometer and an aluminium bezel, while the Pacer is all plastic, though both have the same slim, lightweight appearance.

While the Pacer is built for beginners, it still offers all the essentials runners of any level will need, including training plans and structured workouts you can follow from your wrist, training analysis via Polar’s Training Load Pro tool, and tests that you can do while running or walking to gauge your fitness level and get a VO2 max estimate.

Both watches have the same battery life of 35 hours GPS and around a week of general use, but you can extend the battery to 100 hours when training in power-save mode. They also offer basic smart features like music controls for playback on your phone, weather forecasts and notifications.

Polar is also promising faster processing speeds with the watches, and both have the same MIP (memory-in-pixel) reflective colour display, which is not a touchscreen like on other Polar devices. The watches also have a new antenna design that Polar says will increase GPS tracking accuracy.

It will be interesting to see what Polar does with its Vantage line following the launch of the Pacer and Pacer Pro, which offer almost all of Polar’s top features at a lower cost than existing devices. The Vantage M2 costs £259 and the flagship Vantage V2 is £429, and while the latter does have an all-aluminium design and one key extra feature in the shape of Polar’s orthostatic tests to track recovery, the Pacer Pro does seem to offer much better value to keen runners and triathletes, while the Pacer undercuts all the serious sports watches in Polar’s range.

That’s only the case if the watches live up to their promise in the real world of course. We have the Polar Pacer Pro in for testing and will publish our first impressions as soon as possible.

The Polar Black Friday sale has launched and there are large discounts available on some of the best Polar sports watches, with 50% off some colors of the Polar Grit X Pro perhaps being the standout deal.

Other enticing deals include 30-50% off the Polar Pacer Pro, which was already good value at its RRP, and 20% off the Polar Ignite 3. If you’re looking for one of the best heart rate monitors rather than a watch, the Polar H10 and Polar Verity Sense are both also on sale.

We’ll be highlighting the best deals available from a range of retailers below, and we’ve also put links to a range of websites that are likely to have Polar devices on sale below, so you can check for discounts.

Quick Links

US deals

• Amazon: deals on Polar devices, with offers update daily
• Polar Outlet: up to 50% off Polar watches and accessories

UK deals

• Amazon: today’s best deals on Polar devices
• Polar Outlet: up to 50% off Polar watches and HRMs
• Chain Reaction Cycles: up to 60% off Polar watches and accessories
• Decathlon: up to 32% off Polar devices
• Wiggle: deals on Polar watches, heart rate straps, and accessories

US Black Friday Polar Deals: Editor Picks

UK Black Friday Polar Deals: Editor Picks

Black Friday FAQs

The original Grit X was a great multisport watch that offered most of Polar’s sports tracking features in a more outdoorsy design than the Vantage range. However, Polar did leave a few features off the Grit X, forcing you to choose between the design of the Grit X and the extra functionality available on the Vantage V2. This included running and cycling fitness tests and Recovery Pro, a way to help you gauge how tired your body is each day.

That’s no longer a choice you need to make, because the Grit X Pro gets all the features of the V2 and even brings a few that are new to Polar’s range, putting it firmly among the best fitness trackers. The Pro also has an upgraded design, with a more durable Sapphire glass screen and compass etching on the bezel. If you opt for the Grit X Pro Titan you’ll also get a lighter titanium case.

The result is the best Polar watch to date, one laden with useful features to help you train smarter and recover faster. The Grit X Pro is also smarter than past Polar efforts, with music controls, weather forecasts and outdoorsy widgets that show your altitude along with the hours of daylight where you are.

It’s a great all-round watch but still falls short of the extensive features available on Garmin and Coros’s top devices, which offer full maps and music storage. With Garmin’s Fenix range in particular you’ll get far more impressive navigation features, and both Garmin and Coros offer more in the way of battery life, with only seven days at best from the Grit X Pro.

Should You Buy Something Else?

While I rate the Grit X Pro as the best option in Polar’s range, partly because at £439 it’s £10 cheaper than the Vantage V2, there is a case for the other watches available. The original Grit X is considerably cheaper at £379 and Polar is still supporting it with new updates, so it will be getting most of the new features on the Grit X Pro and Vantage V2. You still won’t get the running, cycling and recovery tests on the pricier watches, or Recovery Pro, and some of the navigation features like the elevation profile of your route are also restricted to the Pro and V2, but the Grit X is still laden with great features, especially considering the £70 saving.

You might also prefer the sleeker design of the Vantage V2, which is made from a lighter aluminium and weighs 52g compared with 79g for the stainless steel Grit X Pro. Despite the Grit X Pro’s more attractive design and increased durability, I also found the Grit X more comfortable to wear all the time.

Outside Polar’s range, the Garmin Fenix 6 Pro remains the top dog in the world of sports watches, with fantastic tracking and training analysis, full maps, clever routing features and useful smarts like NFC payments and music storage. The Coros Vertix 2 also offers more features than the Grit X Pro, with music storage and full maps, though these features are basic compared with what you get on the Fenix. The Vertix 2’s other stand-out feature is its huge battery life: the watch generally lasts me a month on a single charge, rather than the four or five days I tend to get from the Polar.

At £600, both the Vertix 2 and the Fenix 6 Pro cost far more than the Grit X Pro, though you can generally find the Fenix for a lot less than that since it is an older watch. If you can get it for a similar price or even a little more than the Grit X Pro, the Fenix 6 Pro is what I’d spend my money on. The Grit X Pro does, however, offer more accurate sleep and recovery insights than any Garmin.

Design

The Polar Grit X Pro is heavier and hardier than the original Grit X. Like its predecessor it has a stainless steel case with a diamond-like carbon coating on the black version, but the screen is now made from Sapphire glass to be more robust than the Gorilla glass on the Grit X.

It’s a fairly chunky watch but doesn’t feel huge on the wrist, and overall I’d say the Grit X Pro is an attractive device, with the new compass etching on the outer bezel adding to its appeal.

However, the Grit X Pro still has the thick black bezel around the screen you find on most Polar watches. As well as making the watch look a little dated, it surrounds a display that I’d say is just OK. It’s not particularly bright when inside or outdoors, and sometimes I had to strain to see my stats during runs and cycles.

There’s a touchscreen for navigating around the watch, but I found it laggy and it was much easier to use the five buttons instead. It’s a feature Polar never seems to get right, and to be honest, I don’t know why it has them since the buttons are much better. Even with the buttons, there is some lag, with the watch often taking a beat to respond to my presses – often I would press buttons twice.

On the back of the watch is Polar’s Precision Prime optical heart rate sensor, and you can pair the Grit X Pro to external sensors including chest straps via Bluetooth, but ANT+ is not supported. There’s also a barometric altimeter and a compass, and it can use GPS, GLONASS, Galileo & QZSS satellite systems to pinpoint your location during outdoor activities. The watch is also waterproof to 100m.

Sports Tracking

The Polar Grit X Pro is a full triathlon watch with more customisable watch modes that you can shake a stick at. You can display four stats on each of your data screens within the different sports profiles, and set up structured workouts to follow from your wrist.

All the data from your activities is fed into Polar’s training load analysis, which will tell you if your workload is productive or if you’re overreaching. Other insights into your fitness and recovery come from the tests available, which include running and cycling fitness tests, and a leg recovery test where you jump on the spot three times to gauge your muscle fatigue.

The accuracy of the Grit X Pro has broadly impressed me over several weeks of tracking my training and performing in line with most GPS watches I’ve tested. The GPS accuracy has been largely reliable on runs and cycles, and although my tracks have been wonky at times, the overall readings were never wildly wrong and can be used for pacing.

The heart rate accuracy was better than I’ve experienced with the Polar Precision Prime sensor in the past. With the original Grit X and Vantage V2 I found that it was wrong more often than not. That’s been reversed with the Grit X Pro, which generally provides a reading that is in line with that of a chest strap monitor. I’d still definitely pair a chest strap for more accurate results, especially if you’re going to use the training and recovery analysis on the watch to guide you. The optical tracking did throw up the odd completely incorrect reading during a run and that can skew your overall stats.

Like other Polar watches, it takes a while for the Grit X Pro to get to know you, and it’s worth mostly disregarding the Training Pro advice for a month or so. Once your baselines are set with the watch the training load advice can be genuinely useful, especially for overtraining.

I have a few minor gripes with Grit X Pro, all of which are consistent with problems I’ve seen in other Polar watches. Unlike Garmin and Coros watches it limits you to only four stats per data screen, which is annoying – although given the relatively dull display on the Grit X Pro that might be for the best. I also find that the structured workouts are trickier to use than on other watches, being harder to set up, and then harder to follow on the watch unless you are purely using heart rate to guide your sessions.

Overall, however, the sports tracking on the Grit X Pro is excellent and will satisfy the needs of the most obsessive athletes while still easy to use and helpful to beginners.

Navigation

Polar is yet to introduce full maps to any of its watches, but the Grit X Pro does offer breadcrumb trails with turn-by-turn directions. You can create routes on Komoot that are imported to your watch automatically or you can upload routes manually to the Polar Flow website. You get an elevation profile of your route plus a line and pointer on the watch, and you can open up a menu on the route page to bring up options like reverse route, which will direct you back to the start of your activity via the planned route.

There’s the ability to see a beeline back to your starting point, as well as a “Track back” option, which will guide you home via the route you actually took, instead of the original planned route. The watch will also allow you to change to another route mid-activity.

On general runs without a route set up you also get the back-to-start directions, which I find particularly useful. I often can’t be bothered to set up a precise route when exploring a place but want safe directions home once I’m good and lost.

The routing features on the Grit X Pro aren’t as impressive as those on Garmin devices with maps. The Fenix 6 Pro series and Forerunner 945 both let you create routes on the fly and have easily followable context maps. However, they do the job of helping you to get from A to B in new places reliably. The addition of an elevation profile to the route information is also handy when running in particularly hilly places.

Sleep Tracking

Sleep tracking is an area where Polar has always outshone its main sports watch rivals, and that remains the case with the Grit X Pro, which offers the same detailed sleep analysis as all Polar’s devices.

After taking a few nights to set your baselines the Grit X Pro will track your sleep and give you an overall sleep score out of 100 each day, based on several factors like duration, continuity and time in REM or deep sleep. You are also given a Nightly Recharge rating based on this sleep score and information on how your autonomic nervous system (ANS) has recovered overnight. This data feeds into the Fitspark feature that recommends workouts for that day based on how well recovered you are.

It’s a comprehensive approach to your sleep and recovery tracking and while there were some nights where the sleep tracking failed for me, when it does track it seems accurate. I also found it matched up well with the results I was getting from an Oura Ring and a Fitbit Charge 5, both of which I consider very good sleep trackers.

Battery Life

The Grit X Pro has 40 hours of GPS tracking and 100 hours in its power-saving mode, both of which are comparable to most sports watches aside from Garmin Enduro, which offers over 80 hours of GPS tracking, and the Vertix 2, which can give you up to 140 hours. However, like other Polar watches, the Grit X Pro drains far more quickly between activities than watches from rival brands, and I found it needed charging every five days or so when running every day.

This may be partly down to the power it draws at night for its impressive sleep tracking, but it’s still a weakness for Polar in general that you need to charge its watches weekly when both Garmin and Coros now offer devices that last more than a month.

