Polar has announced a handful of new watches today, but the main headliner is the new Polar Grit X Pro. It technically comes in two flavors – the base Grit X Pro which includes not only a new look, but a pile of new software features. And then the Grit X Pro Titan, which includes all those same new features and new look – but also a lower weight and leather strap.
Within the new software features, Polar has added new dashboards that appeal to the outdoors realm, including a daylight dashboard, as well as an altimeter & compass dashboard. They’ve also added a new route profile page, as well as TrackBack feature. Beyond that, the company has pulled in virtually all of the features of the Polar Vantage V2 that it introduced last fall, plus new features added from the Polar Ignite 2 this past spring – including heart rate sharing/broadcasting.
Note that Polar sent over a Polar Grit X Pro Titan media loaner, which I’ve been using for a bit to put through its paces. Once this review is done, I’ll get it boxed back up and sent back to them. After which I’ll likely go out and buy my own for future use/comparisons. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter which makes the site ad-free, while also getting access to a mostly weekly video series behind the scenes of the DCR Cave. And of course, it makes you awesome.
With that, let’s get into it.
What’s New:
The Polar Grit X Pro & Grit X Pro Titan add a number of new features compared to the original Grit X. Most of these features are ones that Polar has introduced on other watches over the past year, primarily from the Vantage V2 last fall. However, others were introduced this past spring on the Polar Ignite 2 (such as Heart Rate broadcasting). Still, there are some brand-new features not yet seen on other Polar devices. Virtually all of these new ones get added to the Vantage V2 on October 20th in a firmware update. Meanwhile, the original Polar Grit X will get most of these features at the end of the year (see the end of this section for the full list).
Here’s what’s new in the Grit X Pro compared to the original Grit X:
Adds new sunrise/sunset/daylight/etc dashboard
Adds new altimeter/compass/GPS coordinates dashboard
Adds new route selection profile page (with map, elevation profile, hydration/nutrition reminders in one spot)
Adds new in-workout route elevation profile page
Adds further ‘back to start’ routing options including reverse route, beeline, and traditional track back
Adds HR broadcasting (HR sharing)
Adds Power ZonePointer
Adds Orthostatic Test
Adds Leg Recovery Test
Adds Cycling Test
Adds Running Test
Adds Dashboard View Customization
Adds Music Controls
Adds Recovery Pro (Training Load Pro was already there previously)
Adds new backlight settings
Adds Zoom in/out on route trail (breadcrumb)
Adds compass etching around bezel
Added ability to use Galileo & QZSS satellite systems
Changed to new Sapphire glass for better durability
Polar Grit X Pro Titan only: New 12% lighter case than Grit X Pro, new titanium case
Polar Grit X Pro Titan only: Added leather strap (also includes secondary FKM rubber strap)
Polar confirmed the optical HR sensor, GPS, and display all remain the same as the Grit X.
Price for the Grit X Pro rises to $499 (from $429)
Price for the Grit X Pro Titan is $599
Battery life remains identical to the original Grit X at 100hrs of GPS, or 7 days standby.
Regular Polar watchers will note that almost all of these were around new Polar watches over the past year. The entirely new features from this list are:
Adds new sunrise/sunset/daylight/etc dashboard
Adds new altimeter/compass/GPS coordinates dashboard
Adds new Route selection profile page (with map, elevation profile,
hydration/nutrition reminders in one spot)
Adds new in-workout route elevation profile page
Adds further ‘back to start’ routing options including reverse route, beeline, and traditional track back
Adds ability to load route mid-workout
Adds ability to change brightness setting
Polar uses the term ‘Dashboard’ where other companies might use widget. Either way, it’s basically a view from the main watch page that doesn’t require starting a sport. Here is the new sunrise/sunset/daylight dashboard. First the main page, and then the details section:
And then here’s the new altimeter/compass dashboard, as well as details section which includes a historical view as well as quick-access ability to calibrate both compass and altimeter. Additionally, it’ll show your exact GPS coordinates quickly:
Then there’s the new route selection page. This appears when you choose a route breadcrumb, it’ll now give you a map and elevation profile, from Komoot routes. Additionally, there’s a handy option right there to add hydration/nutrition reminders (whereas in the past you had to do so separately).
And then during a route/workout you’ve got a new elevation profile page, showing the full route and profile and your position on it:
In Routing, there’s additional mid-route options on how to handle going back to the start. You’ve now got three options in total: You can reverse the route (as planned), you can track back (ignoring the planned route and following what you actually did), or you can go via ‘beeline’. Note that these are sorta split between different menu sections – but nonetheless all there. Plus, you can now add/change a route entirely mid-workout/activity.
With that, we’ll cover the remainder of the newish features throughout the rest of the review.
And finally, for lack of anywhere also to stick it, here’s a quick summary from Polar, on their original Grit X update plans, slated for the end of this year (2021):
Adding Music controls
Adding Running performance test
Adding Possibility to change route during the training session
Adding HR Sharing/Broadcasting mode
Adding Weekly-summary watch face view
Adding Power based training targets
Adding ZonePointer for power and speed zones
Adding Last lap details to training views
Adding Ability to turn off your watch
Adding Ability to perform a factory reset on the watch
Adding “Your name” watch face view
Adding Ability to manually skip a phase during phased session
Adding See the distance covered and time elapsed when pausing a session
Adding Silence a phone call from the watch
Adding Fully customizable quick settings menu which conveniently gives you access to flight mode, do not disturb, alarm, and the countdown timer by swiping down from the top of the display in time view.
Phew. So basically, the original Grit X isn’t getting the cycling and running test, leg recovery test, orthostatic test, and the new reverse route features. Nor the elevation profile aspects pre/mid-route, or the Recovery Pro pieces from the V2. And finally, not the daylight or compass dashboards.
Ok, let’s get into the review.
The Basics:
To begin, the Polar Grit X Pro includes both a touch screen as well as dedicated buttons. With a watch designed for more rugged outdoor use, I appreciate not being forced into using the touchscreen – and in fact, rarely did so. For mid-interval workouts or anything else involving wetness, using the buttons was efficient and quick. Each of the buttons had both good feel, as well as the very slight haptic vibration from inside the watch when pressed (as a confirmation you did indeed press the button).
The button grip material remains the same from the original Grit X, however the buttons are now silver. This makes them easier to visually spot, whereas the original Grit X had the buttons the same as the case color on the black edition.
In any event, as noted you can swipe with the touchscreen. It’s fine, but nothing to write home about. As with the original Grit X and Vantage V2, operations still seem a bit laggy in some cases. For example, in my workout yesterday, it took three seconds each time I pressed the lap button until the actual lap banner confirmation came up. That’s a heck of a long time in an interval workout to not be sure whether or not the interval ‘took’.
In terms of bands, the Grit X series uses 22mm bands. With the Grit X Pro Titan, you’ll get both a leather band, as well as a rubber band. So I’d run with the rubber one, and then use the leather one for daily wear. Or sometimes I’d just leave the rubber one on, because I was too lazy to switch it. The watch uses a simple quick-release mounting system, so it only takes about 2-5 seconds per side to swap. Here’s a little gallery of the straps:
Flipping the watch over you’ve got Polar’s optical sensor, officially known as the Precision Prime sensor. This arrangement is identical to that of the Grit X and Vantage V2, and is seen as an evolution of the original Vantage V Precision Prime sensor arrangement. With the original Vantage V there were 9 LED’s (5 green, 4 red, + 1 unused yellow). But the Vantage V2/Grit X/Grit X Pro there’s now 10 LED’s used (5 red, 4 orange/yellow, 1 green). Typically speaking, the different color LED’s handle different skin colors better. But more on accuracy later on.
Back on the display of the watch, it’s the same as the original Grit X. The main difference though outside of sport mode is that you’ve got new dashboard pages, and you can customize which dashboard pages are enabled. That’s done by pressing the lower left button, and then going into ‘Watch face views’. Here there’s a list of which ones you have enabled/disabled:
The watch face views have various information on the main page, with more detailed information when you tap into it. For example, here’s the activity one, both the main view, and then the deeper view. Each of the main views for all dashboard pages is meant to operate as the main watch face, so you still get the time/date/etc…
All of this information is then accessible from Polar Flow on their smartphone apps, as well as online via the Polar Flow website.
For example, here’s the heart rate one, showing my heart rate details for the day – including workouts:
You can see this within the Heart Rate dashboard view on the watch too:
Same goes for sleep:
And then sleep details up on Polar Flow. In general I found it did a pretty good job of picking up my exact sleep times, as well as sleep disturbances. I don’t have any method of validating sleep phases though, so I can’t speak to that particular component. Albeit, some of the text in this section, namely the red text can be tough to read.
I outlined the new dashboards in the ‘What’s New’ section (the daylight one and baro/compass one), so I won’t rehash those here. Beyond that, there’s also a few more including the weekly training summary, Training Load Pro, Last Workout, and Weather.
At the bottom of each one there will be a red dot for any smartphone notifications. As with most smartwatches, these notifications are fairly basic. It simply shows the message content, and you can clear the message, which also clears it from your phone. But you can’t respond to it (such as for text messages).
You can toggle whether or not you want to receive notifications, as well as a slew of other features within the settings menu. The settings menu also controls changing the recovery mode from Nightly Recharge to Recovery Pro, (more on that in the sports section). You can also pair sensors in here, plus disable features like the 24×7 heart rate tracking (if you’re trying to eke out every last bit of battery life).
Lastly, there’s the newish music control feature.
This allows you to control music on your phone. You’ll access this by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. You’ll need to have a music app open on your phone for this to work. The Polar Grit X Pro series *NOT* have any music storage on it. So it’s *ONLY* controlling music already on your phone.
I appreciate that it does pull the correct music service icon. So for example, you can see I’m playing Spotify, and it shows that icon. Versus if I crack open YouTube it’ll show that. Technically speaking it’s not straight music control, but really ‘media control’, so it’ll play/skip/etc any media service that’s playing on your phone (or at least the iPhone).
I can skip/rewind/pause/play on the main screen, as well as tap the volume icon to increase volume:
There’s no other options beyond that, such as selecting songs or such. It’s just iterating through what you have – pretty similar to what buttons on a pair of headphones would do.
And just for the sake of semi-related clarity, there’s no NFC payments on the Polar Grit X Pro. I don’t believe there’s any hardware in there, and as with the Polar Vantage V2, it’d be incredibly difficult for them to implement contactless payments without having a partner of some sort doing the leg work (which would take years), and I’m not aware of any mainstream/widespread partners that aren’t already tied up in exclusivity agreements with other wearable companies. This is unfortunately a case where the financial industry has made it challenging for any new or smaller companies to play in this space, due to the way payment processors work. In any case, if you’re looking at this watch, you’re likely doing so more for the sport features than the ability to tap for payments at Dunkin Donuts (as amazing as that is).
In terms of battery life, Polar has a claim of up to 100hrs in the longest GPS modes, but for most people you’ll be using the standard GPS mode which is 40 hours. Polar also claims 7 days of standby battery life. In my case I was using GLONASS GPS at about an hour or so per day and the battery burn per activity seemed normal with what I’d expect (in other words, nothing crazy). Same goes for regular wear.
So with that, let’s talk sports.
Sports Features:
I suppose if I was into saving time, I’d just copy and paste my Polar Vantage V2 review into this sports section and call it done. As by and large, it’s virtually identical. Essentially, Polar has taken the upper-end sports and recovery features of the Vantage V2 and stuffed it into the Grit X Pro. However, that wouldn’t cover everything, as the Grit X Pro now adds a handful of new features around routing and navigation. So while I briefly touch on those in this section, most of those are instead in the next section dedicated to routing newness.
To start a sport/workout on the Grit X Pro, you’ll tap the lower left button, which opens up the sports menu. You can store up to 20 sports here, each with its own set of customizations – like data fields or automatic lap preferences.
Polar has some 100 different sport profiles you can choose from. Most of these focus more on calorie burn specifics than capturing exact movements. So for example, practically speaking there’s no technical differences between the Road Running and Trail Running profiles. But it allows you to better categorize your workouts, and perhaps have different preferences for each.
