OVERVIEW: Polar V800 GPS watch for running and triathlon

In the world of GPS sports watches, there has always been a separate world - the world of Polar, with its own standards and its adherents. But lately, Polar has started to move in the right direction - the side where their watch works with accessories from other manufacturers, the side of Bluetooth. One of the first steps on this path was the Polar V800 watch, which was announced at CES 2014 and went on sale this spring.

This review will be a little unusual, because a lot of what has been written may not be relevant in a few months. Polar promises to keep adding more and more features to the V800.

To get started, let's tune in to a review by watching a Polar V800 commercial featuring 2013 Ironman Champion Frederic Van Lierde.

Inspired? Forward.

The watch comes in a small box with the modest signature "Chosen by champions" under the name.

The kit also includes a crocodile charger and a heart monitor (if you have chosen a model with the latter, I see no reason to do otherwise).

What immediately catches the eye and is felt in the hands is the build quality and materials, as well as the attention to detail. You feel an expensive thing that you don't want to give away. This is the same feeling when you get into an expensive car or pick up your iPhone. The watch is made of metal and glass, everything fits perfectly, no gaps or creaks.

The wristband provides the most comfortable wrist coverage

The latch is secure

The V800 has Bluetooth, through which they connect to different sensors (heart rate, cadence, speed, power) from both Polar and some other manufacturers, such as Wahoo, and you can also use it to sync your watch with the Polar Flow Mobile app. If you wish, you can do it the old fashioned way through a cable and a computer. As you've probably guessed by now, Polar V800 doesn't support ANT +, only Bluetooth - only hardcore.

Run

The Polar V800 suits me completely as a running watch, to say the least, it's the best running watch I've ever used today. Almost ideal. They sit comfortably, they don't press anywhere, they are practically not felt on the hand, the display is clear and readable in any conditions.

Let's start with the setup. In Polar V800, like most other modern GPS watches, you can customize both the number of fields displayed and the data displayed on them. Unfortunately, this is done, like many other watch settings, exclusively on the Polar Flow website, and then transferred to the watch the next time you sync. To do this, go to Polar Flow, click on your photo and select Sport Profiles.

Next, click on Edit under the required profile.

In order to change the displayed fields, expand the Training views item, where you can both edit existing screens and add new ones.

Also in the profile options you can configure:

Various alarms during training, for example, the volume of the sound signal or the presence of vibration, as well as messages after a certain time / distance / number of calories.
Automatic lap markers (can be adjusted according to distance, time or starting point if you are running in circles).
The heart rate zone in which you are exercising. If you set it, then the clock will beep every time you leave it.
Gestures. If you tap on the clock, then they can either mark the circle, or change the screen, or turn on the backlight (I chose the last option). Even in V800, you can configure one of the following actions: backlight, display of the past lap or time when you bring the watch to your chest, where the heart monitor is located. Nice little thing.
GPS options. Location data refresh rate (normal or energy saving, in the latter case V800 can work up to 50 hours without recharging) and enable / disable recording of altitude data.

We set the clock, synchronized, and you can run. To start training, press the Start button, select Run and wait until the GPS becomes OK. Polar V800's GPS signal is picked up very quickly, even if you have flown several thousand kilometers before. For a week I ran with them in Kiev, Istanbul, Washington and Boston, the first time after the flight it took them up to a minute to catch satellites, and then literally a few seconds. When all the satellites are found, press Start again and run.

To switch screens, use the Up / Down buttons on the right. To create a circle, press the Start button again, and to pause - Back. Here, it seems to me, everything is not entirely obvious, because usually there is a pause on the same button where the start is, and a new circle could be created with the Back button, which is also common. I wanted to pause several times and instead created a new circle. You can unpause by pressing Start, and the workout is ended and saved by holding Back.

Now my favorite part is interval training. This is often a weak point in some watches, such as the Suunto Ambit2, but the Polar V800 is doing great here, almost. You can create both simple and complex intervals, but this can be done exclusively on the Polar Flow website, unfortunately, there is no such functionality directly on the watch. First, go to the calendar (Diary) and click Add - Training target.

To create an interval running workout, select Running, the name, the date when we will run, and the time, and a little lower - the Phased tab.

Intervals (phases) can be created based on time or distance, we will have time - a complex fartlek 5 minutes + 3 minutes + 1 minute after a minute, three repetitions, so Duration. For each phase, you can choose the desired heart rate zone (with Polar everything revolves around the heart rate) or Free, if you are above all this. Unfortunately, you can't set pace as a goal yet, just heart rate. The next step starts either automatically or by clicking on Start, but only after the end of the time / distance allotted for it.