Smart Features

Slowly but surely Polar is starting to add more smart features to its watches, but the Grit X Pro is still a bit short on this front. You can now control your music using the watch, but there is no storage available, which you do get with many Garmins and the Coros Vertix 2.

It does show the weather forecast, sunrise and sunset times, and you also get quick access to your altitude and the compass by scrolling through your “dashboard”, which is essentially the array of watch faces.

There are no NFC payments or even a basic app store like Garmin’s Connect IQ. Personally, I don’t really miss these features or even music storage, but many people will and it is one area where Polar continues to cede ground to other sports watches, let alone actual smart watches.

There’s stiff competition for the hearts and minds of amateur endurance athletes who want a device that offers more than a beginner GPS watch but don’t want to splash out £400-plus on a high-end watch. With the new Vantage M2, priced at £269, Polar aims to offer a genuine rival to the Garmin Forerunner 245 and Coros Apex.

The M2 is a multisport watch that tracks pretty much every sport going, including triathlon and open-water swimming, along with heart rate monitoring, training load analysis and Polar’s impressive sleep tracking and daily workout suggestions.

The most exciting new feature to arrive on the watch is Fuelwise. It’s present on Polar’s high-end devices, the Vantage V2 and Grit X, and we named it our favourite new feature of 2020 in the Coach Fitness Tracker Awards. With Fuelwise you can set up a nutrition plan for training sessions that last longer than 90 minutes and get reminders when to consume carbohydrates. These reminders will be adjusted to how hard you’re working, based on your heart rate, so you refuel when you actually need it.

Fuelwise also gives you a breakdown of the fuel used in each workout, based on percentage of calories from carbs, protein and fat. When working in higher heart rate zones you’ll be using mostly carbs, whereas fat is your primary source of fuel when exercising at a lower intensity. Each week you also get a breakdown of the nutrients you used during training.

This is particularly useful for calculating your nutrition needs on longer runs and cycles, matching it more closely to what your body really requires. While the feature is most useful for ultramarathon runners, Ironman triathletes and long-distance cyclists, it could be invaluable for marathon runners as well. It’s a feature that sets Polar devices apart – there’s no equivalent offered by other brands – so it’s great to see it on the mid-range M2.

Along with Fuelwise, other features that have trickled down to the M2 from Polar’s more expensive watches include weather forecasts and music controls. There’s also watch face customisation, including the useful training load watch face (pictured, below), which breaks down your weekly training into heart rate zones. This lets you see at a glance if you have achieved a well-balanced range of sessions – too much time spent in the higher yellow and red zones and not enough in the easy blue and green is a recipe for burn-out or injury.

The Vantage M2 also has customisable workouts and although it doesn’t have breadcrumb navigation, a feature you do get on the Forerunner 245 and Coros Apex, it offers a back-to-start pointer during activities so you can at least head in the direction of home if you get lost on a run or cycle.

I’ve used the M2 to track a range of workouts and it’s mostly performed well. The accuracy of the GPS when tracking outdoor running and cycling passes muster when tested against other watches and on a wheel-measured loop. The M2, like Polar’s other watches, tends to be slightly generous on distance covered, and the pace reading will jump around if you take a sharp turn while running, but overall its performance was in line with other watches.

The heart rate monitoring, however, was nowhere near accurate enough to be useful. I didn’t have one run where the M2 tracked my heart rate accurately when compared with the reading from a Garmin HRM-Pro chest strap. The M2 kept picking up phantom spikes in my heart rate, and around those spikes it would read too low for long stretches. When doing other types of exercise, like strength workouts and indoor cycling sessions, it was better, but even then it would lag behind spikes in my heart rate or miss them completely when compared with the chest strap.

This is to be expected on watches with optical heart rate sensors, which always struggle to track accurately, and I’ve always had problems with Polar devices. It can be resolved by purchasing a chest strap and pairing it with the M2. It’s well worth budgeting for this extra expense to get the most from the M2, because that heart rate information is crucial to Fuelwise and the training load analysis. These are the two features that set the M2 apart in its price bracket.

The cardio load analysis on the M2 gives an overall rating of your training, telling you whether it’s productive, or if you’re overreaching, maintaining your fitness or de-training owing to a lack of activity. You also get a strain score to see how much stress you’re placing on your body, and a tolerance score that estimates what you can handle. Over time you want to see that tolerance rise, and to balance the amount of strain you place on yourself against it.

There’s help from the M2 on this front in the form of suggested workouts each day. These use Polar’s impressive sleep analysis to take into account your recovery overnight. I found that the sleep tracking wasn’t of the standard of the Oura ring, which is the most accurate device I’ve come across for sleep tracking, and the M2 sometimes failed to log my sleep at all or overestimated my time asleep, tending to extend it too far in the morning.

However, when it did log my sleep, the M2 was accurate enough to make its sleep analysis and subsequent recommendations worth considering. After a poor night’s sleep you’ll generally be advised to scale back your exercise, and on days when you’re well rested you’ll get harder workout recommendations.

Most of this is displayed on the watch with at-a-glance ratings and advice, but more detail on your sleep and cardio load is in the Polar Flow app. This app has become more user-friendly of late and while it still takes a few days to get used to it and understand where everything is, it generally provides a good experience. There are a few features that are still only available on the Polar Flow website, like extra detail on your workouts or setting up a particularly complicated structured training session to follow, but the app provides a more complete experience than it has in the past.

The M2 offers 40 hours of GPS battery life, which is impressive, but like other Polar models it seems to drain faster when not training than watches from Garmin and Coros do. During a one-hour run it dropped by only two percentage points, but it drained at a rate of more than ten points a day outside of my training. The battery level also has a habit of dropping in fits and starts, going hours without changing much then suddenly losing 5% – far from ideal if you’re trying to judge how much more use you can get out of it before charging it. After several battery cycles the M2 is consistently lasting five to seven days on a charge, and if you’re not running outside every day you’ll get seven reliably.

See related

• The Best Fitness Trackers Of 2021
• The Best Running Watches Of 2021
• The Best Heart Rate Monitors Of 2021

The M2 isn’t an attractive watch in my opinion, especially compared with a smartwatch, but the second generation comes in a greater range of colours including the gold champagne option I’m using. There are also leather (£44.50), woven (£36) and solid silicone (£26.50) straps so you can swap out the sporty perforated silicone strap the M2 ships with.

The M2 is a very strong addition to the mid-range bracket of sports watches. The Garmin Forerunner 245 offers breadcrumb navigation and (on the £300 version of the watch) music, either your own or Spotify or Amazon Music services; the Coros Apex offers superior battery life as well as breadcrumb navigation. There is also the excellent Coros Pace 2 for £180, which is a tremendous tracker with a beefy battery life.

The M2 stands out from its competition thanks to the Fuelwise feature and the more in-depth recovery and training analysis, along with multisport and open-water swimming tracking, which the Forerunner 245 lacks.

I think the Garmin offers a slightly better user experience: I prefer its look and feel on the wrist, and the buttons are more responsive. However, the Vantage M2 is just as good in all the key tracking areas, and if you’d rather have Fuelwise than breadcrumb navigation, it’s the device for you.

Buy from Polar | £269

The V2 is a great running watch but at £450 it’s something of a tough sell, because of both the watches available for less and the features available for a little more. The Polar Grit X is £70 cheaper and has almost all the same features as the V2, with the main difference being the V2’s new fitness tests. I prefer the design of the V2, but some might prefer the chunkier, outdoorsy look of the Grit X.

Even sterner competition comes from Garmin. The Forerunner 945 has an RRP of £519.99 but is often discounted and offers some useful upgrades on the V2 like full colour maps, NFC payments and music storage. Although the GPS battery life is listed at 36 hours to the V2’s 40, with real-world use the 945 comfortably lasts a week, which is longer than the V2.

Then there is the Forerunner 745, which is the same price as the V2 and, like the 945, offers some smart features such as music storage and NFC payments. On paper the 745 has much worse battery life than the V2, but in practice it lasted longer for me during a typical training week. All the same the V2 would be a better pick for one-off long runs or cycles because the 745 offers only 16 hours of GPS battery life. The Garmins also provide impressive levels of training insight, including suggested workouts based on your ability and training load, and I still rate the overall experience as more enjoyable and easier than that of the V2.

If you don’t need the complete suite of training and recovery detail you get from flagship models, you can get excellent watches for a lot less than £449 too, such as the Forerunner 245 (£249.99, or £299.99 with music) or the Coros Apex (£299.99). If you’re just looking for the tracking essentials, the Coros Pace 2 multisport watch is a bargain at £180.

Running With The Polar Vantage V2

Running is my main sport and I log around 80km a week with a range of easy runs, speed and tempo sessions, and a long run. I’ve worn the V2 for a month and my experience with the watch is very positive. It’s accurate, broadly speaking, it’s easy to read when running in daylight, and it provides all the essentials I need plus the detailed Cardio Load training feedback.

It’s not perfect, and I have considerable reservations about the new running fitness test, which failed for me when I attempted it, but there’s no doubt the V2 matches the sports tracking you get from any brand’s best.

The GPS tracking has been accurate. I have occasionally seen a jump in the lap pace for a kilometre split that seems unlikely, but overall it’s matched with my expectations and other trackers I’ve used in tandem. The Polar has a tendency to come up slightly longer for distance covered, and panics when you take a dead or sharp turn that sends your lap pace all over the shop, but it usually rights itself within a few hundred metres.

However, the current pace reading is not accurate enough for the new running performance test. This involves walking and then running at a progressively quicker pace until you max out and can’t keep up with the rising pace anymore (a sub-maximal test is also available, where you reach 85% of your max heart rate then stop). Based on the pace and heart rate at that pace, you’re given a wealth of useful stats like your VO2 max, maximum aerobic pace, and data you can use to personalise your heart rate and power zones.

You are given a little grace when it comes to hitting the target pace shown on the watch – if you’re too fast or slow it will buzz at you and if you get back on track then things can continue as planned, but if you’re off target for too long the test ends. If you’ve reached at least 85% of your max heart rate you’ll get results, but if not, the test will fail and you have to start again.

The first time it failed for me was because I was going too fast in the early stages, when the target pace was really slow. That’s not a big deal and it was my fault. The second time I’d been walking and then running for 20 minutes and the watch simply couldn’t get an accurate fix on my current pace. As I ran faster I could see the reading of current pace jumping around more and more, and at 3min 10sec/km pace, which is my 5K pace, the jumps were so large – both above and below that target – that the watch ended the test and I didn’t get a result.

This was infuriating. Having committed the time to find a nice clear, straight bit of road for the test, and setting aside a run from my training programme to do it, I was annoyed enough to not bother again. Anyone who has used GPS watches will know that current pace is rarely an accurate metric, and to base the test on this is asking for trouble, especially at high paces.

The heart rate accuracy was also unimpressive. The V2 often failed to recognise when I pushed beyond zones two and three, returning quite a low reading instead. I would strongly advise using a chest strap with the watch, because that heart rate data feeds into the many training and recovery advice features, so you want it to be as accurate as possible.

Your training load is broken down on the watch and in the Polar Flow app to show the current strain you’re putting your body under and the tolerance you’ve built up. If you put a lot more strain on your body than Polar estimates you can tolerate, you’ll be marked as overreaching and risking injury. If you’re building your fitness you’re marked as productive.