Here’s a look at the different data page fields options. You can also change things like GPS recording rates and the altimeter. This can be useful if you need to conserve battery for really long activities (as in, more than 30-40 hours). Otherwise, I’d strongly recommend you stick with the 1-second recording rate as any other recording rate will significantly reduce the accuracy of the GPS tracks.
All of this can then be synced with the watch via either Bluetooth Smart or USB to your computer. So throughout the day it’ll sync via Bluetooth, whereas if you were to plug it in to charge, and that cable happened to be plugged into your computer – then it’ll sync that way.
With that all settled, back on the watch you’ll see your heart rate and GPS status displayed on a given sport profile. If you’ve selected an indoor profile (like spinning), then it won’t utilize GPS. Similarly, if you’ve got any sensors it’ll automatically connect to ones you’ve paired up previously – such as a heart rate strap.
The Grit X Pro supports the same sensor types as the original Grit X, and the Vantage series. These are:
– Bluetooth Smart Heart Rate Straps
– Bluetooth Smart Cycling Power Meters
– Bluetooth Smart Cycling Cadence & Speed Sensors
– Bluetooth Smart Running Footpods
– Bluetooth Smart Running Power Meters (it also includes a built-in one)
From a cycling power meter standpoint, it’s more iffy unfortunately. I wasn’t able to pair to a Peloton DFC Bluetooth Smart power broadcaster (every other watch I’ve used had no problems here), nor was I able to pair properly to a PowerTap P1 or P2 power meters (it only saw the left pedal, and then failed to pair with either). On trainers, I was able to pair to a Wahoo KICKR 2020/V5 properly. There’s no support for ANT+ in the Polar wearables. Though you can pair multiple types of sensors to the watch easily via the sensors menu. So you can effectively save multiple bikes’ sensor configurations, or multiple heart rate straps, etc…
Meanwhile, the upper right settings icon on the sport profile allows you to select routes, add timers, and load favorited (structured) workouts. It’s also where you can toggle the settings to get upwards of 100 hours of GPS battery life.
With that, we can go ahead and load up the route and/or start our workout (we’ll talk about routing in the next section). You’ll now see your data pages and data fields as you’ve configured them for that sport profile. If using GPS outdoors you’ll get speed/pace and distance, as well as any altimeter-related details like elevation/ascent/descent. Essentially all the usual bits you’d expect from any GPS watch over the last decade or so. Here’s a few looks at those data pages.
In terms of visibility, the Polar Grit X Pro is ‘fine’. Not incredibly clear, but not bad either. Just sorta the middle of the road. I’ve now run through a fugly hard rain/hail storm, run at night, and mid-day, all without any issues in visibility for my eyes. Though, my eyesight is pretty good. For rest-of-day usage, the screen is always-on, so it doesn’t shut off to save battery life like some fancier display watches do. Ultimately, Polar is saving screen brightness/brilliance for battery life. The idea being you don’t need to charge this watch every day, but can go a week or so before a charge. That *IS* a core reason people buy these over watches with fancier displays.
Back into our workout, with the Grit X Pro you’ll get running power natively from the wrist, just as with the original Vantage V series (and the original Grit X). It uses the accelerometer in the watch on your wrist to make those calculations. That has its pros and cons as I’ve outlined previously. So that’ll show up automatically as a data field, as well as later in your workout data files (shown as wattage below –496w in one of my tempo workout intervals):
If you’re running/riding in a location with hills involved, you can utilize the Hill Splitter feature. This feature tracks each rep of a hill, without any pre-planning required. So it’ll automatically detect when you ascend or descend a hill, and then track the distance and time of that climb/descent. It’ll also count the reps of ascent/descent, which then is summarized on both the watch and app afterwards.
As you start going up a climb, once you hit around the 8-10m of elevation gain marker, it’ll trigger an ascent, and the screen changes to the below screen which shows how far you’ve run/ridden/hiked up that climb, as well as the duration. And of course, you see which number hill this is (e.g. 1st ascent). Note that Hill Splitter does NOT reference any saved course/route data. It’s purely off the cuff style hill counting. That has its pros and cons. It’s great for impromptu weeknight training sessions where you just pick a hill and start doing repeats without creating/loading a course. Inversely, it’s not terribly useful in the Alps or something where you’ve got massive climbs and want to know how much ascent is left – it won’t tell you that. Nor does it leverage any of the new elevation profile bits.
Now, once you’re done with a workout/activity, you’ll get a slate of metrics on the watch itself, here’s a quick gallery of those:
After which it’ll sync to Polar Flow via phone/USB, where you can view the same workout there as well. It can also be configured to automatically be synced to various Polar Flow partners, like Strava or TrainingPeaks, depending on how you’ve got your account set up.
Now one of the core reasons to buy a higher-end watch like this is to balance training load with recovery, and Polar has a slate of features aimed at that. The original Grit X already had Polar’s Training Load Pro and FitSpark features, but they’re fairly important, so I’ll dive into them here as well – even if briefly.
Polar’s FitSpark is essentially a virtual coach that has no overarching fitness/seasonal goal in mind, except to give you a custom workout of the day…every day. But the biggest and most important takeaway is that it looks at your nightly recharge scores and underlying sleep data to determine whether or not you should be doing anything at all. Polar will look at that sleep data and give you a go/no-go type guidance, and then depending on what your greater training data looks like, will also give you specific workouts to do.
Remember, this isn’t tied to a plan. Meaning, you’re not tied to some 10KM race plan. This is basically saying ‘Yo, I know a scary amount about you, here’s four options for workouts today. Pick one.’ Oh, right, yes, it gives you options. Numerous options. Pick your poison:
And then, for each of those options, it’ll give you the specific steps and guidance in the watch itself. There are cardio-focused running workouts with different intensities. And then there are core type workouts too, and for those, it’ll give you the specific moves to do, along with animations and text for each one:
But let’s say you choose the cardio workout, go run an hour or so, and then finish up. At that point, the watch gives you new suggestions. Specifically ones around active recovery such as stretching and related core workouts that’ll help and support that initial workout.
Again, keep in mind the goal of this function isn’t to be an endurance trail running coach. It’ll suck at that. Instead, the goal is actually more applicable to date: To keep you fit and push you slightly with mostly varied workouts across disciplines (such as flexibility and strength).
Now that’s different than Polar’s Training Load Pro, which is designed to be more on the endurance athlete side. This dashboard will show your Cardio Load Status, which shows you whether you’ve got too much or too little load. You can see this from the watch face, and then dive into it to get more details:
Strain is a metric showing the average daily load from the past 7 days. Whereas Tolerance shows your average daily load from the past 28 days. So basically you can look at those two values and see the ratio as part of the number above it, such that it keeps things in check. Go too high, and you’re prone to injury. Too low, and you’re not going to make gains. In the middle, and life is grand.
You can also view this on the Polar Flow app:
Now, when it comes to Recovery Tracking, you’ve got a binary choice between using ‘Nightly Recharge’, which is mostly focused on sleep tracking, or using Recovery Pro. You have to select one. By default, it’s Nightly Recharge, but you can change it in the settings:
However, selecting Recovery Pro means that you’ll need to break out that chest strap at least three mornings per week and do the Orthostatic test. The chest strap is required for more accurate HRV related data that’s used for making the recovery determinations. Somewhat handily, you can even specify exactly which mornings it’ll prompt you to do this.
In my case, I just used the Nightly Recharge function – though that too will require at least three days of activity before it starts giving you results. So just keep that in mind.
Next in the ‘are you ready’ section are the additional tests. And one of the new features of the Polar Grit X Pro is the addition of far more testing options. Polar introduced this new suite of tests back on the Vantage V2, and we’ve seen the Grit X Pro adopt all these. Essentially this allows you to do a Cycling FTP test, a Running VO2Max test, a Leg Recovery Test, and an Orthostatic Test. Previously you could only do a generic ‘Fitness Test’ (which you can still do). All these tests are accessed via the lower left menu:
Now I previously did all these tests as part of my Vantage V2 review, so I’ll refer you to that deep-dive section there where I iterate through how all of them work (and suffer through them). But ultimately, it’ll re-iterate the same thing I said (except, swapping out 2021 for 2020). In 2021, most platforms can do this sort of testing automatically based on your existing workouts. Sure, if you need a one-off test – then go forth. But assuming you’re putting in the mileage, then most training platforms can relatively easily take your existing cycling/running data and determine your VO2Max and FTP. In fact, Polar’s own platform estimates VO2Max after your workouts anyway. This tries to be slightly more accurate.
Now the leg recovery test is indeed something that’s standalone and more valuable, as there’s not much out there that’s going to determine that purely from training data. As leg recovery is far more heavily tied to proper hydration/nutrition recovery, than straight heart-rate driven recovery. And further, the leg jump test data is actually fed into Polar’s FitSpark feature, which then can use it to determine which workouts it’ll give to you next.
Finally, rounding home there’s the newish HR sharing (re-broadcasting) feature. I first tried this out on the Polar Ignite 2 this past spring, and Polar committed to bringing it to the Polar Grit X and Vantage V2 by the end of the year (which it’s doing). And of course, the Grit X Pro gets it out of the gate. This feature allows you to broadcast your heart rate over Bluetooth Smart to other apps/devices, like Zwift or a bike computer.
To pair this up you’ll choose a sport mode and then select the upper left button to see HR Sharing:
From there it’ll go into a broadcast mode where it’ll show up on other devices as accessible/pairable. So now on the other device, you’ll select the Polar Grit X Pro.
Then hopefully, it’ll ‘lock’ the pairing. Just as back this past spring, I found this a bit finicky. Most other devices don’t do a ‘pairing’, but just broadcast (because as the history of the world has shown, pairing can be finicky). Still, once I did the open/close dance a few times, it’d stick.
And from there on, it’ll broadcast (share) my HR. In my case, I broadcast it in Zwift.
I thought it was mildly interesting that the first 3 minutes actually showed slightly different values, and then it locked on identical for the rest of this. I have no logical explanation for this – I never touched the settings after pairing, and in fact this is a *BRAND NEW* iPad on its first day of life that’s never been paired with any other sensor, so this is literally the only sensor it knows its short existence. Below is a chart showing the internal Polar Grit X Pro recorded value, versus what Zwift showed/recorded for my ride. It appears Zwift lagged slightly during the two main portions of the ride where I significantly shifted heart rate. I don’t know if this is a Zwift issue, or a Polar issue.
Of course, my Zwift session last night highlighted Polar’s true problem here for cyclists: Lack of ANT+ support. Or, if they want to blame-shift, lack of pretty much any other trainer company supporting dual Bluetooth Smart connections. But mostly, this is Polar’s fault.
In my case, I was riding on the Tacx NEO 2 smart trainer at home. That trainer supports a single Bluetooth Smart connection (only the Wahoo KICKR 2018/2020/CORE support dual connections). As such, that single Bluetooth Smart connection was already being used by my iPad for running Zwift. But fear not – I’ve got another power meter on that bike! I’ve got a pair of PowerTap P2 pedals.
So I tried that next. Except that didn’t work. Because Polar doesn’t support that for reasons that don’t really make much sense. It’s a pretty standard issue implementation of the Bluetooth Smart power meter profile. Thus, I was out of power meters it could pair to, and couldn’t get my power data into my workout. And this is hardly a new problem, there’s numerous power meters I have that Polar won’t connect to over Bluetooth Smart for unknown reasons.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m super happy that Polar added the HR sharing feature, but given Polar’s hardware undoubtedly supports ANT+ under the covers (due to the chipsets they’re using), they really need to support it on these high-end watches. I totally get it that ANT+ has a limited future, but that doesn’t change the reality of today’s landscape of hardware in the smart trainer realm. There are dozens of units of smart trainers and smart bikes, and only a couple of them (literally) support dual-Bluetooth channels. Just my two cents.
With that, let’s talk routing.
New Routing Features:
With the Grit X Pro, Polar has tweaked the way routing works on the Polar Grit X Pro as well as Vantage V2 series. While I could probably have rolled this into the sports section, things were getting a bit unwieldy in duration there. So instead, I’ve spun it out into this more dedicated section.