Of course, there is Warm-up and Cool-down, for which you can also select the time, distance and heart rate zone. After creating all the steps, select the number of repetitions, in our case three.

You can even create nested reps like 3x (3 × 15 '' / 1 '' + 5 × 1 '' / 2 '), so there are no fartlecks that you can't run with the Polar V800. This is our interval training.

We press Save, and it will appear in the calendar, and at the next synchronization - in the clock. To start training, go to the calendar, but this time in the V800.

An empty square will appear near the date for which we have assigned our fartlek, select it and see the training session (s) that are scheduled for that day.

We press Start and start running, as usual, only now you will have another screen showing the time until the end of the current phase, heart rate and heart rate zone. If you go outside the target zone, the watch starts vibrating and beeping like a cicada, forcing you to return to the frame.

Interestingly, unlike other watches, Polar V800 keeps two types of automatic laps during interval training: set intervals and a regular preset automatic lap (for example, every 1 km). At first, this is a little confusing, because you don't understand why the watch vibrates, but in fact the vibrations are different in duration and intensity, so over time you get used to it and distinguish different signals.

After completing a workout, the track can be synchronized either via a smartphone via Bluetooth, or via a PC via a cable. And view the results in Polar Flow on your computer.

Or in Polar Flow Mobile on your mobile.

I liked that it is possible to divide the workout into segments of 1, 2, 5 km directly in Polar Flow, even if you did not set automatic laps in the settings. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

Workouts can be exported in GPX and TCX formats, and the files can then be uploaded to Garmin Connect, Strava, Training Peaks - wherever you want. Unfortunately Garmin Connect doesn't understand the Polar TCX (everything is OK with the GPX). I won't judge who is to blame, but the fact that Strava and Training Peaks digest it perfectly, as it were, hints. And right there I want to say about one of the significant disadvantages of Polar - the lack of the ability to automatically export to other services, only manually through files, but I hope that this is only for now.

The V800 can measure cadence using an external Polar sensor that attaches to the shoe's laces. It is strange that the watch cannot measure it using the built-in accelerometer. The steps are counted in the activity tracker, but they are not able to divide their number by time. Hopefully this is also a temporary flaw that will be fixed in a future firmware update.

A cool feature of the V800 is its more advanced post workout recovery prediction. First, the watch not only tells you how many hours you will need to rest, but also draws a graph of the forecast recovery, indicating when you will be in what state in the coming days.

It also takes into account not only sports activities, but also daily ones, for example, walks (marked in blue).

That's all about running. Like I said, a near-perfect running watch.

Bike

As always, you can say almost the same thing about a bicycle as about running. In fact, this is the same activity, only instead of the pace, the default speed is displayed and the sensors to which the watch is connected change.

The cycling options on Polar Flow are practically the same as the running ones, only the setting of the power zones for the power meter is added.

By the way, about power meters: let me remind you that Polar V800 does not support ANT +, today it is the de facto standard for most sports sensors, including power sensors, and in the world of Bluetooth there are only one or two of them. But on September 30, Polar added support for the first power meter to the V800, the Polar Look Keo Power System.

In addition to power, the V800, of course, also supports speed / cadence sensors - both paired and separately. You can use a Polar kit, as I did.

Alternatively, alternatives from other manufacturers, such as Wahoo, are also possible. The main thing is that they support Bluetooth Smart. In any case, no speed / cadence sensors go anywhere on cold winter evenings on the machine.

The only note that concerns the bike part is the design of the Polar V800 strap: it is too tight, which makes it very difficult to quickly remove the watch from your hand and fasten it on the bike holder, or vice versa, and for those who count seconds in a triathlon, this is critical.

Swimming

The Polar V800 is one of the few sports watches that can measure your heart rate while swimming (when using the Polar H7 heart rate monitor). That, in principle, is all that they measure in water. But what about triathlon, multisport and other big words written on the box? That's how.

At the moment, the V800s are not able to measure pool strokes or GPS tracking while swimming in open water. The latter can be partially combated by forcibly turning on GPS for activity in Polar Flow, but the track will be far from ideal. The GPS signal is constantly lost when the hand with the watch is underwater, and Garmin and Suunto, for example, use special algorithms to build the correct track, which Polar V800 does not yet have.

Not everything is so smooth with the long-awaited heart rate measurement underwater, because you need to swim with a chest heart rate sensor, which constantly strives to slide down, especially when pushing off from the sides in the pool.

And now for the good. Everything that I wrote above (well, except for the heart rate sensor moving off my chest), it will soon be possible to cross out and forget. Polar promises to add pool swimming support to the V800 in mid-November and open water early next year.