It took a month of running for the V2 to get to grips with my tolerance, with the Polar Flow app, website and the V2 itself disagreeing on whether I was productive or overreaching until then. However, the watch seems to know me well enough now that the advice is more useful when it comes to judging my training load.

You can set up structured workouts to follow on the V2, with targets based on heart rate or speed. This process is quite laborious and I found I had to do it on the Polar Flow website because the workout tool in the app is basic – it wouldn’t allow more than 10 intervals, for example. If you want to set pace targets you also have to use the speed zones you set up for your Polar account, rather than just set a target. If you’re using heart rate the workouts are fine, but I tend to use pace for my workouts and found hitting manual laps was much easier than setting them up. This whole process is far easier on Garmin and Coros devices.

There are also suggested workouts on the V2 each day, including cardio options based on heart rate. The suggestions take into account your fitness and recovery status, informed by the watch’s tracking of your sleep. The workouts are solid but a little basic, and Garmin’s recently-introduced suggested workout feature seems a little smarter to me, with pace targets given and a greater range of suggestions that are closely tailored to the training load measurements the watch has taken.

The V2 also gets the new features introduced on the Grit X that aren’t on the Vantage V, namely FuelWise, Hill Splitter and breadcrumb navigation with turn-by-turn instructions through a partnership with Komoot.

The navigation feature is fine, though no better than what you find on cheaper watches like the Forerunner 245 or Coros Apex, and well short of the full maps you get on Garmin’s flagship Forerunner 945 and Fenix 6 Pro watches. You also can’t create routes in the Polar app and send them to the watch, which you can do with the Garmin Connect app – you have to use the website.

Hill Splitter is a bit of a dud – it automatically records the uphill and downhill parts of your run so you can analyse them later, but mid-run detail is scarce. The tracking often missed hills in my experience, and even when it clocked an incline I rarely found any of the data recorded useful.

FuelWise is great, though. You can set up your nutrition strategy for any exercise session longer than 90 minutes, and the V2 will buzz at you to remind you to take carbs on board depending on how hard you’ve worked. So if the session is easier than expected the reminders will come less frequently, while they’ll come more regularly if you’re really pushing it. If you’ve struggled with sticking to your nutrition strategy when your mind becomes fuzzy in the latter stages of a marathon, this feature could make a world of difference.

Despite some wrinkles the V2 is a watch I’d happily use as a very keen runner, and if you’re really taken with Polar’s approach to training load management and workouts based on heart rate or power, then it’s as good as anything out there. I personally find Garmin’s watches easier to use and more in line with my preferences, especially when it comes to structured workouts. The V2 is also missing some of the features on the most expensive Garmins, like the full maps on the Forerunner 945 and Fenix 6 Pro, and the music storage and streaming on those watches as well as the 745 and 245.

Sports Tracking With The Polar Vantage V2

The V2 is a full triathlon watch that offers a wide variety of sports modes. These will all feed into your overall training load measurements, and the Fitspark feature recommends both strength and supportive mobility and stretching sessions alongside cardio workouts each day.

Like runners, cyclists get a fitness test. In this case it’s a functional threshold power test that you can choose to do over 20, 30, 40 or 60 minutes and requires an external power meter. You can connect this only over Bluetooth, since the V2 doesn’t include ANT+ connectivity.

The other new test on the watch is a leg recovery test, where you perform three standing jumps and the watch measures how high you get and estimates how well recovered your leg muscles are. Of the new tests this is the most useful. It’s quick and easy to do, and providing you jump with equal gusto each time, it gives a fairly reliable indication of your recovery – which is all in stark contrast to the tricky, time-consuming and less reliable cycling and running tests.

I haven’t been able to get into the water with the V2 yet, but it offers all the expected stats swimmers need, including SWOLF, automatic stroke recognition and lap tracking in the pool, while you’ll get GPS distance and tracks for open-water swims.

Activity Tracking With The Polar Vantage V2

The V2 will track your steps, calories and active time each day and put them towards an overall activity goal, which is shown in percentage terms on the watch face. The goal can be set to one of three levels, of which one is the lowest and is suited to mostly sedentary people looking to hit a basic level of activity each day. The third level requires a lot of activity to hit the goal, and is suited to people doing a decent amount of reasonably intense exercise each day. For example, I’d hit the goal on days when I ran, but right now it’s at 50% although I’ve done an hour-long walk and taken 12,000 steps in total.

Using The Polar Vantage V2 As A Smartwatch

Unlike Garmin, which has taken steps to make its sports watches smart through the addition of music, NFC payments and an expansion of the (still limited) Connect IQ app store, Polar has done little on this front.

The V2 is the company’s smartest watch ever, in that it has music controls, but this is a very common feature on watches now. It also has weather information and will show your phone’s notifications, but if you’re looking for a sports watch with real smarts, this isn’t it.

Sleep Tracking With The Polar Vantage V2

What it lacks in smarts, the V2 makes up for with its top-notch sleep tracking. The watch provides impressive detail into how your autonomic nervous system (ANS) has recovered overnight, plus stats on sleep length and continuity that lead to advice on how hard you should push yourself the day after.

I found the sleep tracking broadly accurate, although there were a couple of nights when the V2 missed when I actually fell asleep by a couple of hours. You wake up to a rating that says something like “OK” or “compromised”, depending on how well your body has recovered overnight, and can use this to decide how tough your training should be.

If you want more than a one-word description of your night there’s more detail on both your ANS recovery and general sleep stats on the watch, or open the Polar Flow app where a delightful colour-coded graph details how well you’ve slept based on six factors in three categories – time, continuity and depth. These are all rated against your own usual levels, measured over a 28-day period, which I found more relevant than a rating against a population level average.

If that all sounds like too much info, there’s also a simple sleep score out of 100.

Battery Life On The Polar Vantage V2

The V2 offers the same ultra-long battery mode that Polar introduced on the Grit X, which allows you to track an activity for 100 hours using less accurate GPS readings than you get in the full GPS mode, which lasts for 40 hours.

On paper that’s very good, but in reality I found the V2’s battery life disappointing. I had to charge it every four to five days when I was running outside most days. I’m not sure I’d trust it to get to 40 hours in an activity either: when I tested it alongside the Garmin Forerunner 745, which offers only 16 hours of GPS, I still had 30% left on the Garmin after 4½ days while the Polar required charging. It seems that the V2 drains rapidly between training sessions and loses a lot more battery overnight than other sport watches, perhaps because of the sensors used to track your sleep.

Design

I’m a big fan of the design of the V2, which is much lighter and more svelte than the original Vantage, and I prefer the more streamlined look to the chunky, outdoorsy Grit X. While it’s clearly a plastic-strap sports watch, I think it’s smart enough to wear anywhere, and it’s comfortable to have on the wrist 24/7.

Polar has established itself as a favourite among keen runners and triathletes, with a line-up of feature-rich watches that offer precise tracking and detailed training analysis.

That makes the Unite an unusual release. By dropping built-in GPS, Polar seems to be aiming for beginners who are looking for help getting fit and at gym-goers.

So if you’re a dedicated runner the Polar Unite is not the budget watch you should be considering. There are many better options that have built-in GPS, including the Garmin Forerunner 35 and 45, and Polar’s own Ignite. However, if you’re just starting out, the Unite bears serious consideration.

The watch has a simple design that mimics the one-button set-up on the Ignite, but with a plastic case. The colour touchscreen is bright but doesn’t match the vivid displays you’ll get on a similarly-priced smartwatch like the Huawei Watch GT 2e (£159.99, currently reduced to £139.99), although it beats Fitbit’s Charge 4 (£129.99) greyscale screen hands down.

The Unite’s touchscreen is also slow to respond at times, and the watch’s raise-to-wake feature is also sluggish, to the point where I’d prefer to press the button to turn the screen on.

On the underside of the watch is Polar’s Precision Prime heart rate sensor, which underpins most of the best features on the Unite, in particular the detailed sleep tracking and FitSpark workout recommendations.

Those are tied together. The Unite will track how well you recover each night based on your heart rate variability and breathing rate alongside things like your overall time asleep and the number of interruptions you suffered overnight. Based on that info, you’ll be recommended a variety of workouts to do each day.

The workouts are divided into three categories. Cardio sessions can be done via any form of exercise that gets your heart pumping, because the guided workout is entirely based on your heart rate. The Unite will tell you which heart rate zone to be working in, whether you’re running, on an elliptical or just doing hundreds of jumping jacks.

There are also guided strength workouts, with stick person animations to show you how to do each move, and supportive sessions that focus on stretching and core moves. All the suggested workouts are based on how well you’ve slept, so in theory you won’t be told to go and run for two hours if you’ve had a terrible night.

In practice, I did find the Unite was sometimes a little ambitious with its workout recommendations, especially for a watch aimed at beginners. After a night of sleep it rated as “compromised”, my cardio recommendations were a tough 54-minute tempo run or an easy run of over an hour, while the primary strength recommendation was a 51-minute workout. An alternative 30-minute bodyweight workout was the only suggestion that seemed to fit with the poor night’s sleep the Unite had detected.

Of course you can ignore these workouts and do your own – the watch tracks pretty much every type of exercise bar triathlon. For outdoor activities like running and cycling, the Unite will link to your phone’s GPS to add accuracy, or you can rely on the accelerometer in the watch to track your run distance.

The lack of GPS is disappointing. Even if you always run with your phone, as I do, connected GPS is not as accurate as built-in GPS. And even though the Unite is cheaper than other Polars at £134.50, there are many devices for that price or less that have built-in GPS. Both the Watch GT 2e and Fitbit Charge 4 do.

Not having built-in GPS also doesn’t seem to result in better battery life. The Unite’s battery drained by around 20 percentage points an hour when I was running with an always-on screen (I don’t want to press a button or wait for the autowake to get its act together every time I want to glance at my stats). This is well short of the 50 hours Polar suggests the Unite will achieve in training mode with both the heart rate tracking and connected GPS enabled, though I’m sure I could make the battery last longer by not having the screen on.

It’s another sign that the watch is better for gym-goers, because training without connected GPS on doesn’t sap the battery so much. I’d still say you want the screen always-on during workouts, especially when following instructions from the Unite.

See related

• Best Fitness Trackers
• The Best Fitness Smartwatches
• Polar Ignite Review: An Extremely-Smart Budget GPS Watch

The Unite tracks your everyday activity but if you follow your step count closely, be prepared for some unusual numbers. Polar’s step tracking takes into account all your activity and assigns step values to things like indoor cycling, so my count was always inflated well beyond what a Garmin on my other wrist had recorded.

I can see why Polar does this: if step count is your main target each day you want all activities to help you towards it. But there is also a general activity goal on the watch, so Polar could have used the steps tally to just track, well, steps.

The overall activity goal on the Unite can be set to one of three levels, one being the easiest and three being a target that even very active people will find tough to hit every day. There are also inactivity alerts on the watch, but I’ve not had one from it yet despite spending a lot of time sitting at my computer. This is a problem I’ve encountered with other Polar watches too – the inactivity alerts don’t seem to trigger when they should.

A couple of other small annoyances with the Unite are its strap, which is oddly hard to do up tightly without popping it open again, and the charger, which is a cradle with a USB attachment on it. Not adding to the collection of cables everyone has is a good idea on one hand, but this approach also means the charger is small and easy to lose.