To start on routes, those sync in from Polar Flow (as with before). This is where you can either create routes directly on Polar Flow, or pull them in from Komoot. Unfortunately, Strava Routes aren’t supported at this time (nor any other platform). Within your account you’ll need to toggle which routes you want synced to your watch.
It’s in this space that you can sync Strava Live Segments as well. Note that you can store up to 100 ‘things’ on the Polar Grit X Pro, meaning a combination of up to 100 Routes, Segments, or Structured Workouts.
As noted earlier, you’ll access the routes and workouts from within the sports menu, and then the upper left button to access the settings icon. And this is where you’ll find the first of the new features, the ability to see the route map and elevation profile. First though, you’ll choose to open a route like normal:
Then from there, it’ll take a few extra seconds to open the route up, but will show a little breadcrumb trail along with the scale along the bottom (the distance of the route is shown up above):
If you swipe/scroll down, you’ll then see the elevation profile displayed:
Unfortunately it won’t show you any stats about that elevation profile in terms of total estimated ascent or descent – which seem like kinda important features on such a page. Still, it’s a good start.
At the bottom of that page they’ve consolidated the ability to add hydration/nutrition alerts. Previously you had to dip into the menus again to add these. Now it’s all part of the route workflow.
With that, we’ll get started on a workout by pressing start. Now, in the workout you’ve got a new elevation profile data page. The numbers at the bottom in green are the total ascent and descent remaining/expected on the route, whereas the numbers in white are your current ascent/descent.
From that data page you can calibrate the altitude (useful if you come along a sign-post on a mountainside with the known elevation). As noted above, this page won’t show you exact climbs within the route like other platforms, but just gives you the overall route profile. In theory it’ll show you your position along the route, and portions completed, like so:
However, in practice I’ve found it iffy if it actually does that. On some routes it didn’t, and others did (such as when I reversed route). Hopefully that’s just a minor rendering bug that they can sort out. You can see below how on this route, it didn’t at all, despite being halfway through this route and on-course:
In any case, the newness doesn’t end here. If you switch to the breadcrumb trail page, you’ll notice you’ve now got a new option to reverse the route, allowing you to track back towards the start. So start from the breadcrumb trail as before (there are no underlying maps here, just a dot of trails and notifications for when to turn)
Now you see one option above, but technically speaking, there are now three ‘get me back’ type options, they are:
Reverse Route (middle right button): This will reverse the planned route (irrespective of what you actually did)
Back to start – Beeline (pause, then upper left button): As the bee (or crow) flies, straight back to start
Back to start – Track back (pause, then upper left button): This will follow your actual hiked/etc route back, including any errors you made
Here you can see the other two options up in the paused menu:
In addition, Polar has introduced one last option here, which is to actually change out the route entirely mid-workout. Previously you couldn’t do this. To do this you’ll pause, and then tap the upper left button, and then choose a different route. This allows you to start that route from the beginning or a mid-point.
In the past I’ve routinely made backup/secondary routes for longer hikes and changed the route mid-hike. In fact just last month I did this hiking a ridgeline in Chamonix. I had our planned longer route on the ridgeline, but then the weather turned and it wasn’t likely going to be safe to be on that ridgeline as long as we needed to be to complete that planned route. But anticipating this (or, just us being tired), I had created some shorter variants that took us down lower into the trees earlier. That’s where changing a route mid-activity is useful.
In that particular case on that day, the secondary options I had created still weren’t aggressive enough (we needed to descend *THEN*, not another 30-45 minutes later which is what I planned for my backup routes), but the concept is still valid/useful.
In any event, I think all these changes that Polar has made are a great example of just how challenging it is to make a watch in this space. These are all examples of features that are “must haves” for some folks, but “don’t care at all” for others. And the only way to increase market share in a space like this is checking off these types of features. I’m glad to see Polar is recognizing that and executing on it.
(And again, these new features will all come to the Polar Vantage V2 in a firmware update, currently slated for October 20th.)
GPS & HR Accuracy:
There’s likely no topic that stirs as much discussion and passion as GPS accuracy. A watch could fall apart and give you dire electrical shocks while doing so, but if it shows you on the wrong side of the road? Oh hell no, bring on the fury of the internet!
GPS accuracy can be looked at in a number of different ways, but I prefer to look at it using a number of devices in real-world scenarios across a vast number of activities. I use 2-6 other devices at once, trying to get a clear picture of how a given set of devices handles conditions on a certain day. Conditions include everything from tree/building cover to weather.
Over the years, I’ve continued to tweak my GPS testing methodology. For example, I don’t place two units next to each other on my wrists, as that can impact signal. But often I’ll simply carry other units by the straps, or attach them to the shoulder straps of my hydration backpack. Wearing multiple watches on the same wrist is well known to impact optical HR accuracy.
Meanwhile, for HR accuracy testing I’m typically wearing a chest strap (usually the Garmin HRM-PRO, Wahoo TICKR, or Polar H10) as well as another optical HR sensor watch on the bicep (lately the Whoop band and/or Polar Verity Sense). Note that the numbers you see in the upper right corner are *not* the averages, but rather just the exact point my mouse is sitting over. Note all this data is analyzed using the DCR Analyzer, details here.
To begin, we’ll start with an interval/tempo run I did this past weekend. This had an initial warm-up, followed by a small pile of 800’s with 90-seconds recovery. Then from there I did a sustained 10-minute tempo section at 5KM race pace. Here’s the data set, so let’s look at the heart rate first:
You can see the Polar Grit X Pro’s optical HR sensor in green there, and how during the warm-up it struggled a bit. While the overall trend was in the right direction, there were two times it clearly lost the plot fairly substantially. Once I got into the 4×800’s, it was mostly good, save between interval #1 and #2, where it seemed to miss the recovery. Finally, during the sustained tempo portion of this workout, it was perfectly fine.
Looking at the GPS tracks for this workout, at a high level, it and the other watches all seemed to do fine, including through sections that had both tall buildings, large highway overpasses, and some tree sections.
However, there were a few occasions where the Polar Grit X Pro GPS track was a bit offset in mostly minor ways, such as this portion here:
None of these sections were major fails, more minor GPS offsets for shorter periods of time.
Here’s another running workout, this one with shorter intervals of higher intensity. It’s also exclusively done in the woods, partially on trails. More on the GPS bits in a second.
You’ll notice that during the warm-up the GRIT X Pro is perfectly fine here, and for most of the intervals it holds on correctly. Keeping in mind these 45-60 second long intervals are tricky for any HR sensor, but especially optical HR sensors. Still, after the first short one, it largely keeps track, save the middle one where it entirely missed it:
On the GPS side of things, as noted, this was mostly in the forest. And on the whole, like with the first run above, it was largely the same as the other units, including a COROS Vertix 2 and a Garmin FR745.
Still, as with before, there were sporadic cases where the GRIT X Pro just meandered a bit off by itself. Like it needed some brief alone time:
None of these were drastic of course, but certainly notable as a pattern:
And then one final run here, an increasing tempo run on relatively straightforward terrain/conditions. First up, the heart rate side.
In general, pretty good here from the GRIT X Pro. You see some minor variability though, just like I saw on the original Grit X and the Vantage V2, which share the same HR sensor. By variability, you see around the 22-minute marker and a bit after that how it just wobbles slightly. It’s not major, but is notable.
Also notable is the first time I’ve ever seen the Apple Watch SE completely lose the plot from the beginning – that’s a crazy solid fail there.
On the flip side, looking at GPS, no real issues here. All the units agreed pretty happily, including again a number of large highway underpasses and a few tall buildings.
You can see in both these sections of larger tunnels/underpasses, we had no problems in terms of any wonky GPS or anything. Nice and clean.
Next, taking things indoors we’ve got a Zwift workout from the other night. This is compared against the Polar H10 chest strap, a Whoop 3.0 band, and an Apple Watch SE. In this case, the optical reading of the Grit X Pro was spot-on with everyone else I trust. Though, as noted earlier, there was a very slight discrepancy in what was transmitted from the Grit X Pro to Zwift using the HR sharing feature (only at the beginning and end).
But again, in terms of accuracy of the recorded data on the watch, it was spot on.
And then we’ve got another indoor workout, this time on the Peloton Bike, and it too was pretty close. However, again we see those little HR wobbles of the yellow line which indicate a bit more variability than I’d have liked – especially given how ‘easy’ indoor bike trainer workouts should be for optical sensors (as there’s no road vibrations to contend with).
Finally, note that my travel these last few weeks didn’t include any mountain spots – so from an elevation testing perspective, it’s not something I could do with extensive rigor. Instead, welcome to the flats of Amsterdam. However I would note that in this simple bake-off between the COROS Vertix 2, the Garmin FR745, and the Polar Grit X Pro, they were relatively similar in terms of trends, but were offset from reality. In this case, I let each watch figure out my current elevation using its own internal methods (which is pretty much using GPS first, as you’d normally do unless you knew the exact starting elevation).
My actual elevation for this route matched the FR745 one, which is basically hovering between 0m and slightly below sea level (again, Amsterdam). The Grit X was offset about 25m high, and the COROS Vertix 2 offset about 70m high.
Overall, I’d say GPS and HR accuracy are mostly good – but with some minor caveats. For the GPS side, it occasionally drifts off, though does usually correct itself within a few hundred meters. Whereas on the HR side, in some intervals it’ll lose the plot, but also usually corrects itself. Unlike some other watches I’ve reviewed recently, it doesn’t lose it forever. It always finds its way back to goodness in relatively short order.
The other important thing is that if you don’t find the minor heart rate variances acceptable, you can easily pair a chest strap to it to increase the accuracy.
(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy sections were created using the DCR Analyzer tool. It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, GPS tracks, and plenty more. You can use it as well for your own gadget comparisons, more details here.)
Product Comparison:
I’ve added the Polar Grit X Pro into the product comparison database, allowing you to compare it against other products that I’ve reviewed in the past. For the purposes of below I’ve compared it against the COROS Vertix 2, Garmin Fenix 6, and Suunto 9 Peak – which are the ones most people will be comparing it against from a sports/fitness standpoint. One could argue perhaps the COROS APEX Pro instead of Vertix 2, but I suspect most people will compare it to the Vertix 2. As always, if you want to compare it against other products, you can always make your own charts in the product database.
And again – don’t forget you can make your own product comparison charts comparing any products using the product comparison database.
Summary:
The Grit X Pro is a modest upgrade from the original Grit X, almost seemingly aimed at allowing Polar to offer a nicer and more adventurous looking watch with all the features of the Vantage V2, but that doesn’t carry the plastic Vantage V2 looks. This transition shouldn’t be surprising, after all, we’ve seen it play out at every other sports watch manufacturer including COROS and Garmin, and to a lesser degree Suunto and even Wahoo. Suunto already had most of those looks, so it was more about going on a diet there. In that respect, I think Polar succeeded. While the original Grit X took the crown as my favorite looking Polar wearable, the Grit X Pro Titan easily edges it out. It not only looks more premium, but now matches that feature-wise too.
The challenge of course, as is always the case in this price range (upwards of $599), is our competitors. At this price point, you’re battling not just COROS and their Vertix 2, but you’re battling Garmin’s Fenix 6 base pricing at $549. This is effectively the exact same situation that played out 45 days ago for COROS and their Vertix 2 pricing. Which then gets into the argument of whether or not premium materials make up for a lack of comparative features. That’s a tough argument to make, and ultimately comes down to the individual.
I’ve gotta believe Polar is probably aiming more here for their existing Polar customers, which wanted not just the more premium looks of the Grit X series, but simply wanted all the advanced training and recovery features of the Vantage V2. So in that sense, Polar pulled that off. No longer does a Polar customer have to decide whether or not they want good looks, or good features. It’s now in one watch with everything. Which frankly, is the way it should be. It’s a really nice looking watch that, as I did last week, fit in perfectly fine in a suit in a high-end restaurant. Yet a few hours earlier was throwing down intervals on trails.
