Polar Vantage in the Test: The new power is the power measurement

Polar is back. Many runners, sports enthusiasts and professional athletes have become with a sports watch by Polar, or a Polar chest strap for heart rate measurement. Polar was one of the pioneers in this area and brought the first products since the beginning of the 80s on the market. In the past years it was quiet around the Finnish family business, although the fitness tracker, heart rate watch and Cycling computer is experiencing almost a flight of fancy. The last of the new releases from Polar are from the years 2014 and 2015, such as the Polar V800 multi sports watch for professional claims.

Michael Spehr

editor in the Department “technology and Motor”.

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But now is the Polar back. The new product is called Vantage and is available in a large Version of V and a stripped-down name of M available. We have tried the Vantage V for some time. It costs 500 euros and is much cheaper than the top products of the Competitor Garmin. The housing is made of stainless steel, on either side of the five physical buttons, the watch but in addition, with the colored touch screen that is located under Gorilla glass. Sapphire crystal glass as the competition is not have to. The quality of workmanship is neat, however, you need a tool to change the plastic bracelets, and the brightness of the display leaves much to be desired.

At the bottom of the green LEDs are for the measurement of the pulse, and a red LED to increase the measurement accuracy. Four metal bumps are used for coupling of the loading shell with a small contact buttons on a USB cable. The charging cradle and the watch reset to match each other, can be a test of patience. Inductive Charging would be the better solution. With a thickness of 13 millimeters, the Polar is hardly a shirt to wear, and the Creation of the band could go faster.

Who has taken the clock, marvel at the great Blank on the screen. You can customize the appearance of the watch a little, and with a swipe of your finger across the screen to switch between the display of the last sports activity, some heart rate data, the display of the whole day’s activity, as well as the training status. There isn’t much more, and here the opportunity was missed to provide additional information.

But what is yet to come. Because several features of the new Vantage will be delivered as a Software Update. Built-in receiver for GPS and Glonass, Galileo. A Barometer is available, Sensors for the measurement of the oxygen saturation. What the watch can currently: GPS-Navigation, measurement of heart rate variability, there is no stopwatch, no interval-Timer and not Push notifications from your Smartphone. The backlight of the display turns on at night with every movement, it sucks. Here it is, so waiting for new Firmware.

But now, enough griping: In practical use, when Running the Vantage V heart rate and distance measures very accurately, the GPS route recording is significantly better than with the expensive Garmin watch that won’t fail on a regular basis in the big city. A unique feature of the Polar comes in: it measures without any further accessories, the performance when Running, wherein the calculation is performed with the help of speed, acceleration, and climb. You can leave the values in absolute (watts) or relative in watts per kilogram of view, not only subsequently, but also during the run. You will see very nice speed and performance without time offset in parallel, the heart rate is lagging behind. Especially on hilly routes, the advantage of the measurement of performance is immediately apparent, and you can practice to achieve with a low pulse value, a higher level of performance.

Not only when Running Vantage wants to be a reliable companion, but also afterwards. The ongoing Balance between training load and recovery is a core part of the analysis Software, Flow, which runs in the Web Browser and in the App and on the iPad in a beautiful presentation. The current training will be compared with those of the last few months, recommendations for further activities to derive. What Polar is presenting here, in analysis, is extremely fascinating. With the Cardio Load of the cardiovascular response of a training session should be recorded, comparing, and the muscular load is specified as a quantity of mechanical energy produced during a run, also.