The Unite is not without its flaws, but for the price it offers an impressive package for people who want to get fit and aren’t entirely sure how to go about it. There’s no doubt the Unite’s guided training features will get you in shape if you follow them closely, and it’s a fairly attractive watch to wear all the time for activity tracking as well.

If you want all that plus GPS, you can get the Polar Ignite, which is £174.50; those who want a better-looking watch for a similar price should go for the Huawei Watch GT 2e, which has GPS but lacks Polar’s guided workout features. Fitbit’s Charge 4 band has GPS and does offer workouts and training programmes through Fitbit Premium, but that’s an additional monthly subscription which seems a bit much when you’re spending £130.

Polar Unite - Waterproof Fitness Smartwatch with Connected GPS, Sleep Tracking, Daily Workout Guidance, Recovery Measurement - Wrist-Based Heart Rate Monitor

£84.32Buy now

Buy from Polar | £134.50

Should I consider buying something else?

At its RRP of £439 the Vantage V occupies the space between top-end Garmin watches like the Forerunner 945 and Fenix 6 Pro – which are among the best fitness trackers and offer more features and better design – and mid-range watches like the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music and Coros Apex. That’s about right: the Vantage V is more or less a mid-range watch with a couple of extra features, most notably running power.

However, the Vantage is usually available for between £350 and £370, where it offers excellent value – although there’s a good argument for buying a mid-range watch like the Forerunner 245 Music or Coros Apex, which cost £300. Unless you’re  taken with the idea of running power, I’d lean towards the 245 Music myself, and it’s clearly the better choice if you want music on your watch.

One other good option is the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus series. Now the Fenix 6 range has been released, the 5 Plus watches are ripe for deals that will bring them close to the price of the Vantage V. Though the RRP of the watches remains at £599, you could find the 5 Plus for £399 in the Black Friday sales. Any of the watches in the range (the 5S Plus, 5 Plus and 5X Plus) offer considerably more than the Vantage V, with colour maps, superb sports tracking and smart features like music storage.

Polar Vantage V In-Depth

Running With The Polar Vantage V

In my first go-round with the Vantage V I found it desperately lacking when it came to run tracking, with the most egregious error being inaccurate distance tracking. For example, it came up very short when I tracked a parkrun that had two hairpin bends in it, suggesting it isn’t taking GPS readings frequently enough to account for sharp turns. I’ve tried several other watches at that particular parkrun – the Apple Watch 4, Garmin Fenix 5 Plus and Garmin Fenix 6 Pro – without having the same problem.

However, a recent update has fixed this problem and I’ve tested the Vantage multiple times on runs under tree cover and even on the track without noticing any unforgivable GPS discrepancies compared with a Garmin watch paired with a calibrated footpod.

That’s not to say all the problems with the watch have been fixed. Heart rate accuracy is still a crapshoot. The Polar Precision Prime sensor in the watch is meant to be the company’s most accurate optical monitor yet, but I found it often lost my heart rate during runs, dropping by around 20bpm for a couple of minutes or spiking to ridiculously high levels for 30 seconds or so, before returning to the correct reading. During a steady effort this is a mild annoyance, but it’s maddening when trying to base an interval session on heart rate.

I strongly recommend only considering the watch and chest strap sensor package in order to take advantage of the advanced training load and recovery analysis features. These link directly to your effort level during workouts, based on heart rate, so you need accurate readings or they become skewed and largely useless.

Once you’ve used the Vantage V for a week you’ll start getting feedback on your training, in terms of the load placed on your cardiovascular system and your tolerance to that load. You’ll find this in the Polar Flow app and on the website – there’s not a huge amount of info on the watch itself. In the cardio load section you’ll be told if your training is productive in the sense of making you fitter, or if you’re overdoing or underdoing it. The longer you use the watch for and the more (accurate) data it gleans from your training the more useful this cardio load report becomes, and it can be genuinely useful in helping you to avoid risking injury by pushing too hard.

The Polar Vantage V also has another way to measure your effort level – running power. This is the first device to offer a power stat without the need for any extra sensors, and it works. Once you work out how the figures relate to your running, you can use power to pace your training runs and races. The Vantage V can also break down your power by zone, so you can use it in a similar way to heart rate.

But will you? Are runners really going to use it to pace their races instead of, well, pace? It’s a fairly new idea in running and this is the first time it’s been made so easily available, so maybe it will catch on fast if people start producing negative splits in races where power has helped them gauge their effort level perfectly. However, in the year since the Vantage V launched I’ve seen little sign of runners really embracing power, and I barely gave it a second glance after testing it out a few times with the Vantage V.

It’s perhaps a measure that triathletes will take to more easily when running, since power is widely used in cycling, but I’ll confess I’d find it very hard to try to run a PB based on power rather than trying to hit a pace that directly links to the time in question, and for easy efforts I don’t see power being a significant upgrade on just using heart rate to ensure you’re not overdoing it.

The Vantage V’s updates has also brought an intervals mode to the watch, along with structured workouts and breadcrumb navigation. These are essential features for a flagship running watch, especially as you’ll find them in most mid-range and even budget running watches, and they are very useful.

One thing that Polar will not be able to update remotely, unfortunately, is the hardware of the Vantage V. It’s a little clunky to use, with stiff buttons and a fairly dull screen that’s sometimes tricky to see while on the run. I much prefer interacting physically with Garmin’s Forerunner or Fenix, or Coros’s Apex, and it’s one of the Vantage’s biggest failings as a flagship watch you’re expecting to wear at all times and train with most days.

Cycling With The Polar Vantage V

The Polar Vantage V offers cyclists a little less than runners, mainly because a wrist-based cycling power measurement isn’t possible, although you can pair a cycling power meter with the watch if you have one.

The tracking experience is generally the same as running, though interestingly I didn’t have the same heart rate accuracy issues when cycling as I did when on foot. The sample size is smaller – I run more than I ride – but the heart rate readings didn’t drop to an unexpectedly low number, matching up reasonably well with a chest strap’s readings.

Your rides also inform the recovery and training feature. If the heart rate tracker is working for you then these can give a decent picture of the strain your training is putting on your body.

Swimming With The Polar Vantage V

Pool and open-water swimming are both tracked by the Vantage V, which also has dedicated triathlon modes for on- and off-road events. You can set the pool length to one of the usual standards or enter it yourself, although the scale goes all the way up to an improbable 250m but bottoms out at 20m. We suspect you’re more likely to come across a pool shorter than 20m than one longer than 200m, but there you go.

The pool swim tracking on the Polar is excellent. While you can’t display swim-specific stats during your session beyond distance, time and pace, after you finish you get an impressively thorough breakdown of your session including stroke rate per length or minute, your SWOLF score, and the type of stroke you used. I found stroke recognition was accurate even with my imperfect technique. There’s also a breakdown of how long you rested for between lengths or sets of lengths, which is recorded automatically so you don’t have to press the lap button each time, and you can analyse each set in detail including pace (per length or set) and heart rate, although the latter isn’t tremendously accurate in the water as you’d expect.

Using The Polar Vantage V To Track Activity

When you set up your profile on the Vantage V you get to choose between three activity goals. Level 1 is aimed at mostly sedentary office workers; level 2 is for people who spend a lot of the day on their feet; and level 3 is for those who are very keen on their chosen sport.

One thing I particularly liked is that everything you do counts towards the goal – everyday activity stats like steps, calories and active minutes as well as sports tracking. In a similar vein, your everyday activity contributes to your recovery status. If you’re on your feet all day that’s clearly going to affect your recovery time almost as much as a half-hour run at lunch, and Polar does well to take this into account.

In the Polar Flow app you get an attractive circular graph that shows your day colour-coded by how active you were – darker blue means more active. It’s a good representation of your day, and clearly highlights if you’ve done one big run or ride then sat still for the rest of the time, which isn’t the smartest way to stay active. There are also inactivity alerts, though these seem pretty generous in my experience. I found I could sit for long periods without triggering any.

The level 3 target is sufficiently difficult to hit that it can motivate very active people. I run almost every day and log 90-100km a week, but my runs alone tended to not be enough to hit 100% of my activity goal each day, and I had to also stay active throughout the rest of the day. That said, I – like most keen amateurs – probably don’t care all that much about the activity goal on a watch; what matters to me is completing my planned training that day, even if that means putting my feet up because it’s a rest day.

The Vantage V doesn’t do anything especially novel with its everyday activity tracking, but it does make itself useful enough that you’ll be keen to dive into the stats between your training sessions.

Sleep Tracking With The Polar Vantage V

One area where Polar is streets ahead of Garmin, Suunto and Coros is sleep tracking. Across its range of watches, Polar offers impressive detail on your night’s rest and feeds that into its recommendations on how you should train the following day.

This is through the Nightly Recharge feature, which gives a rating of how well you have slept and also how well your autonomic nervous system (ANS) has recovered. The latter is based on how much time you spend in rest and digest mode (parasympathetic nervous system) compared to fight or flight mode (sympathetic nervous system), and measures physical stress on the body using your heart rate variability, heart rate and breathing rate.

Each morning you get a sleep rating and an ANS charge rating, compared with your previous 28-day average. This shows up on the watch as a simple measure like “very good” or “good” if it’s been a good night on both counts, or “poor” or “compromised” if it hasn’t been. The combination of both sleep and ANS is useful because it’s possible to black out for a full night’s sleep without getting much good-quality, restorative sleep. After a night on the sauce, for example, your body will spend much of the night processing the alcohol, so your ANS recovery will be poor even if you log eight hours of sleep.

The Vantage V uses this information to give recommendations about how you should train the next day, perhaps suggesting you ease off if it’s been a particularly bad night. In general the watch always told me I could train, even if I’d had an awful night by its measures, but it would gently suggest an easier session if that was the case.

You also get a detailed sleep score based on six factors across three categories: amount, solidity and regeneration. These are all engagingly presented in the Polar app through a colour-coded six-pointed star, and there’s a simple sleep score out of 100 if you just want a quick rating at a glance. This easy-to-understand way of displaying information is something I’d love Polar to bring to the training history and cardio load sections of the app and website, because those are areas more people will look at and they’re a little tricky to get your head around at times.

The Vantage still sometimes struggled to track my sleep perfectly, but it was more accurate than any Garmin device I’ve worn, and the feedback provided is of a completely different order. Polar seems to really get how important sleep is to your training schedule.

However, the one major flaw in all of this is that the Vantage V isn’t very comfortable to wear at night. The silicone strap gets hot and the devices sticks out a long way from the wrist, so on several occasions I’d find it too annoying and take it off. It’s a trade-off that you’ll have to decide on each night: do you want the sleep stats or the relief of not wearing a chunky tracker at night?

The Polar Flow Website And App

The Polar Flow training platform comprises both a smartphone app and a website. The latter gives the clearest picture of your fitness or training load over time, but you do get a good snapshot of your cardio load in the app, along with a lot of detail on any individual training sessions and your sleep stats.

The experience isn’t as straightforward as on Garmin Connect or Fitbit’s app, and even on the website there’s a lot of digging to be done to find the stats you’re after at first. This will be off-putting for people who are unfamiliar with tracking technology, especially as you can’t just get by with the app and the watch. The flipside is that stat obsessives will enjoy spending some time delving into the website.