Like many watches, the small iterative updates between versions might make some impatient – but in this case, I think the Grit X Pro might be more about trying to fill in the most critical competitive gaps in the hiking/routing/endurance sports realms, while also removing the dilemma consumers previously had with Polar between picking a nice watch or a more feature-rich watch. Now those are one and the same.
With that, thanks for reading!
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Hopefully you found this review/post useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.
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Since the Polar Grit X Pro is no longer sold, I recommend looking at Polar Grit X2 Pro:
And finally, here’s a handy list of accessories that work well with this unit (and some that I showed in the review). Given the unit pairs with just about any Bluetooth Smart sport sensors, you can use just about anything though.
This dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart sensor will transmit cadence not only to your bike computer/watch, but also 3rd party apps like Zwift, TrainerRoad, and more.
Speed sensors are primarily useful for offroad usage. I don't find much of a need for one while road-cycling, but for mountain bike trails they can help alleviate speed/distance issues with poor GPS reception in dense trees.
This is a strap I often use in testing/comparisons. It's dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart, but it also supports the 5kHz analog heart rate transmission for older gym equipment. Also, it has workout storage/recording in it and supports two Bluetooth connections.
This is a great strap, especially if you're going to the gym. It's dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart, but it also supports the 5kHz analog heart rate transmission for older gym equipment. Note that it only accepts a single Bluetooth connection, versus dual-connections for the Polar H10.
I'd argue the Polar OH1 Plus is the best optical HR sensor out there. So while it might seem odd to get this when your watch also has a optical HR sensor, this one is just better most of the time. Plus, it also has workout recording storage. Dual ANT+/Bluetooth.
The Polar Verity Sense is the newer variant of the Polar OH1 Plus. And while it might seem odd to get this when your watch also has a optical HR sensor, this one is just better most of the time. Plus, it also has workout recording storage. Dual ANT+/Bluetooth.
And of course – you can always sign-up to be a DCR Supporter! That gets you an ad-free DCR, access to the DCR Quarantine Corner video series packed with behind the scenes tidbits...and it also makes you awesome. And being awesome is what it’s all about!
Thanks for reading! And as always, feel free to post comments or questions in the comments section below, I’ll be happy to try and answer them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Thanks!
That’s my understanding after everything I’ve compared feature-wise. I’ve asked Polar to confirm that as well, just in case I’m missing some tiny thing somewhere.
What is the size (dia/mm) of this GritXPro.? Not given on Polar Website and couldn’t find it in your very good review. I like the featureset and it would be a great update from my M430 but I don’t want a dinnerplate on my wrist
Are the hardware differences between the grit x and grit x pro so big that it constitutes the new features only appearing on the pro or is this more of a business and marketing side decision, whats your take?
I would presume this is a business/marketing decision. Given that they confirmed the GPS, HR sensor, and display are all identical. Best I can tell based on responsiveness – the processor side seems identical as well.
In that sense, I get it as the original Grit X had a lower price point than the V2, and thus the V2 features were greater. So they are porting quite a bit over, albeit not quite everything.
Regarding elevation profile page for example, I think all hardware is already there… As Ray said, they rely on old customers to buy the new watch, so some features are blocked for past models… This customer here will buy a new watch, but after 3 Polars of my own, and 5 I bought for the family, next one will be Garmin…
The only thing Grit X nails is sleep tracking. Battery before the race estimated 35 hours, died after less than 24h. Can’t charge on the go. No serious mapping. OHR very discutable. No SPO2 sensor, no NFC payments, limited number of watch faces…
In general, Grit X and PRO are adventure/trail oriented, and with that (lack) of functionalities and for that price, there are much beter options out there…
For all those who are not into trail running, and would like a good looking sports watch, even the first edition of Grit X will do the job.
I’m assuming you still don’t get notifications during a workout, or have Polar finally seen the light and given us the option to enable that?
I still find it bizarre that the exact time I need to be given the name of my contact/summary of the message on my watch rather than having to dig around in my bag/pocket for a buzzing phone is exactly when Polar watches won’t show it; during a workout…
Still the same there. Though it’s funny, because the menu option literally says “On”, and then when you tap into it, there’s only one option “On, when not in training” – so it’s as if there’s thought for adding two options, but only one option exists in that particular setting menu.
Polar know how to enable it (points out to m460) but you have to buy polar gritx 2 pro to unlock it ;-). Its sad to see how Polar turned out to make money on simple soft upgrades instead on making whole new products…
Ray, when did your in-depth reviews start to lack any mention at all of battery information/functions/runtimes/real world useage. etc ? Not even a single sentence mentioning manufacturer battery length or modes.
I’ve enabled the product comparison chart here, it now shows in the post. That normally includes all the battery claims – I had set it live earlier at launch, but didn’t initially include it in the post as I wanted to sweep through the other products again for firmware update inclusions: link to dcrainmaker.com
In this case, battery seems roughly as claimed in terms of day-to-day battery life. The GPS activities I did didn’t throw any red flags as being overly battery burning.
Yes and what are the claimed battery specs? I guess that’s my original point.. For an in depth review, why would I go to polar, to research their battery specs, and then cross reference that with a statement of; “battery life is as claimed”. Just put lines in to the in depth reviews about battery life! This is a significant component/feature of this market segment to review. Just trying to tell you, I think sometimes there is a a very slight implicit bias in products you may not like, to not get as in depth of a review, as the products you do really like. I thing wrong with that. But at a minimum, help us understand them equally, since we are relying on you to help guide our decisions. Hoping my comment makes your reviews what they once were, super thorough, and without heuristic shortcuts.
Good lord people. I always include battery life claims in the product comparison database (and in fact, the Polar Grit X Pro entry in that database went live *AHEAD* of this review, since it was pre-populated). I have for a decade since the database was introduced.
Also, fun fact: I usually remember to add in the product comparison charts a few hours after launch. Largely because I’m usually running behind (as was the case this time), and I like to triple-check all the units displayed in that chart on launch day show any updates. Both product updates and database updates. For example, I recently added dual-GNSS as a row to the product database, but haven’t manually gone back and set every single product to ‘No’ from null (except the COROS Vertix 2). So in this case, I went and set these items to ‘No’ for Garmin and Suunto. And inversely ensured that the Polar Vantage V2 was reflecting any upcoming changes from today’s announcements. In a perfect world, these would happen at the same time. This is true for virtually every review I do, from Garmin to Apple.
As for the battery life claim versus mentioning it somewhere in the other written text, sorry, my bad. Any regular reader here knows I tend to focus on what’s new and changed (both good and bad), and things that are hard to find details on. Rather than regurgitating a spec sheet of claims. So again, when time is tight, I spent my last 30 mins before embargo trying to track down outside in the woods why exactly I was seeing differing results on the elevation plot not working and trying to suss out a pattern, rather than spending that copying/pasting from Polar’s press release (especially since battery life was exactly what it was on the Grit X…because it’s basically the same unit).
Thanks for the review. Å ges questions:
1 which coordinate systems är supported? Is it just WGS 84 lat/Long, of does it support also support UTM, MGRS etc.
2 Does it support waypoint and waypoint navigation?
Just wondering… how they manage to tell ppl owning grit x their watch can’t handle those “super advanced” upgrades. Grit x and grit x pro are basically the same device…
They’d probably note that the advanced recovery features for example previously came on the Polar Vantage V2, which costs $499/499EUR (the same as the Grit X Pro). Whereas the original Grit X cost $429.
Overall – they sell the same watch – grit x, vantage v2, grit x pro is basically the same, just software differences. If I own grit x I would feel cheated. As a owner of original Vantage v1 – I feel cheated.
The problem is that those upper-end features only exist because people pay more for them. It’s a premium feature, and thus a premium price.
We can set aside whether that higher price is appropriate for the market at large, but looking specifically and only at Polar’s offerings, they’re divided up into higher-end features costing more. It’s not about the hardware – it’s about the software. Just like if you buy a less expensive version of Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, you get fewer features (e.g. Photoshop Elements instead of full, or not all the Office suite).
The creation of features isn’t free. Someone has to make those features, test those features, iterate those features, etc…
But I have a proof that Polar never brought function to vantage v1. Polar wont answer me why they advertise function which doesnt exist. Its not about your explanation, its about bring promised function to vantage v1. Are you interested in seeing this as a tech guy? I can provide you with proofs :-)
Look at the “training with the key features” official video released along with vantage ver1. Go to 2:12 and you will see that zonepointer for power is available for vantage v1, you can get in on every screen. This is not available in final version. If you choose to have this “power” on your watch you wont get this graph only number. Check for yourself. It doesnt work like on video. Its a cheat.
If you look closer you will see that managing this field lets you add this zonepointer to only one view. Like on 2:08 and 2:10. Can you do that on your vantage? Of course not. It shows you how to make this view – and you can click “done” everytime. I also dont see this is blocked to one view, right?
Simple question: can you a view like on the video? Yes or no. (look on “cancel” and “done” they the same colour mean you can save it to use it. Its not about “I dont see an information to use it everywhere” because I also dont see an information this graph for power to use only on “fixed” view. Picture attached.
“If you look closer you will see that managing this field lets you add this zonepointer to only one view. Like on 2:08 and 2:10. Can you do that on your vantage? Of course not.”
Unless I’m doing something wrong,I just did exactly this. I added the HR ZonePointer to one field, and then again to another. Then saved it successfully. Then re-opened up the entire settings page and it still shows there.
Maybe you’re running into a simple bug on the smartphone app that doesn’t exist on the desktop side.
Mr DC who said ANYTHING about HR zonepointer? Its not about HR zonepointer, its about POWER zonepointer just like on the video – I even pointed it should look like on the screen (2 views, one with power graph, one with maximum power). (I call this zonepointer because you can lock zone, see min and max zone for power). If you add a “power” and mix it with different views (for example max speed) you wont get this power graph, only numbers. So its not a bug, it is made this way. Do you understand what I mean now?
Add power view and mix it with time/speed for example to any view using vantage v and look – you dont have this power graph. Only numbers
But what you screen-shotted isn’t ZonePointer. It’s simply your power with the max/avg. You can see this exact screen literally in my original Polar Vantage V review from three years ago, the third pictures in this section, out on a run: link to dcrainmaker.com
(Screenshot snippet above)
The official “Power ZonePointer” has a different look, which, shows your actual zones as color-coded. Polar never said anything about this for power, nor has ever shown it to my knowledge for the V1 (it came to the V2 a little under a year ago).
Lets make a test: make a 3 view with 3 fields on vantage v1 just like video suggest. Do you get this graph or not? Of course not :-). So this video shows a function which doesnt work like on this “training with KEY features” points out. Ok, so its not like typical zonepointer but its just a name – on video Polar shows a function which doesnt work like on the video. I can’t freely manage my power graph on vantage v. Do you agree or maybe on your polar vantage v1 you can. I bet you cant :)
I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know what you want anymore. I showed I could recreate what you screenshoted. I showed that they only promised HR ZonePointer (and delivered). That’s what you asked for.
I’m sorry that’s not the true ZonePointer you want, but that’s what they showed – they didn’t call it ZonePointer during the video. They actually literally showed the field names it was on the same slide (which, btw, is the default power setup for running on a Vantage watch).
“3 view with 3 fields on vantage v1 just like video suggest. Do you get this graph or not? Of course not :-).”
That’s what I did in the reply above (with screenshots), three years ago. It’s precisely what’s in that screen: 3 fields, including the one with the little graph thing, exactly like the video.
Maybe someone else can help interpret, because each time you’re asking for something, I’m showing it, and then you’re asking for something else. Cheers!
No, you showed me FIXED power view – its fullscreen, you cant change anything on this screen. Its something completely different than managing your own data fields like video suggests – mixing, changing positions. Do you understand the difference between fixed full screen power graph and adding different fields to view?
If you use the same data fields just like video shows you wont get a graph. And thats the whole point. Maybe Ill make a photos of watch or video so you can understand but you could easily just follow the video and notice differences. But not add full-screen power graph just add those fields – power, max power and average power. You wont get this graph.
Or like me, abandon Polar after 6 years to see if the grass is greener on the Coros Vertix 2 side.
Seriously, the business model to update a device for as long as the hardware can handle it is what won me over.