The Polar V800 currently measures excellent strokes in the pool and in open water. Swimming style will be determined with almost 100% probability. The results of a swim in the pool look like this:

Calculating the SWOLF parameter has become a pleasant little thing for me. This is a figure that is obtained from the addition of the length of the pool in meters and the number of strokes to overcome the distance. The lower this figure is for you, the more economical your sailing. Triathletes will understand what we are talking about here;)

Triathlon

Polar V800 is conceived as a triathlon watch, but for the time being it is problematic to use it in this capacity due to the fact that it does not measure swimming, more precisely, it only measures the heart rate, if your heart monitor does not fall off in the process. But otherwise, the implementation is quite standard: choose a triathlon among the activities, swim, press the lower left button (Back) at the beginning of the transit zone and Start at the end when you start riding. The same is true when switching between cycling and running.

When Polar adds full support for open water swimming, the V800 will be a true triathlon watch, and a great one too.

Daily use and activity tracker

Polar V800 is not only a sports watch, but also a stylish everyday watch with a built-in activity tracker. If earlier in GPS watches they did not pay much attention to everyday use, some of them did not even have such functionality, now the manufacturers realized that they could make their product worn 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except for charging time). Polar is no exception. The clock has four options for displaying the main screen, however, the purpose of the screen with my name and surname remained a mystery to me. So as not to forget my name after the marathon?

Also, the watch has an alarm clock (yes, it should be noted separately, because some do not), which can even be set to repeat, including only on weekdays.

And Polar V800 is also a good activity tracker, counting steps, distance traveled, calories burned and even sleep, but despite the fact that Polar V800 counts steps, for some reason they cannot show their number directly on the watch. Here you can see only the recovery status and progress bar by activity without any values. In order to find out how many have walked today, you need to synchronize your watch with your smartphone or computer and look in Polar Flow or Polar Flow Mobile.

To sync with your smartphone, hold down the Back button and open the Flow Mobile app on your phone. In a few seconds, you will see a multi-colored circle visualizing your activity for today or for any other selected day (no, I did not sleep in the evening and did not run at night, this is all the time zone difference). Here you can also see the total data for the day by the number of steps, distance (if you tap on steps), calories, activity and sleep time. If you click on sleep, you can see in more detail how high-quality it was, 91% - not bad. There are also weekly and monthly statistics.

In the desktop Polar Flow, the activity tracker has a small window in the backyard, and even on the second tab. This is really a more mobile feature, few people study in detail the number of steps in the evening with a cup of coffee, looking at the computer screen.

In principle, Polar V800 satisfies almost all the needs of an activity tracker, except that there is not enough power, but this is for special fans to count everything. In the upcoming firmware Polar promises to make the watch itself more informative in this regard, so that the number of steps does not have to climb into the mobile every time.

Battery operation

According to the manufacturer, Polar V800 works in GPS mode from 13 to 50 hours, depending on the frequency of location updates: the less often, the longer, of course. In the daily watch + activity tracker mode, the V800 can last a whole month. With fairly active use (up to 10 hours of training per week), I charged them once every 7 to 8 days.

The charger for the V800 is made in the shape of a "crocodile" and is attached to the top of the watch.

I have never been able to fasten it the first time, it may take time to get used to it.

Miscellaneous

Polar V800 has a lot of different niceties. For example, the watch will tell you if you started to run, but did not press Start, and if you move while searching for a GPS signal, on the contrary, it is advised to stop in order to catch satellites faster.
There is Airplane mode, the purpose of which remains a mystery to me. The only thing this mode does is prevent you from starting a new workout or syncing your watch to your phone via Bluetooth.

Polar V800 Airplane mode
Polar V800 has a Back to start function that will guide you to the starting point if you get lost during training. It turns on in the settings of sports profiles as a separate screen.

Polar V800 Back to start

Minuses

Lack of measurement of everything related to swimming, except for the heart rate (yet).
There is no possibility of automatic export of activities to other services, only manually via GPX and TCX files.
There is no automatic change of time zones and time correction via GPS.
Due to the design of the strap, the watch can be difficult to remove and put on quickly, and speed is critical when shifting onto the bike and back onto the arm during a triathlon.

Output

Polar V800 is two watches at once. On the one hand, those that we have today, and on the other, those that will be when Polar rolls over all the promised updates (swimming, an improved activity tracker, perhaps a cadence without a footpod, etc.). Today it is an excellent running watch, one of the best in my opinion, and a very good watch for cycling, but I can't call it a triathlon watch due to the lack of a full-fledged swimming measurement. The V800 can also be useful outside of sports by measuring daily activity and sleep. And in the future, they will keep getting better, getting new and new functions.