I also found that syncing the Vantage V with the app was sluggish, and if I wanted to get the data on a training session over immediately, I’d have to hold down the back button on the watch. Automatic syncing does happen after a while but it’s not immediate, while the opposite is the case with most wearables, and who wants to wait a few hours to get their activity on Strava? Not me.

How Often Am I Going To Have To Charge It?

Battery life on the Vantage V is listed at an impressive 40 hours in training mode, with GPS and heart rate turned on. If you enable smartphone notifications and continuous heart rate tracking outside of exercise you’ll drain it a lot faster, but you’ll still get a week out of the device between charges, which is great.

Where Can I Wear It Without People Laughing At Me?

The Vantage V has a sleek design that means you can wear it everywhere. It’s certainly a big step up in the looks stakes from previous Polar watches, especially the clunky hunk of plastic that was the M430 (an excellent tracker – looks aren’t everything). However, when you interact with the Vantage V the design is less impressive. The buttons are stiff and take a millisecond too long to respond and the touchscreen is quite unresponsive – in fact I found it pretty pointless.

It’s not an especially bright screen either. It feels a bit cheap, frankly, when it is anything but. The Vantage V looks smarter than past Polar devices, but it doesn’t come close to the premium feel of watches like the Garmin Fenix 6 Pro, or even the Coros Apex, which is under £300.

Should I Consider Buying Something Else?

If you’re looking around at the best fitness trackers and are a runner first and foremost then there are better options than the Ignite, with the Garmin Forerunner 45 being the obvious pick. It’s cheaper than the Ignite, it’s easier to use and it has better battery life and GPS accuracy too. The Ignite is also lacking in smart features like music storage, so if that’s important to you the Fitbit Versa 2 might be more up your alley, even if the Versa is far less capable as a sports watch.

However, there is nothing else quite like the Ignite available, especially in the sub-£200 bracket, with features like the daily workout suggestions and in-depth recovery tracking putting it in a league of its own. Furthermore, it’s a proper GPS multisport watch for under £200, which isn’t all that common. The Coros Pace (£179.99) is a great multisport watch with a better battery life and it’s easier to use than the Ignite, but the Ignite’s excellent recovery features and the depth of detail you get on your training through the Polar Flow website and app mean it far outstrips what Coros offers.

The Polar Ignite In-Depth

Sleep Tracking With The Polar Ignite

Sleep tracking is all too often an afterthought in the world of serious sports trackers. Garmin has made some effort on this front but the analysis is undermined by inaccurate data, while Suunto and Coros offer only a basic outline of your night’s rest. Polar, in contrast, has gone all-in on sleep tracking, particularly with regard to how it affects your recovery and ability to train the next day.

Each morning the Nightly Recharge feature tells you how well you’ve recovered overnight, which is based on your sleep and the activity of your autonomic nervous system (the bodily functions you don’t have to be conscious of, like breathing). The latter is measured through your heart rate, heart rate variability and breathing rate while asleep. You want your heart rate variability to be high while asleep because this shows your body is not under stress and so is recovering.

The quality of your sleep is measured through six factors in three categories: amount, solidity and regeneration. In the Polar Flow app the results are engagingly presented with a colour-coded six-pointed star, and you also get a graph of your night’s sleep showing the time spent in light, deep and REM sleep, along with any interruptions, plus a sleep score out of 100 if you can’t be bothered to dive into all the detail.

Polar takes this info and then recommends what exercise you should do the next day based on how well your system has recovered, recommending four workouts you could try.

It all sounds great and at first I was impressed by the depth of info the Ignite seemed to be providing on my sleep – and indeed what it was doing with that info, particularly the recommendations regarding how active I should be the next day. However, after a few weeks with the Ignite the features started to show a few cracks.

For one, the sleep tracking wasn’t always that accurate, often missing the time I actually went to sleep by several hours. Across a month of wearing the device it logged the start of my sleep as two or three hours after I actually fell asleep about a third of the time. I have a baby, so I’m acutely aware of my sleep and I’m going to bed very early, which means a sleep start time of 1am stands out as clearly wrong.

Then there’s the fact that whatever my Nightly Recharge was rated as, the Ignite told me I was good to go when it came to exercise the next day. I’ve been told my recharge was “excellent”, “okay”, the slightly alarming “compromised” or “poor”, and the recommendation was always that it was a good day for training. I sometimes got a qualifying message along the lines of “you might be tired”, but this was always followed with advice to exercise anyway. The recommended workouts from the watch might change to something more strength-based rather than a long cardio session, or say to take that cardio session easy, but when my recovery was rated poor I was surprised to still see I was recommended a 67-minute cardio session.

I’ve always thought that sports watches that recommend recovery times after workouts and gauge your overall training load should take into account sleep, so I’m pleased Polar is taking steps to do this with the Nightly Recharge feature, but it’s not perfect yet. It’s interesting to get an instant rating on your wrist of how your sleep has recharged you when you wake up, but if the tracking isn’t flawlessly accurate (or at least better than broadly right two-thirds of the time) and the recommendation is always to exercise anyway, it loses some of its appeal.

However, it’s very close to being really smart, and I have noticed the accuracy of the sleep tracking is trending upwards in the time I’ve had the Ignite. Polar is certainly on to something here – you can use the Ignite to shape all your training based on the state of your body that day, which will help you avoid injury and actually enjoy your training because you’re working at the right level for your energy levels. It just needs to iron out some small wrinkles.

Sports Tracking With The Polar Ignite

One of the areas where the Ignite stands out from the competition is the vast range of sports modes it offers, including a dedicated multisport mode for triathletes, duathletes and anyone else who likes to do more than one sport in one session, as well as an open-water swimming mode. This is something Garmin does not offer on its cheaper watches like the Forerunner 45 and 245, which are aimed squarely at runners.

Even more exciting is that the Ignite doesn’t just passively track all these sports, it directly recommends what you should do via the FitSpark feature. Each day you’ll be recommended four workouts across three categories – Cardio, Strength and Supportive, with the latter being activities like stretching and fundamental core exercises.

What you’re told to do is based on the Nightly Recharge estimate of how well recovered you are each day, so in theory you’ll never be told to do something that’s beyond your energy levels that day.

Choose a Cardio workout and you can do the session while running, cycling, swimming or doing anything else that gets your heart rate up, with the guided session based entirely on your heart rate (the Ignite will record this while swimming, though accuracy can be hit and miss in the water).

For the Strength and Supportive sessions you can see the exercises you’ll be doing on the watch before starting, and once you get going it will guide you through your circuits. Experienced gym-goers aiming to add serious muscle might not get much from the strength sessions, which mostly involve bodyweight exercises, but they’re the perfect way for most people to increase their full-body strength and particularly useful for runners, triathletes and team sport types who need a quick and easy-to-follow session to support their main activity.

Once you’ve done a Cardio or Strength session each day the Ignite will change its recommended workouts to a Supportive session so, for example, you can add some stretching at the end of a run.

Although I didn’t see a huge change in the workouts based on my Nightly Recharge readings, I was still impressed by the FitSpark feature. If you’re following your own training plan already you can use the odd session here or there to support it, but if you just want to get fit and don’t really know what to do, you can simply use the Ignite’s suggestions each day, or every other day, to get seriously fit.

Running With The Polar Ignite

Aside from measuring running power from your wrist and offering breadcrumb navigation (which are both restricted to the high-end Vantage V), Polar hasn’t held back any run tracking features from the Ignite. You can set up to four stats per screen and follow guided workouts or even training plans from your wrist, with Polar’s plans especially good for anyone who wants to train using their heart rate.

I was also delighted to see that you can set the screen to be always-on during a run, or indeed any workout. This is something you can’t do on the Apple Watch, which makes it hard to see your stats at a glance.

Opting for always-on will hit your battery life hard, but I’d rather charge a watch every day or every other day and significantly increase how easy it is to use during a workout, and Polar’s decision to give users the choice is welcome. That said, you do have to switch it to always-on in every individual workout – there’s no master setting that makes that the default option.

One considerable problem with the design of the Ignite for runners is that there is no lap button. You have to rely on auto-lap and if you’re doing a guided workout where you want to manually start each section, you have to do so by pressing a button on the touchscreen. The Ignite’s touchscreen is not 100% reliable in registering a touch at the best of times, and when you’re trying to hit a fairly small section of it with sweaty fingers while running hard it’s more like 50% reliable, which can be frustrating. My advice is to stick to workouts where it automatically moves on to the next section.

The other significant problem with the run tracking is that, as with the Vantage V and Vantage M trackers, I’ve consistently found the GPS readings on the Ignite to be off. They come in short of the actual distance on most runs, with the disparity growing when I did a run with a lot of sharp bends – it produced 9.6km for a 10K race with six hairpin bends in it, for example. Polar seemed to have worked on this since the Vantage was released and the distance tracking across its range is getting more accurate, but it’s still not infallible.

I was more impressed with the heart rate tracking accuracy of the Ignite, however. On a couple of runs it locked on to my cadence to begin with before finding my heart rate a couple of kilometres in, but generally it was pretty close to bang on from the start and then throughout my runs, even when I was doing intervals – with the Ignite keeping pace with the rapid changes in heart rate.

The Ignite links to the Polar Flow app and website, which provides a lot of detail on your training. Too much for the average runner, in truth, and it can be confusing to navigate. However, there are some key areas which are worth checking out. The best of these is Training Load Pro, which analyses your recent training to see if you’re being productive in improving your fitness, overdoing it, maintaining your fitness or undertraining. This information is plotted over time along with your cardio load report, which shows the strain you’re putting on your system along with your tolerance.

Both are useful estimates of whether your workload is suitable for you, which can help you avoid injury. In theory, with the Ignite on your wrist you can ignore all this and just go by its suggestions each day, but it’s there if you do want to dive into more detail or are following your own training plan ahead of a big event.

Activity Tracking With The Polar Ignite

The Ignite tracks your daily steps, calories burned and active minutes, and puts those all together along with your exercise to create an overall daily activity goal. This includes a choice of three levels that you set in your profile and can change at any time.

Broadly speaking, the levels roughly break down as level one for mostly sedentary people aiming to get a little more active, with the goal being something like hitting 10,000 steps a day. Level two is for people who train several times a week and level three is for extremely dedicated people, training almost every day, who are also active outside their training. As an example of the standards expected for level three, on a day where I ran 14km and logged over 15,000 steps in total, I just squeaked to 104% of the target.

Once you’ve set your target you can view your progress on the Ignite or in the Polar Flow app. which provides an attractive colour-coded ring of your day so you can see periods when you were more active, along with any inactivity stamps you’ve earned by staying still for too long.

In my opinion Polar’s activity target is a little more engaging than a simple steps count and does a good job of motivating you to stay active in between your training sessions, which can be a common failing among even very active people.

How Often Am I Going To Have To Charge It?

This depends on whether you set the screen to always-on during activities. If you do, you’ll see the battery drain at around 20% an hour, assuming you’re doing an activity that also uses the GPS. If you keep the screen off until you look at it – which is far less convenient especially when running or cycling outside, when you don’t want to stare at your watch for a second longer than necessary – and train every other day, you might get three days of battery out of the Ignite.

If you do have the screen on and/or train most days you’ll need to charge the Ignite every other day at least. And since its sleep tracking features are a key part of its appeal, you’ll need to do that during the day. Fortunately the Ignite charges quickly – I found that plugging it in for 60 minutes or so in the evening just before bed was enough.