Yes and no. If I buy an Intel core I9 or a core I3 pc, in both case I can have all the different version of Microsoft products. Here, if I want the software upgrade I need to put my Grit-x into the trash ….
In any case, it’s good that the firmware 2.0 will arrives end of the year with a lot of new features.
Probably they will be pushed to do also a version 3.0 if they don’t want to loose part of the polar community.
Phones aren’t adopting it, and Bluetooth Smart on some devices has multi-channel connections (the main limiter for most consumers).
Don’t get me wrong, at a protocol compliance level, ANT+ continues to be far superior in my testing. And you’ll notice if you look at any of the sports tech reviewers out there, virtually all of us will use ANT+ over BLE every time we can (for a slew of reasons, some of them related to workflow, and others just due to it working reliably).
Nonetheless, for companies like Polar and Suunto (and seemingly now Coros too), the lack of ANT+ is absolutely hurting them in the cycling/triathlon realm. One only need to read the comments on the recent COROS Vertix 2 review. Maybe that makes a difference – maybe not, but there are real-world problems that Polar and others can’t fix without ANT+.
The fact that Polar’s cycling test requires another device to actually do the test is a great example. Or the fact that I literally couldn’t get the Polar watch to pair to any of the power meters on my bike, or the trainer (because the trainer connection was used by Zwift…as one does in 2021). These are problems that should have been resolved years ago through a firmware update, and while it’s easy to brush them away at this point – they just won’t go away.
People aren’t buying new trainers every year, or even every 3-4 years. Unless you bought a Wahoo KICKR18/20/CORE, then anything you buy – even today’s latest models – don’t support dual BLE connections.
why they should support a proprietary protocoll that is owned by Garmin and not use a industrial standard as anybody else, did Garmin’s ANT+ did anything the last decade to support notification, assisted GNSS routing, music playback or controls over ANT or likewise? Why anybody should use two protocolls sharing the same frequency band just that Garmin can still call it a day and collect royalty?
“why they should support a proprietary protocoll that is owned by Garmin and not use a industrial standard as anybody else, did Garmin’s ANT+ did anything the last decade to support notification, assisted GNSS routing, music playback or controls over ANT or likewise? Why anybody should use two protocolls sharing the same frequency band just that Garmin can still call it a day and collect royalty?”
This kind of comment is funny, as it shows lack of knowledge. I presume you know that Polar is part of the ANT+ group, right? And I presume you know that’s like 300+ companies these days.
Frankly, there’s more products supporting the power meter profiles over ANT+ than over Bluetoth Smart (mainly due to legacy history). Sure, it’s owned by Garmin, but that hasn’t stopped all the rest of their competitors from it – and thriving on it. Literally nobody cares when I talk to companies about that.
(They did however very much care when Garmin decided to rename ANT+ officially to Garmin Canada, which I content was a highly stupid decision…but hey…).
But in terms of productization, none of what you say actually holds water in real-life when talking to these companies. Nor, does it hold water in real-life when dealing with what consumers sift through. After all, at the end of the day, Polar’s stuff still doesn’t work with leading power meters and trainers. It’s a non-starter. That’s all you really need to know, isn’t it?
“what do you think about BT FTMS? Would that solve the issue? Is there any reason at all why it is not yet widely adopted (by companies like Polar)?”
Sorta. It solves the cycling test bit – definitely.
But it doesn’t solve the dual-connectivity bit, namely people wanting to use Zwift on their trainers (which, is what close to a million people do), plus another hundreds of thousands on TrainerRoad, and hundreds of thousands more on other platforms. If I was designing a watch for endurance athletes, I certainly wouldn’t make a product that doesn’t integrate properly with the leading platforms that people use for training.
Just a comment regarding smartphone ant+ support… actually most (of not all unless hampered by some design decision) Android phones can support ant+ either natively or just adding a small software module download. Of course iphones don’t support it in any fashion, so if that constitutes most, I get the theory, the reality is Apple, specifically and mostly in isolation, doesn’t support it. Nearly all other smartphones can or do. So it’s perspective on whether it is waning at all, the ANT+ consortium might actually have metrics to back that up, don’t know, but it seems more likely it is just one more software attack that manufacturers would rather cut corners on dev costs by leaving out, than a truly market driven perspective. BT is good enough for the 80%, so take the money and run, leave the 20% out of luck or forced to adapt it if other (costly) means that need more/ open connections. (I guarantee there are more gymlink enabled devices worldwide in use today in commercial guns than bt and ant combined, because it was so pervasive and inexpensive to implement that only the past few years have seen it fade away in new products, but the past sales are tremendous worth bikes, treadmills, rowers, etc… market and tech evolution didn’t drive it out, just business choice of supporting the new (and pc, phone, tablet compatible) bt diving the old standards out.
Gymlink and ant+ are limited to one market, sports devices. Tech programmers on the computer side (that everything talks to now) have no exposure, they know bt and wifi stacks…. so cheaper to go bt with a dime a dozen bt programming team and widely supported bt stacks and simplify chipsets and internal circuitry, than keep the skilled niche (thus cost more) teams for the old rf methods in spite of their many benefits and (yes) a few flaws, which never really matter in sports device usage. IMO.
GPS accuracy makes me sad… Do you think there is any way polar might someday return to the glory days of the V800? Or is the current gps chip just not good enough.
The current chip family lacks a significant amount of horsepower that the sirfstar family had (channels, deducated anti-jamming/noise rejection circuits, and quite a few other in-chip functions that made (make) it a far more capable chip. But also it was 3x more power hungry (basically it was a commercial implementation of military grade gps tech). On v800 it also had a substantial antenna (under the black “extended” chassis of the watch). The Sony family everyone is using now is far cheaper, less powerful, but less power hungry, and takes less internal space for a full design. It’s also less accurate natively, and some of the sirf features really can’t be reproduced in software without huge amounts of code and processing (thus consuming memory and battery).
The main problem is the v800 and its siblings (m430, v650?, and similar from Garmin such as 935) were actually the exceptions to the rule. So the market a a whole (not many had those models) never knew that level of accuracy. So an ignite m2 today is just asaccurate or more so, than a fitbit, or apple watch 4, or pick most any other fitness product from 2015…
So us lucky privileged few who could clearly see on the gps track where we moved 2 feet to avoid a car half over the sidewalk or dodging walkers, know what “could be”, the other 99% of the market are happy if the watch stayed somewhere near the road they were on, lol, so by that standards these new to them devices are “better”. And battery life, cost, and size, ARE better, just at the expense of EVERYONE is ho-hum now.
My v800 has “track mode”… when I run in a track, it follows me dead-on (might slowly drift one direction over the course of a workout, but with Covid in particular I could easily see where I swung out a couple of lanes for 50ft to avoid close contact vefore swinging back to my lane) Modern “track mode” is a forced fix to the reality of crappy gps, and in fact will falsely change your distance in any case of changing lanes unless using a footprint for distance tracking. No such problem with accurate models of 5 years ago. But 14hrs training vs 40hrs… that’s a tradeoff some needed to make too.
I keep reading stuff like this, but I have to say, I’ve never seen it in practice. I had two 935s, and a good day was when they showed me on the right side of the street, but there were still plenty of cut corners, jumping over buildings, etc. The 945 is slightly worse, but it always gives the same distance for the same runs as the 935. The 620, which used a Mediatek GPS chip, was actually the least accurate watch I’ve ever owned. The TomTom Cardio Runner was a Sirfstar watch, and it was probably the most accurate I’ve ever used in terms of the tracks, but it still wasn’t as night and day as you’re suggesting. It had good days and bad days, and it’s only after looking at all of my runs for a long period of time that I was able to come to the conclusion that it was slightly better.
Hi DC, got few question:
1. Does navigation view can be zoom in/out during activity ?
2. How watch performed if you’re going to get off track ?
3.Does the watch, in mountain running mode, automatically draws a gps track for later return ?
1) Yes, you can zoom in/out on the breadcrumb trail. I think I showed that in the video, but I can add a picture above.
2) There’s no re-routing if off-track, it simply gives you an arrow back towards the track.
3) I’m not sure I understand. If you’re recording a GPS activity, you can at any time choose to reverse the route and get back home. Is that what you mean?
In point 3 I mean: If you do not use the uploaded route during activity, does the watch still create a GPS track that you can view and possibly return to (as in Garmin watches).
I liked my original Grit X, but ended up returning it mainly for this. I’d always start and end my route at my front door, but with 200+ feet in elevation difference according to the barometer. That also threw off the Hill Splitter. I’d always have mismatched climbs & Descent counts on an out and back route (not to mention the hill splitter normally didn’t kick in until I’d been climbing for over a minute, so hill repeats had to be long)
Same here, I had it fixed twice but ended up with the same problem of going downhill for 50m at the start of my run and the altitude being off 100m or so after a few weeks of use, despite keeping my Grit X clean. Finally I accepted this, and in the Alps the altitude map in Polar flow looked ok, even though the exact altitude in the moment was usually off.. I always let Strava correct the altitude now. Might be a reason to go for the new Grit X but am curious if it’s any better…
I don’t see anything on any of the data field options on Polar Flow showing Vertical Speed for the VV2 or Grit X Pro units I have with the new firmware. :(
Polar is reputable brand for sure, the design is still far from optimum if we look at latest suunto watch for example. It would be great if the increase the screen size compared to the bezel size & made it slimmer. The sleep matrix still assumes that your never wake up during your sleep compared to other brands. Always true to the subject DC keep it up.
Is it possible to see your recorded trajectory while -not- following a route?
Sometimes it would be handy to see if you are crossing a road you have already passed, or orient a bit where you are relative to where you have been/see your starting point/etc..
As a followup question, can you see the recorded route when using the bee-line back to start function?
I understand elevation profile are available with Komoot. What about GPX files ? Do we still get elevation or Komoot is absolutely mandatory like it is to get turn by turn, please ?
I know that every company needs to make money, it’s obvious, so why Polar cannot provide any paid software updates? I don’t want to change the watch after 1 or 2 years when is still working and looks nice and has the same (similar) hardware. I don’t want to produce electro trashes when I really don’t have to. If someone wants a new grit x pro it’s ok. If the same or similar functionality could be a part of grit x, Polar should make a software update that you have to pay for.
As the owner of vantage V1 (style of V1 is the best for me), I don’t want to buy any other Polar’s watch for now, unless they will create something significantly new (not a new watch face). Even my m430 (not a premium watch) has a more usable training pause screen than V1 (premium watch!). In general, I think Polar made a step back with the “circle series”. A few months later they presented V2 and abanded V1 (even paid software updates). So I stopped buying new polar products, I don’t want to be cheated again.
Now they do the same with gritX, the upcoming update will be the last one (for V2 also). I’m sure!
I do agree there – I think paid software updates is the way to go in this space. Now, I don’t know logistically how these companies pull that off business-wise.
I think that’s a much tougher problem to solve for the sports-focused companies (e.g. Garmin/Polar/Suunto), and to a lesser degree Wahoo.
Figuring out the right ‘cost’ of that upgrade is tricky. For example, let’s say you go from a Polar Vantage V1 to a Polar Grit X Pro. In that case, if sold direct with middleman, they’d likely stand to make hundreds of dollars (profit). Yet, would you pay, let’s say $150 for those added features? Sure, that allows Polar (or whomever) to remove the retalier/distributor, but that’s not enough to account for the total income loss.
Obvously, some features will never quite fit into that, as they depend on hardware advancing (such as higher end displays, more processing power, etc…). But in terms of the Vantage lineup, the hardware doesn’t seem to have functionally changed much – again, at least from an outsiders standpoint.
I think back in the Fenix 3/3HR days (maybe it was a model or so earlier), Garmin actually publically talked about how tight they had gotten on firmware space, in terms of optimizing every last line of code to fit extra features in and eventually reaching the ‘We ain’t got no more space’ point. At that point, they had added a boatload of features, including added CIQ capabilities, and basically said they never expected the platform to grow as fast as they did. Obviously, we’ve seen them take a different stance in the past few years. Products like the Edge 1030 are now 4 years old, and basically getting all the same features as the Edge 1030 Plus (save the handful of features physically requiring faster processing). Of course, there are also watch examples to the contrary too.
Thanks for your reply, of course, I’m talking about the same line of products like Vantage, also I understand the hardware restrictions, then “your watch hits the wall” and to get more you need to change it to the new model. No problem.
I think (from my point of view) the software update could be even more expensive (half price or 3/4 of new watch), still, it would be the better option for me. I’m a programmer, I know that software is important and expensive :), but (I guessing) cheaper than the physical product, trashes, whole production line, factories, parts, and the whole other things around the process of creation.
Polar could add an option in the Flow app where you provide bought file with new firmware, I hope they will provide such an option in the future, now I’m waiting for V3 or V4 or we will see :)
“It’s a really nice looking watch that, as I did last week, fit in perfectly fine in a suit in a high end restaurant. Yet a few hours earlier was throwing down intervals on trails.”
That’s what I like about the Girt-X Pro. I’m currently on the Polar Vantage M, which is still rock solid and reliable for my personal use (except for some Polar Flow integration things that I would love to see, as well as the compatibility with some 3rd party sensors). However I do understand that with limited time and resources a development team needs to choose its battles wisely.
My question regarding the firmware upgrade plans for the original Grit-X is also answered.
Thanks for the good work again, Ray !
Hi Ray – glad you used the Apple Watch SE in your testing. Since watchOS 8 was released. I have seen a noticeable improvement in the ‘cornering’ of GPS tracks. Your screen grabs of your tests also look promising. Have you noticed it too in wider use too?
It does seem pretty good in my testing lately as well. The other day I realized I never released a full Apple Watch SE in-depth review, so I figured I’d slot this into things as Apple is keeping the SE in the lineup with the 7.
Hi Ray, great review. I may have missed it but can you confirm whether you can create a route directly in Polar Flow, or do routes have to be created in Kamoot and uploaded that way?
And, if routes can be created in Polar Flow can you import them from GPX?
My V2 does not have the navigation “Zoom in / out” option, so i believe this is a new feature as well. Pretty minor, but maybe worth calling out as such. I would be curious to know if this zooms the new elevation profile, or just the breadcrumb track’s scale.
So I wondered/thought the same thing, and thus basically asked ‘what the exact is vegetable tanned leather’, and I don’t think that’s the case. Here’s what they said:
“Perforated Leather bands are light and add a touch of class to your everyday look. Premium FKM bands are both durable and functional and feel great against your skin. The perforated leather band is made from real leather and it has been crafted using vegetable-tanning. Vegetable-tanning uses only natural ingredients, and there are no chrome used in the process. This gives the leather a soft, natural-looking finish.”
That matches what the interwebs says when I look it up. It’s still animal leather.
Ah cool, so it’s really “vegetable tanned leather” and not synthetic leather looking cool as “vegan leather”. They should have gone with Genuine Leather (vegetable tanned) for bums like myself.
At first thanks for the – as always – comprehensive review!
As a long time Garmin User I looked forward to this watch. For training load and recovery features I like to change over to Polar. Also for the IMHO better design compared to my actual F6pro.
But I’m disappointed. Still the old 1,2″ display with the large bezel space, looks old. But the real bummer ist the lack of ANT+. It is a simple and robust protocol that I don’t want to miss. In 20 years as participant at sport events I never had a single problem with my ANT+ sensors, but a lot of hassle with all the BLE stuff.
I second your concerns. I see that bezel, and it is a no go.
I have never had one issue with an ANT+ device in 15 years, not one. I have problems with bluetooth stuff every day. Just yesterday I had a problem because my edge wouldn’ connect to my phone, because why 935 was somehow blocking it. ANT+ just works, all the time, every time.
@Marcus…I’m totally with you on the desire for ANT+. The ‘just works’ part is super valuable, especially will all of the other little tasks involved in getting me on the bike or out the door for a run. I’m not interested in adding ‘dorking around with sensor pairing’ to that list. For better or worse, that will likely keep me in the Garmin ecosystem when my 920XT dies (and it seems to be having more troubles lately – froze after a run yesterday that was recovered by a soft reset, but the writing is on the wall, I think).
Like allways, a great review!
But du you have anything about the map coordinates showing, ie what kind of map-ref. it shows?
Is it only DD.MM.SSS, or can you choose ?
My understanding is that Polar tries to capitalize on the success it had the previous years with the previous watches. Polar Vantage V2 was not a great hardware update over the Polar Vantage V. Same for Grit X Pro. I think it is pretty much the same with the Grit X. Just differences in SW updates and features.
It is the same as the Suunto path back in 2017. Spartan Sport WHR succeeded by Suunto 9 and then updates stopped. Now when someone spends a lot of money for the top product a company offers, she usually expects the company to support the product in terms of updates AND new features. At least for 2-3 years. Because she already paid top money for it. When I spend more than half a thousand dollars for a product, then the least I expect for it, it is not be outdated in a year or two. Because I’ve already paid more than VFM money.
I think these watches are really great, and I find reviewer’s lack of enthusiasm simply stunning :) Of course I’m a fan of polar, but still – polar and e.g. garmin or coros are perfectly comparable in terms of quality of watches (of course polar has best web interface ;)), yet is seems terribly hard for reviewer to acknowledge it.
You dedicated a summary of huge interview to points like 1) well looks improved 2) they are $50 more expensive than some other watches 3) your personal guesses about for whom polar made this model (now THAT’s a mystery). No summary of most useful or liked features, no summary of precision… and then one last sentence of degrading compliment “polars customers (not we – them) dont have to choose ANYMORE”.
You may have great methodology and be thorough, but you sure as hell can’t hide your antipathy towards polar – so please don’t even try man, it will be easier for everyone.
“No summary of most useful or liked features, no summary of precision… and then one last sentence of degrading compliment “polars customers (not we – them) dont have to choose ANYMORE”.”
Umm, because the accuracy hasn’t changed, because it’s the same sensor and chipset, as discussed. Sure, I could have added that in the summary – but it certainly wouldn’t have helped the situation – since it was the worst of all the units I tested for both GPS and HR, against COROS, Apple, and Garmin. Did you want me to add that in?
As far as antipathy – I don’t have any towards anyone.
The difference, and I think the reason why people read here over marketing fluff reviews – is I’m going to call it like it is (both good and bad…and blah/shrug). One only has to read the comments on *ANY* of the YouTube reviews today on the Grit X Pro to find reality (or social media – pick Facebook or elsewhere). The reality is Polar is in a very dangerous spot pricing-wise compared to a base Fenix 6.
No amount of hand-waving or fanboyism changes that.
I’m a long time Polar fan but have used Garmin, Corus and Apple watches over recent years. However, I have gravitated back to Polar with a Vantage V2 this year. What I don’t understand is the performance delta I see between a Polar Grit X that I also have and the Vantage V2 if they are supposed to have the same intervals.
GPS performance on my V2 is excellent even under heavy tree cover whilst my Gritx X was noticeably poorer. My Apple Watch 5 series was really bad, my Corus Pace 2 struggled under heavy tree cover and a Garmin 945 I had would veer off course (by miles) every now and again. I don’t know if these issues are caused by me using a Stryd footpad at the same time. The combo of Stryd/H10/AirPods really seems to affect Apple Watch GPS performance.
Optical HR performance at rest is great on my V2 but with my skinny wrists not so good on the move but now actually out performing my Apple Watch. However, I find my OH1 outstanding so it’s not the technology just the positioning which seems to the challenge.
Overall I’m quite happy with my V2 when paired with OH1/H10 for my Trail Running needs. GPS lock is fast and trails are accurate I love the Flow, Sleep racking and recovery tools. Better battery life would be good for me (although I am swapping with Grit-X so less of a pain and I don’t do Ultras) and a larger screen. As a man in his 50’s who now needs reading glasses the 3 field views are a challenge to read on the move, Hopefully next year we’ll see Polar adopt a bigger circumference screen and slim the bezels.
I did get very annoyed with Polar when they under delivered on the original Vantage only to release the better Grit-X quit soon after. Now it seems they are getting better at delivering new features to older models but might help if they were up front about this. They could say new models will receive updates 2 years from launch but some new features will always be limited to new models (whether technically or commercially limited). Perhaps by handling expectations better they might not annoy some of their long terms fans so much. This batch of firmware update will go someway to repairing the damage.
Grit X Pro seems to be a very nice watch indeed. However, as a Grit X owner I already opted out of this holding back software business model and went with a company that explicitly states all their models will get all new software upgrades so long as the hardware supports it.
As a consumer, I prefer that business model…
The only difference is the sapphire glasses, operating temperate and ruggedised features that I can see. Functionality will be identical following V2 3.0 update on 20th October.
Thanks for the great review, as always and pardon my engrish :) Some time ago I upgraded from v800 to Grit X. Totally love it and once again thanks to you – I made the correct decision. What I really hate in routes function from Polar is that I have to find Start point and in some cases, tracks are planned 0.5 kilometers away from the actual start point and if I miss it, instead of route guidance watches will try to lead me to start point. I’m kinda frustrated why Polars can’t stick to the closest route point and I can’t find if this was finally solved in Grit X Pro. Maybe there is a solution and I simply fail to find one? And btw, is it possible to completely turn off touch screen functionality?
Honestly I think they did a pretty good job. They didn’t change a ton and that’s a little disappointing, but every single update addresses something that I’ve heard people complaining about. From the screen brightness, changing routes mid-run and zooming, proper trackback, compass outside of activities to the sapphire screen. Might not be enough compared to what Garmin is doing, but it seems like they are listening to feedback and working on the right things. I’m also happy that the V2 gets all the updates this time around.
Are any of the polar products yet automatically updating / syncing to flow? (as it was the main reason / annoyance contributing to my Garmin switch 3 years ago). M430 and Ignite we still have in the household require you to manually connect every single time (unless we’re completely missing something
Yes, Flow and the newer polar watches do background sync. I’ve found it works reasonably well for me on a Pixel 2 and Pixel 4 with the Vantage V2. Can’t attest to any other watches, phones or platforms (iOS). Bluetooth will be Bluetooth on occasion (and just not work).
M430 will autosync, but there is a specific setting(s) in the phone permissions you have to configure right. (Don’t recall offhand but I think you have to allow flow to always do whatever in the background even when not running, something like that) this is true for Android anyhow, as mine does it all day long (periodically at intervals). V800 no, that’s always manual, BT in m430 is a better implementation in this regard. iPhone ymmv, maybe someone else can answer that.
I like the idea of passing the updates to the Vantage V2 which I already have, so will probably not move across to this, unless it was bigger screen, I see it has new backlight settings? But hopefully there is a backlight improvement.
I still don’t understand why Polar persist in annoying their previous customers with not pushing out all updates to older models, E.G. the original Grit X is only 18 month sold, yet no running/cycling tests on the update?
Also it’s seen as a Trail Watch yet still no safety feature like Live Tracking it really isn’t giving people an option to move across from Garmin or forcing people to stay with Polar. I understand it has a backtracking feature, but not great if something happens to you. Safety features really are a must have feature now.
Even in other watch reviews we are looking for hints to next generation Fenix, that is sad. I was not impressed with Polar, I don’t want to buy 6x pro now in case the new model is announced soon, so I just wait in frustration. If I knew there isn’t going to be a new model in the coming 6 months, I can purchase a 6x pro in peace.
I understand the business decision not to include new features to the original Grit X. But I can’t help myself but feel even more attracted to Coros with their policy of trying to add new features to old models. Sure, after some time it will be impossible due to HW limitations. And maybe with more and more models they might not manage it for all models. But compared to Garmin and especially compared to Polar, they are doing a great job.
I’ll definitely consider future updates when buying next watch – and after Vantage M2, V2 and Grit Pro “updates”, it will not be Polar for sure.
My thinking exactly. After 6 years or so with Polar (V800, Vantage V, Grit X) I decided to go with Coros Vertix 2. The two main reasons being top notch hardware and the business decision to keep that device updated with new software for as long as the hardware will support it.
After seeing Grit X being left without many software features due to pure business decisions, I’m pleased I made the change.