Where Can I Wear It Without People Laughing At Me?

The Ignite is the most aesthetically pleasing device Polar has produced – for me it’s far better-looking than the pricier Vantage series. The slim watch and silver bezel won’t look out of place anywhere, but you might have to opt for the black band if you want it to work across different outfits and situations – the white and yellow bands are a little more ostentatious.

Using The Polar M430 For Step Counting

While the M430 doesn't give you a dedicated step target to hit each day, it will record the number of steps you take and count them all towards your activity goal. As this is a GPS device primarily aimed at runners it’s not surprising that steps don’t take centre stage, but they are monitored and if you check out your daily activity report on either the device or the app, you can see your step tally.

Using The Polar M430 As A Heart Rate Monitor

The addition of optical heart rate tracking on the M430 is one of the major upgrades on the M400, which required users to wear a chest strap while exercising to gather that information. Polar has a reputation for making accurate heart rate monitoring straps around, so I had high expectations of the optical tracking in the M430.

After a few early issues, those expectations were met. In the first week or so of running with the M430 the heart rate would jump around a bit, and occasionally refuse to rise above a certain point no matter how hard I pushed myself. But following a software update these issues have not reared their heads again, and the heart rate readings on the M430 have been consistent with both a chest strap and the top-end Garmin Forerunner 935 GPS watch.

This is vital, because the M430 has gone all-in on heart rate. All the training sessions you can follow through Polar Flow are based on working in different heart rate zones, which is a great way to ensure everyone works at the same intensity no matter how experienced a runner they are.

It’s easy to keep tabs on your heart rate with dedicated screens showing which zone you are in at that moment and the overall period spent in each zone. While you’re being guided through a workout, another screen will indicate what your heart rate should be and buzz if it’s not in the right place.

You can also lock your heart rate into a certain zone mid-run by holding down the stop/start button for three seconds, prompting the M430 to buzz if you move out of this zone. I found this feature especially useful on long runs where I was meant to be taking it easy but found my effort level drifting up. The M430 would let me know when to ease off the gas.

Once a session is completed, the M430 will tell you how it benefited your training, largely based on heart rate. So a tempo session in higher heart rate zones will help you build speed, while a long run in lower zones helps build endurance. You also get a graph of your heart rate mapped on to the zones, which are colour-coded in the app (the screen of the M430 itself is black and white).

I’m a keen runner but I’d never really based sessions around my heart rate before using the M430, using pace to guide my training instead. After trying it, I’d say it is definitely something runners should consider to ensure they are working at the right effort in each session. The M430 makes using your heart rate to guide your training very clear and easy, especially if you use a Polar Flow training plan.

Currently the M430 tracks your heart rate only while you’re active, but in the third quarter of 2017 an update should bring all-day monitoring to the device, which will give more detail on your resting heart rate and, therefore, general fitness.

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Using The Polar M430 To Track Activity

All of your daily activity is logged towards your My Day target on the M430. This target can be set to one of three levels, with level one being the least active and level three the most. How much activity you need to undertake to hit your goal depends on the intensity of the activity. For example, hitting level one requires 11hr 19min of low-intensity activity like standing at work, 2hr 12min of medium-intensity activity like walking, or 58min of high-intensity activity like running, or, more likely, a combination of all three.

The My Day screen shows steps, calories burned and your overall active time, as well as indicating what you’d need to do to hit your daily target. For example, right now I would need to do 1hr 30min of jogging to hit my goal in one go (I have it set to the the ambitious level three target and have done… nothing. Yet).

All the sports you track go towards your My Day goal, and the M430 can be used to track pretty much anything – simply add your favourite activity to the device via the Polar Flow app. You also get a full breakdown of your day’s activity via the app in the form of a circle which highlights periods where you were active (and how intense the activity was) and any long stretches when you sat in place.

The My Day feature is a more useful goal than a basic step target because it includes all your activities, but I found I rarely paid it much attention. If you’re looking for everyday tracking, it’s done more engagingly on devices like the Fitbit Charge 2 (which is also stylish enough to wear all the time), whereas the M430’s strength is in proper sports tracking.

Using The Polar M430 For Running

The M430 tracks many different kinds of activity very competently, but running is its main focus and where it excels. Even if you don’t use one of the training programmes – more on which later – the tracking is accurate and comprehensive, with enough data to satisfy even advanced runners.

Along with all the key stats like time, distance, pace, calories burned and heart rate, the M430 provides your cadence, an estimation of how demanding the run was which links to an overall training load to ensure you’re not overdoing it, and your running index. This last stat tells you how efficient your running is and it’s charted over time on the app. It uses this index to give an (in my experience, optimistic) estimation of how quickly you can complete a 5K, 10K, half and full marathon.

Speaking of those distances, you can get yourself into the best possible shape for a race by syncing one of the Polar Flow training programmes with the M430, a process that is mercifully simple. Using the Polar Flow website you set up your plan based on the event you’re doing and you’re current fitness level (it takes 20 seconds, max). The plan is then formed and synced to the Polar Flow app and M430. No wires required.

From there you can see the sessions you have coming up on the M430 and load up today’s workout at the click of a button. Each training plan has a mix of runs of different lengths and intensities, with each session guided by your heart rate. So you could do a phased run with five minutes in zones 1 and 2, five minutes in zone 3, then five minutes in zones 4 and 5, or an intervals session where you spike into the higher zones before resting.

Each session is guided by the M430 which breaks down the benefits of the training afterwards. The plans also include some basic strength and mobility training, which many runners unwisely skip.

The plans are excellent, especially for beginner runners unsure of how to prep for an event. The training programme will also adapt if you miss sessions, so you don’t have to bin it at the first failure. All in all, it’s brilliantly executed and if you follow the plans closely, there’s little doubt you will become a better runner.

However, if you are already an advanced runner with your own ideas about your training, you might find the plan gets a bit repetitive and end up skipping sessions to do your own thing.

There is also a lack of choice in the plans you can pick – there aren’t third-party plans to download as on Garmin Connect. That said, you can create your own sessions very easily on the Polar Flow website and sync them to the M430 to guide you through them. It’s more of a hassle than simply following the Polar plans, but for keen runners it allows close control over your training.

Finally, the M430 is very quick to lock on to GPS, faster than any of the Garmin or TomTom devices I’ve used.

Using The Polar M430 For Cycling

While the M430 takes a proactive approach to running, with coaching and training advice, it merely records your rides. You’ll get the usual stats – time, distance, heart rate, calories burned and average speed – plus pace zones, if you’d like to see how much time you spent going at certain speeds.

As with running, you’ll also be given a measure of how demanding your training was, which will add to your overall load to help ensure you’re not straining yourself too much. The M430 tracks cycling reliably, but has no specific metrics like power or cadence, so keen riders will be better served by a dedicated tracker or bike computer.

Using The Polar M430 For Swimming

The M430 is waterproof and will make an attempt to track your heart rate when swimming, although the results aren’t likely to be as accurate as when you’re undertaking dry activities. It also lacks specific metrics like SWOLF or even distance tracking, so if swimming is your main sport or you’re a dedicated triathlete you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.

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Using The Polar M430 For Calorie Counting

All individual activities you track with the M430 will produce a calories burned stat, and if you wear it all the time you’ll also get your total daily calorie count. Your training calendar on the Polar Flow app will also give you your total calories burned tally for each week. The data is all there, but as with most everyday tracking metrics, it’s not the real focus of the M430.

Using The Polar M430 As A Sleep Tracker

Sleep tracking is an area where Polar has developed its offering, and the M430 records your night’s rest in detail. You get a breakdown of how much time you spent asleep and interruptions, giving an overall rating for sleep continuity.

The M430, however, doesn’t divide up your snooze into deep and light sleep, and the device isn’t that comfortable to wear in bed. I wore the M430 for a few nights and found it slightly too bulky to completely ignore when trying to sleep, while the rubber strap does make the skin underneath hot even if you loosen it, which in turn makes the main unit flap around.

Polar has made a decent effort to make its sleep recording tech more insightful, but the M430 doesn’t feel like a device that can make the most of it.

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The Polar Flow Website And App

Polar has achieved that rarest of feats with the Polar Flow website and app, in that data and training plans sync easily across both as well as the M430, so you can make changes to preferences and review your activities on each of them easily. TomTom and to a lesser extent Garmin should take note – if Polar can do all of this wirelessly, they can too.

Training programmes have to be set up on the website, and that’s where it’s easiest to review your in-depth running data, but you can also get by with the app and M430 easily for day to day training. The Polar Flow app also syncs to other third-party apps quickly so you can get your data on Strava.

Polar M430 Battery Life

The M430 has three options for accuracy when recording GPS activities, with the highest-accuracy option taking a GPS reading every second. You’ll get eight hours of juice in high-accuracy mode. In medium accuracy GPS is plotted every 30 seconds, and in low power mode it’s every 60 seconds. Opting for the power-saving mode will see the M430 last 30 hours while recording, but a GPS reading every 60 seconds won’t provide the accuracy needed for reliable run tracking.

I found that the Polar would just about last a week with four or five runs, but if I also cycled to work with it I’d have to make sure I charged it during the week. The M430’s battery life is solid enough that it isn’t annoying for recording your sports, although if you were wearing it all the time as an everyday tracker as well you’d probably have to charge it a couple of times a week.

Design

The Polar’s design is very sporty and silicone-y, especially if you opt for the alarmingly orange colour. It’s also quite bulky and I found it would make the skin underneath it quite hot when worn for long periods. As a result, it belongs in the “only to be worn when active” camp, despite its everyday tracking features.

It’s primarily a GPS running watch, so this isn’t a major concern when it comes to ignoring your daily step count, but it’s a bit of shame it’s not more comfortable to wear while sleeping because its sleep tracking insights are solid.

Is The Polar M430 Worth It?

Polar has since released the Vantage M and Vantage V watches to update the M430 and V800 wearables respectively. The Vantage M is a lot more stylish than the M430 and offers advanced training analysis that tells you if, for example, you’re overtraining. However, it’s also £249 to the M430’s current price of £174.50, so it’s tempting to stick with the latter if you don’t mind the clunky design.

The M430’s competition from without, to become one of the best fitness trackers, comes mainly from Garmin, the big name in GPS running watches. The Forerunner 235 is usually available for a similar price and offers a similar package to runners as the M430.

There’s also the Garmin Forerunner 35, which is a terrific budget running watch usually available for £120 or so. The Polar M430 is more advanced than the Forerunner 35 and its training plans are a major plus compared to the Forerunner 35 or 235, so if following those plans is key for you then Polar will probably be the best way to go.

If you’re not so set on having all the running smarts contained in the Polar M430, you could also look at a more stylish everyday tracker like the Fitbit Versa or Fitbit Charge 3. Although neither has built-in GPS, they do offer GPS by connecting to your smartphone instead.

Buy on polar.com (£150) | Buy on amazon.co.uk (£130 at time of writing)

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Polar A360 In-Depth

Using the Polar A360 for step counting

Like all fitness trackers, the Polar A360’s primary function is to count every step you take and use this data to estimate the distance you travel and calories you burn. In a neat touch, the default screen display gradually changes from white to blue as you edge closer to your daily steps goal.

From left to right: The default screen showing the time and how close you are to your daily step goal; My Day screen displaying progress towards your daily step goal, steps taken, distance travelled and calories burned; and My Heart Rate, where you can measure your ticker’s current BPM.

However, compared with other devices, its accuracy is questionable. On one particular day the A360 counted more than 17,000 steps, while the other two fitness trackers I was wearing – the Garmin Vivosmart HR and Misfit Shine 2 – both reported numbers around 13,000. The disparity seemed to occur after driving – as the device was on my left wrist, I assume that changing gear was fooling it. Most fitness trackers can suffer from this problem, but the size of the discrepancy made me do a double take.

Disappointingly, there’s no altimeter built into the A360 so you don’t get the secondary goal of flights of stairs climbed that many competing devices offer.

The A360 has vibration built into it and the device will alert you if you’ve been inactive for 55 minutes. If you don’t heed that warning and continue to be inactive for over an hour, you’ll receive an inactivity stamp on the app – like a black mark from your schoolteacher.

Using the Polar A360 as a heart rate monitor

This is Polar’s first attempt at an optical heart rate monitor, having built its reputation on chest strap HRM technology. So is it actually any good?

The underlying principle of Polar’s approach is the same as any other wrist-based HRM solution: LED lights shine through the skin’s surface, allowing an optical sensor to ascertain when blood is being pumped. No optical HRM device will ever be as accurate as chest straps, especially during a high-intensity workout, because optical sensors just don’t react as quickly to spikes in your heart rate as electrode sensors.

For more measured training, though, Polar’s optical sensor does a decent job. If you’re running 5K at a steady pace, a good optical sensor will be pretty close to a chest strap, although you’ll still need to ensure that you have a snug fit to your wrist so stop any ambient light affecting the reading. Thankfully, the A360’s rubber strap is both comfortable and simple to secure.

Since the A360 is a fitness tracker rather than a running or multisport watch, and will be worn 24/7, we assumed that constant heart rate monitoring would be a given. Not so! That means Polar A360 users get no average resting heart rate – arguably the most useful feature that an HRM fitness tracker offers. Polar could still have offered resting heart rate measurement without constant monitoring by logging your heart rate as soon as you wake up in the morning, just like the Jawbone UP3. But that’s not an option with the A360 either. What you can do is take a spot measurement of your heart rate manually, which is the kind of feature we were seeing in trackers like the Withings Pulse three years ago.

The only time that the A360 will measure constant heart rate is when you’ve instigated a training session, at which point it will start the stopwatch and continually track your BPM until the training session is manually stopped.

The lack of constant HRM functionality undoubtedly helps with the impressive battery life, but it’s a compromise I’d rather Polar hadn’t made. At the very least, the choice should have been put in the user’s hands.

The A360 doesn’t provide a broadcast function for its HRM either so it won’t pair with other devices, such as a Garmin Edge cycle computer. Want to tell your Edge what your heart rate is? You’ll need to wear an additional chest strap.

The A360 will pair with Polar’s H7 Bluetooth chest strap HRM to give you accurate heart rate data when training, but that makes the HRM function in the watch redundant. If you need the absolute HRM accuracy of a chest strap, you’ll probably also need a far more feature-rich device than the A360.

Using the Polar A360 to track activity

The Training feature built into the A360 allows you to select an abundance of activities and log your performance when undertaking any of them. Bear in mind, though, that there’s no GPS built into the A360 and it doesn’t pair with external sensors (bar a Bluetooth HRM chest strap).

Strangely, the A360 doesn’t offer automatic tracking of activities either – you’ll have to manually instigate any activity, and then remember to stop it once you’re done.

Using the Polar A360 for running

Select the Run option from the training menu and the A360 will start the stopwatch and continually measure your heart rate until you end the training session. As well as time and heart rate, the A360 will also estimate distance and pace. While this data will never be as accurate as a GPS-enabled device, it does give the user data by which to judge performances over time.

To be fair, the distance accuracy on the A360 isn’t terrible. I ran around 5km with the Polar A360 on one wrist and the Garmin Vivosmart HR+ GPS on the other. The Garmin GPS tracker measured a distance of 5.08km, while the Polar A360 logged 5.58km.

Polar will also create a running program for 5K, 10K, half marathon or full marathon distances – helpful if you’re training for an event or just looking to hit a milestone. This can only be done via the Polar Flow web portal, though. There’s no mention of it on the device itself or on the Polar Flow smartphone app – you heard it here first.

Training sessions are added to your training diary within the Polar Flow web portal and details of the program will be transferred to the A360 when you next sync it (not the easiest or quickest of tasks).

Strangely, there’s no indication that your running program has been transferred to the device, and no way to see that it’s active either. However, if you start a training session, you’ll be presented with the first step in your running program.

Polar has always been good at creating training programs, but I’m just not convinced that the kind of person who’s looking for that kind of functionality would be buying an A360 rather than a dedicated running watch.

Using the Polar A360 for cycling

There’s a cycling option under the training menu on the A360, but the functionality is limited. There’s no built-in GPS and it won’t pair with speed, cadence or power sensors, so you’re just logging how long you ride for and your heart rate. From that the A360 can estimate the calories you’ve burned during the ride, but that’s all.

Using the Polar A360 for swimming

The A360 is waterproof but if you wear it while you swim, it won’t be tracking very much. There’s no lap counter or stroke counter, and optical heart rate monitors don’t work in the water. Sure, if you wanted to measure your heart rate and get a decent estimation of calories burned, you could pair the A360 with that Bluetooth smart chest strap HRM, but if you need a device that tracks your swims accurately, you’re better off looking elsewhere.

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Using the Polar A360 for calorie counting

Like all fitness trackers the A360 will estimate the calories you burn based on how active you’ve been. The accuracy of that estimate is greatly improved when the heart rate monitoring is active, but as already mentioned this device doesn’t support 24/7 HRM activity.

When you’ve activated a training session and the HRM is active, you’ll get a good indication of how many calories you’ve burned during your workout. But for the rest of the time the A360 is simply making a best guess based on the steps you’ve taken.

You can pair the Polar Flow app with MyFitnessPal to use the popular food logging app to add consumed calories to your daily data. This will give you a dynamic calorie count, which is useful if you’re looking to lose weight.

Using the Polar A360 as a sleep tracker

The A360 will automatically detect when you’re sleeping and when you wake in the morning, as well as logging when you’re in restful sleep, in restless sleep and awake during the night. Although it’s hard to improve your sleep pattern, the tracking will illustrate if your slumber improves as you become more active or if you improve your diet.

The Polar Flow app

Not so impressive is the fact that the A360 doesn’t sync automatically when you open the app, leaving you to press the single button at the side of the device. And even when you do manually initialise the sync, it takes an absolute age to complete.

The app is nicely presented though, with a clock-based main screen providing a simple “at a glance” snapshot of your day. Above the clock you’ll get a breakdown of the number of minutes you’ve spent doing different things – sitting, sleeping, walking etc.

You can add friends to your activity feed to see how you’re measuring up against your peers, but this functionality is nowhere near as tightly integrated as it is in competing apps from the likes of Fitbit or Jawbone.

How often am I going to have to charge it?

Polar quotes a battery life of two weeks for the A360 based on 24/7 usage and an hour of training per day. That’s a pretty amazing claim and a slightly optimistic one, too. But the battery life is very good, no doubt helped by the lack of 24/7 heart rate monitoring. I’d say you can get about a week and a half usage out of the device on a full charge, which still puts it well clear of much of the competition. Just bear in mind that if you turn on smart notifications, that battery life will be significantly reduced.

A plus point for Polar is that that A360 uses a standard Micro USB connector for charging – like nearly all (non-Apple) phones and tablets. No need to carry a proprietary cable with you – just ask around.

Where can I wear it without people laughing at me?

The Polar A360 is a good-looking device (it would look even better without the prominent Polar logo on it, but so be it). There are five strap colours to choose from (powder white, charcoal black, sorbet pink, navy blue and neon green, £19.99 each) if you want to coordinate it with your outfit, but the standard black version is subtle enough to be worn in most environments.

The A360 also has the best screen I’ve seen in a fitness tracker – it’s a full-colour touchscreen affair, that’s surprisingly easy to read even in bright sunlight.

The fact that the A360 does a good impression of a smartwatch will also help it hold its own in everyday use. The A360 will tell you when you have a call on your phone and who’s calling, as well as relaying new text messages, calendar reminders, weather notifications and even PlayStation friend requests.

Should I consider buying something else?

While the Polar A360 has some nice features – that beautiful screen, extensive smart notifications and impressive battery life – it’s simply too feature-light at this price for us to recommend it over some very strong competition.

Even though you can now find it for around £125 online, the A360 is still more expensive than the superb Garmin Vivosmart HR, which provides a feature set that’s far more extensive (even if it’s beaten on screen and battery life).

And while the Vivosmart HR could be overkill for less serious users, you could spend even less on a Fitbit Charge HR and have similar functionality with a better supporting ecosystem. Again, the Charge HR can’t compete with the A360’s screen, but it will count the flights of stairs you climb while also being kinder to your wallet.

If you’re serious about your training you probably log and analyse every minute of every session. Whether you’re nailing sets in the gym, running intervals or laying down 100km on your bike, the chances are that you’ll be collecting all that data so you can see how each session compares to the last and the next. But what about when you’re not training? Do you have any idea how active you are the rest of the time? That’s where the Polar Loop comes in.

While there’s no shortage of fitness trackers on the market, the Loop stands out as the ideal partner for anyone who takes their training seriously. Given Polar’s history in fitness technology – Polar invented the portable heart rate monitor – it comes as no surprise that the Loop would offer more than the average fitness tracker.

The Loop will sit comfortably on your wrist, no matter how large or small your arms may be. This is because unlike other fitness trackers the Loop can be personally customised to fit the individual user. The solid metal clasp will ensure that it stays put, too.

Polar has covered pretty much every base with the Loop, matching every other fitness tracker out there, while adding a few features that set it apart from most. Regular swimmers will love the Loop since it’s completely water resistant.

Of course the Loop will capture more conventional activity, logging each and every step you take each day - from that step data the Loop will estimate the distance you’ve travelled and the number of calories you’ve burned. And you can view any and all of that data on the Loop itself thanks to its large LED display – no need to dig your phone out of your pocket as with so many other fitness trackers. That built-in display also means that you can use the Loop as your wristwatch so there’s no need to have both your wrists populated.

The Loop does more than just count your steps though, it can also ascertain how much effort you’re putting into your activity. The Loop will assign a specific level of intensity to every minute of every day. There are five intensity levels – resting, sitting, low, medium and high activity. The beauty of these different activity levels is that the Loop can estimate how active you need to be to hit your daily goal and give you options – so you might need an hour of walking or only 15 minutes of jogging. The ability to differentiate levels of intensity also means that the Loop’s estimate of burned calories is very accurate.

But what really makes the Loop an ideal partner for the serious athlete is its ability to factor real-time heart rate into the equation. The Loop is compatible with Bluetooth Smart heart rate sensors, like the Polar H7. This makes the Loop so much more than a fitness tracker, it’s also a proper piece of training kit. So before you head out for a run, or get stuck into a circuit training session, strap the H7 heart rate monitor around your chest to get a detailed breakdown of your activity. If you were thinking about buying a dedicated heart rate monitor for your training sessions and a fitness tracker for logging your daily activity, the Loop can do both! 