Disappointing, but I hope Polar sells these watches nevertheless so they have more money for development of new features. Better Screen-Body-Ratio, Maps and dual-frequency GNSS would bi nice.
I think it’s a great outdoor companion. I have Grit X and i preordered Pro Ti version. Never had Garmin or similar so i stick.
As for all Coros lovers (i also wanted to take a plunge and go for Vertix 2 but …) did you read internet ? Did you read DCR Vertix 2 review ?
This might be the most handsome GPS watch I’ve ever seen.
The things that keeps me stuck with Garmin at present are music and payments, and those are really hard for the smaller players to do because it requires the cooperation of third parties. I wonder if there’s potential for a consortium of all of the other guys to come up with a solution that could be licensed to any wearable. SportPay? SweatPay? Something like that. They’d have a much easier time negotiating with the banks if they did so as a single unit with a lot more total users. Ditto for music. It wouldn’t solve the problem that they’d have to write their own code for their own unique devices, but it could at least give them the green light to do so.
“I wonder if there’s potential for a consortium of all of the other guys to come up with a solution that could be licensed to any wearable.”
Roughly speaking, that’s what there was for Garmin. It was technically called FitPay (by NXT-ID). At the time though, Garmin was basically the only meaningful customer on the wearable side. After a couple years, Garmin acquired FitPay (or the assets of it). It’s all a bit fuzzy, but basically, that blocked anyone else from leveraging it.
The challenge is you’ve basically got payment solutions from: Apple, Google, Samsung, Fitbit, and Garmin. Collectively, after you cover those platforms/user bases, the user bases beyond that get super small (excluding China).
Realistically, I think the best approach for the Polar/Suunto’s of the world on the NFC/Music side is to do what Suunto is doing with the Suunto 7 – utilizing WearOS. With Fitbit committed to going WearOS, that platform is going to get far better, quicker (namely in terms of battery life). WearOS solves many gaps for Polar/Suunto. It does create new gaps for the ultra-endurance crowd, but frankly speaking, that’s a very very very very very very small portion of the market (people needing that kind of battery life).
Garmin has shown that people are happy to find middle-ground with a Venu-style device of mostly good display but still respectable battery life. I think 2022 will be a strong year for this type of device.
I agree that the watch looks amazing but I am biased as I have always liked the look of Polar’s watches.
I agree that not having payment and music on watch looks like a massive gap, but I am wondering how many consumers actually use payments and/or music on the watch. I am one of the ones who use music. I do so on my 945, although, I always run with my phone for safety. The positive side effect of running music from the watch is that instructions for structured workouts do get transmitted through your headphones. This is a big one for me, as I regularly miss the next step of a workout on my V2.
Having said that I really like how Polar does things (e.g., the Flow platforms, sleep tracking, training load, native running power, setting up the watch in the app, Zone lock) and I think that Polar has gotten to a feature set that works well for most (if you have separate bike computer).
Literally, the only things that always drives me back to Garmin after a while is the fact that the software of the V2 seems just not fully baked in terms of reliability. I sometimes have crashes during TBT navigation. When that happens, you lose all data (In contrast when my 945 crashes, which it has only done once, it restarts the activity you where in at the moment, it crashed.). As long-distance triathlete, I find it too stressful to not be able to be able to 100% trust my watch. I would argue that that is the same for the target group of the Grit X pro and I really hope that reliability is better with the next firmware.
There are also sometimes problems with pool swimming where the watch thinks that I did not swim more than half of my time in the pool, which have been around since the original Vantage and I do think that they will ever get fixed, as the group of people swimming Polar watches is just too small, I guess.
I agree that music and payments are basically issues for people who run without phones. I’m not sure how big that market is. It absolutely includes me and most of the people I train with, but we’re far from a representative sample. (We’re sort of elite-amateur/semi-pro types who rarely run fewer than 70 miles/week; we’re also mostly Gen-X or older millennials who started running before we even owned phones, or in any event before phones were used for music.) I suspect it’s the more serious runners who tend to go without phones, and that does seem to be the market that Coros, Polar, and Suunto are targeting.
Does the Titanium has a better scratch resistance compare to the DLC model ?
I have a Garmin Marq Athlete, in perfectly state, like new after 2 year compare to the media Loaner you tested here which looks patina.
Thanks , Zenon
Yes and no. DLC is harder to scratch, but when it does, the scratches can be very visible. Titanium oxidizes, so scratches fade over time and become almost invisible unless they’re very deep.
Hi Ray, great review as always, I very much like both your articles and the video reviews!
Stupid question – I have the feeling that the Grit has been way more popular in the Polar community than the V2 and I donˋt get it at all. The V2 has the same specs but is much lighter than the GritX, more comfortable for trail and street runners and and it came in late 2020 with even more features. So why now the GritX Pro? Fancy titan bezel and saphire glass? After 11 months of daily use and > 200 trainings, hikes and trails in the Swiss Alps my V2 still has not a single scratch. Itˋs super durable and light. So why a new model with the same functionality and hardware? I would have expected a better battery life or offline maps – the new watch looks nice but imo is for nothing (making money?).
And to be fair, that is what’s changed the trajectory of watches in the category over the last few years. The overwhelming vast majority of people don’t want plastic-looking watches on their wrists. Some don’t mind (myself included), but the market has shown super-clearly that people want to wear the same watch all day (and night), and that watch to be stylish.
The Grit X series delivers on that. It’s as simple as that.
Now, I do agree with your second part in that there’s value in Polar differentiating with additional features like offline maps. With COROS in that category now with the Vertix 2 (and Suunto sorta there with the Suunto 7), Polar really needs to focus on that for a Grit X 2 or whatever they call it in a year or two.
Thanks Ray for yet another useful review!
Being a Vantage V user, who has never had a single issue with my current watch, I’m seriously debating whether or not to upgrade. Ah, well..
The thing that I’m currently missing the most is average pace for an entire interval, or an entire set of intervals (each) in a phased workout. Now I would have to contend with pressing manual lap.
@Ray, Do you know if any of the other major brands offer this option?
After years with Garmin 5 and Garmin 6X Pro, I am unsure if I should switch to either the Polar Grit X Pro or the Suunto 9 Peak…would you recommend me to change environment outside Garmin? if so…Grit X Pro or Suunto 9 Peak?
This Wiggle video shows that the backlight setting may have been updated since this review – it now appears that you can increase the light setting beyond just ‘low’ (3:50 in). link to youtube.com
Love the looks of it and I even would consider buying one, BUT the 1,2inch screen is a dealbreaker for me?
Why can’t they fit in a proper screen? The gap between the bezel of the screen is too big for me, it blows my mind that nobody is adressing this in reviews? It’s like having a TV from the 90’s …
I know the will drain more battery but give the option to go for a bigger screen (screen to body ratio). Every respected smatch watch supplier now offers a 1,4inch screen.
I’m curious to learn if Polar (flow) is also enabling the synchronization of sleeptimes from Polar Flow to TrainignPeaks. The data fields are in both data models, but in a multisport scenario it all makes sense to have a proper integration.
From what I understand, it’s (still) not possible to view any of the new “outdoor” dashboards (or any other dashboard for that matter) while a sport profile has been activated and the watch is in “training mode”. So which of the new “outdoor” data (sunrise, sunset, GPS coordinates, …) can be added to custom sport profile views?
I have purchased one of these ones. It looks great and I like the APP more than Garmin’s.
HR sensor works decently well for me… at least the average beat count is the same as with a band (I need to compare the peaks)… but as a previous owner of a V800 , I have to say that GPS accuracy is poor… I have tried GPS+Glonass and GPS+Galileo. It has too many mistakes in my opinion.
I simply don’t know why accuracy cannot be like V800… did they use forbidden military technology, or was it a gift from aliens, or just too expensive to integrate in a watch… I don’t know, but we are wasting big amounts of money in poor GPS accuracy. And my (other) Garmin FR 630 does not do it much better.
About everyone being worse than V800: I believe it has been covered on DC Rainmaker elsewhere. It’s not that the GPS chipsets of today are bad, it’s just that the V800 was exceptionally good, based on military standards. But the reduced accuracy has the benefit of longer batter life.
If you have the Grit X Pro, would you be able to test which hiking specific custom data fields are available in training profiles? Is it possible to view the GPS coordinates while in a training session?
Well , battery is not an excuse for accuracy. What’s the point of having wrong data about your exercise?
To me the GPS accuracy is the most important thing… I use the device for training, not for work, going out with friends or just the gym. The mistakes seen during trainings are so many… simply unacceptable.
Ah about your questions, I am not sure what you mean, but I think the answer is that you can’t. After the session, I usually check the route in the map they show in web , and they allow deep zooming … that’s when you see all the mistakes clearly.
I identified a difference of more than 200m in 10K running sessions. I have been doing the same circuits for years… so stepping the same tiles each session … and comparing my V800 old sessions with these ones…
I came here after looking at your keynote for 2021. Lots of insights and I leave it to Garmin and Coros to take the lead in cramping features into their watches. I have one question though, I am a long time polar user and the basics of what a sports what does (again my opinion) polar does accurately like HR, GPS, Recovery, Sleep and how much better you are getting. May I know your opinion on the same, if you consider others are on par or better than Polar on these points.
Hi Ray, I heard that the barometer opening has been redesigned for the Grit X Pro compared to the Grit X because of the many issues with it (I had a lot of problems myself). Do you have any more insight into that? From the pictures of the Grit X Pro it looks like the two holes on the bottom are not there any more, but other than that I can see no difference.
In answer to a question I posted on Facebook, Polar confirmed that they have redesigned the barometer casing for the Pro. Furthermore they have implemented a fix for the Grit X, specifically saying the following:
“After the repair we’ve added a protective covering as a holder for the barometer which fixes the issue previously experienced with your Polar Grit X.”
The outlook is beautiful with outdoor spirit. I like this design.
However the route navigation function is not so versatile as Suunto.
Suunto allows user to start at any point and to any direction of routes.
And change or correct routes in the middle of activity.
If greet x pro want to be real outdoor watch, it need to improve navigation function.
been using the Grit X for over a year. Found this weird thing with its route when downloaded a 360km GPX Alps route – shows as 360km on Polar Flow and Komoot – but only about 250 on the watch! tried to download same gpx files few times with same result.
any idea why?
the inability to charge the watch during the long multi-day run (like i believe is possible on Garmin) is very annoying – any idea if it will be addressed by Polar?
I’ve asked Polar about the charging stuff but they have no plans to change this, claiming sweat will cause corrosion.
This is the main reason why I now have a Vertix 2 and after a 24hr run with route guidance on all the time still have 74% battery left…
I hace been a long Polar user for more than 10 years. Starting with an RS800, then M400, M430, Vantage M and finally upgraded to… another M430!!!!! I found so frustrating the problems of the Vantage M mark 1, that it always seemed a work in progress no matter how many firmware updates it had, that I finally bought myself a new M430 to substitute the much battered previous one. That experience has made me very wary of the new generations of Polar watches and so far what I am reading hasn’t convinced me otherwise.
Well after 2 months comparing my old V800 and my new Polar Grit X Pro, I confirm that V800 has much better GPS accuracy by far. The mistakes Grit X Pro make, belong to 15 years ago (crossing the streets, sometimes running on rooftops like Spiderman?)… Polar exchanged the Grit Pro with another one and I see the same results. I don’t really know if it’s hardware or software, maybe a mix, but it is so dissapointing. And I have plenty of visibility … buildings are decently separated, only sometimes random trees as I use to run around parks but not inside. It’s a pity, the rest is super cool and heart rate works good for me compared to HR band, good for the average, maybe not for peaks but I accept that.
Is anyone swimming with the Grit X Pro (or the Vantage V2)? How does it work? I have a Suunto S9 which works really well at tracking lap swimming (at least, it might just work well with my very personal freestyle swimming), on par with a Fenix 6 i’ve used for a year, and wonder if the V2 also woks well?
Does it keep track of the intervals, as it recognizes pauses at the wall, or do you need to push the lap button to have the auto-interval distance displayed on the watch?
Polar knows exactly how to disappoint long term users!