Anyone who wants to stay fit and healthy will know that rest is just as important as activity and the Loop can help you there too. While you’re sleeping the Loop will continue to track your movement, and in the morning it will tell you how long and how well you slept. Obviously it’s hard to force yourself to sleep better, but if your Loop tells you that you’re particularly restless at night, you can at least try to figure out why. 

The Loop is continually communicating with your smartphone throughout the day and syncing all your data to the Polar Flow app. The app will give you increased insight into how you’re doing, and allow you to compare today to yesterday, or any other day for that matter. All your data is also synced with the Polar Flow web portal where you can look back at your daily activity and schedule in specific workouts and goals. You can even check out summaries of your weekly or monthly activity and get some useful insight into the tangible benefits of your activity.

So, while there are many fitness trackers out there, the Polar Loop really is the best choice for anyone who’s serious about their fitness. Not only will it track everything you do, every day, it can also replace your dedicated heart rate monitor. In the case of the Polar Loop, one size really does fit all.

Polar Loop: £84.50 RRP

Polar H7 Heart Rate Monitor: £64.50 RRP

The Polar RC3 GPS training watch is designed for runners and cyclists. With a built-in GPS receiver, an arsenal of optional accessories and a powerful free web interface for your computer, Polar's watch could prove incredibly useful for anyone who’s keen to track and improve their fitness.

The device has an old-school digital watch feel, with a rubber strap and an LCD screen, and it comes in a choice of blue, black or red. The bright red colour on the one we tried certainly stood out but we probably wouldn’t wear it as an everyday fashion item. It feels well made, too, although the lack of any tactile response in the buttons is disappointing. When you’re on a run, you’re never sure if you’ve pressed a button successfully because there is no click or loud beep to confirm your action. It's a minor gripe, but it can be distracting.

The training watch is water resistant to one metre for half an hour, so it will survive a run in the rain, but if you're looking for a device for swimming or triathlons you’ll need to look elsewhere (check out our review of the Garmin Fenix here).

You can connect the RC3 to a Windows PC or Mac using any micro-USB cable both for syncing and charging. Polar says the watch can survive up to 12 hours of continuous use with the GPS turned on before the battery runs out, and while we didn't quite have the stamina to test this claim, we had no battery problems even after a week of training.

Depending on which bundle you buy, you’ll also get a chest strap and wireless heart monitor. These help the watch understand what sort of a workout you're doing, so we strongly recommend you buy a package that includes them.

If you plan to use the RC3 GPS for cycling, you’ll need a separate cadence sensor, which tracks your pedalling activity to build up a more complete picture of your session. There’s also an optional speed sensor for cycling and a stride sensor for running if you want to augment your watch even further, but as each of these extras costs between £30 and £50, you’ll need to increase your budget if you think they’re necessary. We tested the RC3 without any of these accessories and used it only for running.

On the run

Before you take the watch out on your first run, you need to give it some basic information including your weight, gender, age and height. From this it calculates the heart rate you should expect to hit under different exercising conditions, as well as the number of calories you’re burning.

After you've strapped on the heart rate monitor, simply tell the device you're going for a run and it searches for the heart rate monitor and a GPS signal. We found that even in the most open spaces under clear skies the RC3 took at least two minutes to find a GPS signal, and we couldn’t get one at all in a built-up environment surrounded by tall buildings. If you're lucky enough to be in an open space, the wait is bearable, especially if you do your pre-run warm-up while it’s searching. Once the GPS sensor had managed to lock on to some satellites, we had no problems with it. Even in the middle of the city surrounded by buildings the watch was reliable and didn't appear to go awry at any stage.

While you’re running, the Polar RC3 tells you your speed, heart rate, calories burned, altitude and even your direction relative to where you started. The information is easy to read, and there are plenty of layouts to choose from so you should be able to find one that suits you. The more devices you pair with the RC3, the more bewildering the choice of layouts becomes, but at least Polar has covered every base for every type of user. 

Web app

The watch can tell you most of the information you'll want to know about your session, but if you synchronise it with your PC and upload the data to Polar's web-based personal trainer service, you can take a much deeper look into all your activities, with graphs, maps and charts showing you exactly how you performed every step of the way. The more sessions you do, the longer the watch takes to sync so you may wish to delete some of your stored sessions from time to time.

You can create your own training programmes, complete with targets that Polar then turns into a training schedule and synchronises with the watch. There are no smartphone or tablet apps available that can interact with the watch because neither it nor the heart rate sensor has Bluetooth built in. This is a shame and puts the Polar RC3 GPS a little way behind some of the latest activity trackers.

With a training programme loaded, the watch beeps if you slow down too much or begin to over do it, which makes it a very effective personal trainer provided you know what you want to achieve. If you're not sure what you want out of your training, you can download one of Polar’s training programmes or even one that another user has made.

While the web interface is powerful, it’s also quite complicated and we often felt overwhelmed by the way the site is laid out. It's certainly less user-friendly than those from the likes of Fitbit and Nike, but it’s still useful if you can get your head around it.

Verdict

In these days of smart watches and mobile phone apps, the Polar RC3 is starting to feel a little dated. If you look at it another way, though, it's refreshingly simple – it does what it's supposed to do extremely well, and it’s reliable.

The RC3’s main problem is the wealth of Bluetooth-enabled heart-rate sensors that can be paired with GPS-enabled smartphones, and apps that can do essentially the same job. What you’re buying with the RC3 GPS is the ability to see this information on your wrist.

As a training companion, we think the Polar RC3 GPS is a great piece of kit for anyone who’s serious about their fitness, and if used correctly it’s a useful tool for improving your times, stamina and endurance.

 7/10

The Polar Loop is the latest in a series of activity trackers designed to be worn all day on your wrist, following on from the success of Nike’s Nike+ FuelBand. It gets closer than most to mimicking Nike’s features for a significantly lower price – but it has its own weaknesses too. 

One of the Loop’s biggest strengths is that you don’t have to be tied to a particular brand of smartphone as you do with the iOS-exclusive FuelBand – you can simply strap it on and go, although it will play nicely with an iPhone if you have one. It also becomes much more useful once you create an account on Polar’s website.

The Loop has since been updated with models such as the Polar A360 following in its footsteps, but if you want to read our review of the original Loop carry on reading.

RECOMMENDED: All Wearable Fitness Trackers

Getting started

Apart from the device itself, all you get with the Loop is a wristband adjustment tool and a USB recharging cable.

The Loop is only available in one size and has to be cut to fit your wrist. This involves taking the clasp off using the supplied tool, then measuring your wrist with the paper guide and cutting the wristband to the relevant size. It sounds like a hassle but it’s well worth it since it ensures a perfect fit so the Loop won’t rub or irritate your wrist when on the move. The stainless steel clasp securely locks the Loop to your wrist, and never came loose during our testing. The wristband itself is light but also rather rigid – you’ll certainly feel it if you roll on to your arm in your sleep.

You don’t have to disassemble the Loop to charge it – the magnetic connector is built into the wristband. The cable is held firmly in place by the magnet and the screen lights up to indicate it is charging, so you can always be sure you’ve connected it properly.

Polar has opted for a proprietary charging connector, which makes it difficult to charge when you’re out and about. Nike’s FuelBands have a convenient built-in USB plug, and other rivals such as the Withings Pulse use a micro-USB port which will work with just about any (non-iOS) smartphone charger.

Once it’s charged, you can strap on the Loop and it automatically begins tracking every step you take. According to Polar, the Loop will last for five days on a full charge, but in our experience we were down to 10% of a full charge in less than four. You won’t want to leave the house with a low charge, unless you bring the USB cable with you, although we found that it does charge quickly. It went from 20% to 90% in under 15 minutes, which is more than enough for a day’s use.

How does it work?

Like most other activity trackers, the Loop uses an accelerometer to track movement. It logs every step you take, estimating calories burned based on your movements. With no altimeter the Loop can’t track elevation, but it at least works out how intensive your movement is at any given time – although it does label anything above a gentle stroll as ‘very active’.

The rubber wristband is water-sealed, so you won’t need to take off the Loop when taking a shower or going for a swim. It can’t tell the difference between walking and swimming, though, so your swim will simply count as very active movement.

Where the Loop sets itself apart from other fitness trackers such as the Fitbit Flex is with its red LED display. It has four modes: Steps, Time, Calories burned and Activity. The first three display your numbers for the current day, while the Activity mode gradually fills up a bar to indicate your progress towards your daily goal, which is calculated using the data you add when registering the Loop. The LEDs are brightly lit and we had no trouble reading the display under bright lights or when outdoors.

For more detailed information about your daily progress, you sync the Loop to a PC, Mac or smartphone and use the Polar Flow website.

Syncing your data

To download and keep track of your data, you need to create a Polar Flow account. It’s a quick, simple, and – most importantly – free process, where you’re asked for your age, height and weight, which are used to calculate your BMI. Unfortunately there’s no way to enter your stride length, so the Loop won’t differentiate between small and large builds.

Once you’re registered and have installed the Flow Sync software for either Windows or Mac OS X, connecting the Loop to your computer will automatically sync the device and open your web browser to the Polar Flow website.

The online Polar Flow portal is still in beta at the time of writing and it’s very much a work in progress, with no way to enter training sessions manually. You’ll need to use the Polar Beat app to track your runs, otherwise you’re limited to the Diary view. Here, you can chart your daily activity using a visual diary which displays the time you spent lying down, sitting, standing, walking and running. It counts the number of hours you slept per night, but gives no advice on improving your sleep patterns. Inactivity alerts are displayed here, showing you when you had been sitting still for an extended period of time.

The wristband doesn’t vibrate to remind you to take a break from your desk, which would have been much more useful than a notification you’ll only see at the end of the day. You can’t set yourself specific targets like walking a certain number of steps or burning a set number of calories, either.

Unfortunately there’s no way to add other training or gym sessions to the diary without the optional heart rate monitor. This uses the LED display to show your actual heart rate, as well as let you know when you’re in the right heart rate zone for fitness or burning fat. However, this adds an extra £44 to the cost of the Loop, and is another gadget you’ll have to wear while exercising.

There’s an in-depth social aspect, which plots the rough locations of other Polar users on a map and generates visual routes of their runs using Google Maps and StreetView, but again only for those using at least one Polar smartphone app or the heart rate monitor – by itself, the Loop is solely a fitness tracker.

There’s an app for that

You don’t need to be tied to a computer to synchronise your data – as long as you’re an iOS user. The Polar Flow app is free to download and can sync the Loop to your Flow account, but there’s currently no Android alternative. Anyone with an Android device can of course still sync through their PC, but it’s an extra step, something that Polar should remedy in the future.

The Loop uses the low-power Bluetooth Smart standard, so once you’ve installed the app and paired it to the wristband it will be constantly connected to your phone, beaming updates to the app so it’s always up to date when you open it. The app shows almost all the same information as the web portal, so you may not need to use a PC at all – at least until Polar adds more features to its website, anyway.

Verdict

A proprietary charging connector and lack of an altimeter means the Polar Flow isn’t the perfect fitness tracker. Although the built-in display is a major positive point, as is the very reasonable £80 price, it’s an almost entirely passive device; with no way to set goals and no Android support at the time of writing, it’s clear to see why Nike’s FuelBand SE commands a £50 price premium.

Score: 7/10

RRP: Originally £79.50, down to £44 in 2016

Manufacturer: Polar

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