Coming from the RX3 GPS, V800 and Vantage V, the last and the last I bought was the Grit X Pro.
Recently the last discovery was, that you have to calibrate the compass again after you paused the workout during following a route.
What is Polar thinking?
You set up the watch to follow a route during biking, you fix the watch to the handlebar until you pause the training.
If you would like to proceed with your training you have to re-calibrate the compass. Therefore you have to loosen the Grit X Pro from the handlebar to do so.
Once you went through the setup you can fix it again to the handlebar.
Every time you would like to start the training again, you have to do that!
Now I’m questioning the whole compass functionality.
Why you ask?
Because there is a compass watch face running all the time without permanent calibration!
Polar, please change your philosophy back to “Push a button and everything is done”.
I do not want to spend half an hour before everything is set up. I want to do my training instead.
Agreed Polar needs to get with it and add a “bar mounted” calibration method for all cycling sport profiles. Seems like basic common sense, considering they sell a bar mount!
However, on the V2 (and i assume the Grit X Pro?) you can cancel out of the compass calibration while in a session. Just push the lower left button “back” button, and it will cancel calibration, and then rely on GPS to calibrate compass direction while you are moving. The compass still wont’ be calibrated, but at least you can stay riding and not fiddle with the watch.
A year has gone since that post. Still – I experience exactly this constantly – re-calibration of the compass needed during training, which is annoying no matter if the watch is mounted on a handle bar or on your wrist.
Second issue: The watch doesn´t wake up way to often if you have set it to automated pauses when not moving.
I wonder if the firmware update of today fixes those issues. I fear, I will be disappointed….
I have been using Polar M400 with H7 sensor for over 8 years and it still works as it should. Right now I got an offer for used (like new) Polar Grit X Pro for 270 USD. Based on this review, do you think I should take this offer and upgrade? As a landscape photographer I see a lot of useful features I can use and as a man that likes hiking, skiing, running, swimming, crossfit etc. it looks like it is not necessarily an overkill for me.
Does Polar still only support one alarm at a time? I really like Polar products – but little things like this make it hard to use them as a “daily driver”.
Why is there no calender function included were you can see what training is next in line?
Were you can even choose to do the previous missed training or do the training which is scheduled two days later because it fits in today?
I believe there is, but you need to turn on the watch face view. Go to settings, choose views, enable the “latest training sessions” view. If you have a training plan on polar flow it should show past and future sessions you’ve planned and completed.
Hey DC Rainmaker!
I use the Grit X Pro Titan since May 2022 – the firmware update in July introduced a nasty bug that lets the Grit X Pro crash in the middle of training sessions – with all data lost.
Polar supports plays as if they are dumb. Ask me to reset the device which I’ve done several times now, try to accuse “3rd party sensors” like the Wahoo pedals or speed sensors. But it also crashes without any sensor attached.
Then they replaced the unit with a completely new one.
Guess what… First week now and again it crashed.
I am 100% convinced they have a software bug. It’s horror when a training session is lost after some hours of riding.
And they don’t react professionally nor do they really want to find out what the circumstance are – like type of phone connected and such. It crashed with and without sensors, with and without notifications on or off… It’s such a painful situation.
What do you suggest to really get Polar’s attention?
Thanks!
I can relate exactly to your experience with Polar support, buggy devices, and general frustration with their “pro level” devices. As i understand the Vantage V2 is nearly identical (under the “hood”) to the Grit X Pro. On my V2 i had frequent mid-ride watch crash/reboot/data-loss incidents. For me, the 4.0.9 software updated seemed to resolve those crashes. I would be sure to NOT use any of the watch features during a workout, if you can avoid them, my crashes seemed to occur more often when using FuelWise, Drink reminders, etc.
When i contacted Polar support about the crashes, they basically told me “factory reset your watch”. I asked “so every time i have a crash, i need to factory reset my watch?” “yes”. “But that doesn’t fix the problem, it does nothing to fix the bug, what should i do?” “Please factory reset your watch”. utterly useless.
Unless Polar publicly announces their update policy, frequency of bugfixes, etc, i do not plan to buy another of their watches. In an era when Garmin actively wants users to help them fix bugs, frequently releases updates, blows past Polar with features (both hardware and software), it’s hard to say Polar is better in any way in 2022. (In 2018/2019 their FitSpark, Recovery Pro, and other features were years ahead of others, and chronically slept on by DCR in my opinion. IMO they squandered the early lead and now can’t compete at the high end).
Thanks for sharing your experience.
It’s the same for me here: support *always* replies with “reset your device” and refuse to take customers who find terrible bugs seriously.
It’s a complete fail.
I tried not to use “advanced” features, no notifications during session, no reminders – but it still crashes.
This is the most annoying and frustrating experience in a long time.
Sports watches can and will have bugs – but they should never ever lose recorded data. Why do people like DC with a lot of “power” not help us increase the pressure on Polar?
Right now I would say NOBODY should buy a Polar watch anymore.
Estoy interesado en renovar mi reloj de deportes, actualmente tengo el Polar M y quisiera actualizarlo al Polar Grit X Pro, pero antes de hacer una inversión me gustaría validar si el Polar Grit X Pro hizo algunas mejoras respecto a la medición de ritmo.
Con el Polar M, Cuando salgo a correr o a hacer bicicleta, cuando cruzo en una esquina o hago paradas puntuales, bien sea por esquivar algún obstáculo, noto que el tiempo del ritmo sube, 1:30 a 2:00 por encima y se vuelve a normalizar luego de 20 a 30m aproximadamente.
Muchas gracias por el post, es muy buena la información.
Much as I love Polar hardware, am I the only one who finds their UI and software in general extremely poor? Not quite unusable, but boy do they make it difficult to use many of the features…
Ok, this may be a silly question, but is there a way to increase or decrease the sound volume of the alerts? Not the volume on the music controls but the volume on the beeping sounds when starting or pausing an activity, the FuelWise reminders and so on. I am afraid the default is very quiet, and I will not hear the fueling alerts when riding my mountain bike.
Thank you! It is not the most intuitive place to have the option in my opinion; that being said, this is exactly what I needed, and although I would like it to be louder in the max volume, it surely helps 90% of the time.
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FIRST
Haha..that’s the spirit!
Seriously though, I knew I’d find out more here than I did from the Polar site. Still not enough to stop me waiting for Fenix 7/8/unicorn.
So just to be clear – after VV2 gets its updates, they will be the same software-wise?
That’s my understanding after everything I’ve compared feature-wise. I’ve asked Polar to confirm that as well, just in case I’m missing some tiny thing somewhere.
What is the size (dia/mm) of this GritXPro.? Not given on Polar Website and couldn’t find it in your very good review. I like the featureset and it would be a great update from my M430 but I don’t want a dinnerplate on my wrist
It’s about 47mm, I have skinny wrists but when I tested the Grit X it actually looked great on mine.
Is the Vantage M dead SW updates wise?
For the Vantage M(1) – I’d say so at this point, given the Vantage M2 is out this past spring: link to dcrainmaker.com
Maintenance and bug fixing updates are still rolled-out, but seem to be pick-up harder in my personal experience. :-)
link to support.polar.com
Are the hardware differences between the grit x and grit x pro so big that it constitutes the new features only appearing on the pro or is this more of a business and marketing side decision, whats your take?
I would presume this is a business/marketing decision. Given that they confirmed the GPS, HR sensor, and display are all identical. Best I can tell based on responsiveness – the processor side seems identical as well.
In that sense, I get it as the original Grit X had a lower price point than the V2, and thus the V2 features were greater. So they are porting quite a bit over, albeit not quite everything.
Haven’ asked me, but I’ll try to answer. 😄
Regarding elevation profile page for example, I think all hardware is already there… As Ray said, they rely on old customers to buy the new watch, so some features are blocked for past models… This customer here will buy a new watch, but after 3 Polars of my own, and 5 I bought for the family, next one will be Garmin…
The only thing Grit X nails is sleep tracking. Battery before the race estimated 35 hours, died after less than 24h. Can’t charge on the go. No serious mapping. OHR very discutable. No SPO2 sensor, no NFC payments, limited number of watch faces…
In general, Grit X and PRO are adventure/trail oriented, and with that (lack) of functionalities and for that price, there are much beter options out there…
For all those who are not into trail running, and would like a good looking sports watch, even the first edition of Grit X will do the job.
I’m assuming you still don’t get notifications during a workout, or have Polar finally seen the light and given us the option to enable that?
I still find it bizarre that the exact time I need to be given the name of my contact/summary of the message on my watch rather than having to dig around in my bag/pocket for a buzzing phone is exactly when Polar watches won’t show it; during a workout…
Still the same there. Though it’s funny, because the menu option literally says “On”, and then when you tap into it, there’s only one option “On, when not in training” – so it’s as if there’s thought for adding two options, but only one option exists in that particular setting menu.
Polar know how to enable it (points out to m460) but you have to buy polar gritx 2 pro to unlock it ;-). Its sad to see how Polar turned out to make money on simple soft upgrades instead on making whole new products…
Sad to see. Simple feature, but that would even make me look for another watch even if I got it for free…
Ray, when did your in-depth reviews start to lack any mention at all of battery information/functions/runtimes/real world useage. etc ? Not even a single sentence mentioning manufacturer battery length or modes.
I’ve enabled the product comparison chart here, it now shows in the post. That normally includes all the battery claims – I had set it live earlier at launch, but didn’t initially include it in the post as I wanted to sweep through the other products again for firmware update inclusions: link to dcrainmaker.com
In this case, battery seems roughly as claimed in terms of day-to-day battery life. The GPS activities I did didn’t throw any red flags as being overly battery burning.
Yes and what are the claimed battery specs? I guess that’s my original point.. For an in depth review, why would I go to polar, to research their battery specs, and then cross reference that with a statement of; “battery life is as claimed”. Just put lines in to the in depth reviews about battery life! This is a significant component/feature of this market segment to review. Just trying to tell you, I think sometimes there is a a very slight implicit bias in products you may not like, to not get as in depth of a review, as the products you do really like. I thing wrong with that. But at a minimum, help us understand them equally, since we are relying on you to help guide our decisions. Hoping my comment makes your reviews what they once were, super thorough, and without heuristic shortcuts.
Haha. Crooked Ray is out to get Polar! Sad! Make DCRainmaker great again!
Good lord people. I always include battery life claims in the product comparison database (and in fact, the Polar Grit X Pro entry in that database went live *AHEAD* of this review, since it was pre-populated). I have for a decade since the database was introduced.
Also, fun fact: I usually remember to add in the product comparison charts a few hours after launch. Largely because I’m usually running behind (as was the case this time), and I like to triple-check all the units displayed in that chart on launch day show any updates. Both product updates and database updates. For example, I recently added dual-GNSS as a row to the product database, but haven’t manually gone back and set every single product to ‘No’ from null (except the COROS Vertix 2). So in this case, I went and set these items to ‘No’ for Garmin and Suunto. And inversely ensured that the Polar Vantage V2 was reflecting any upcoming changes from today’s announcements. In a perfect world, these would happen at the same time. This is true for virtually every review I do, from Garmin to Apple.
As for the battery life claim versus mentioning it somewhere in the other written text, sorry, my bad. Any regular reader here knows I tend to focus on what’s new and changed (both good and bad), and things that are hard to find details on. Rather than regurgitating a spec sheet of claims. So again, when time is tight, I spent my last 30 mins before embargo trying to track down outside in the woods why exactly I was seeing differing results on the elevation plot not working and trying to suss out a pattern, rather than spending that copying/pasting from Polar’s press release (especially since battery life was exactly what it was on the Grit X…because it’s basically the same unit).
In any case, I’ve added those in.
Thanks for the review. Å ges questions:
1 which coordinate systems är supported? Is it just WGS 84 lat/Long, of does it support also support UTM, MGRS etc.
2 Does it support waypoint and waypoint navigation?
Just wondering… how they manage to tell ppl owning grit x their watch can’t handle those “super advanced” upgrades. Grit x and grit x pro are basically the same device…
They’d probably note that the advanced recovery features for example previously came on the Polar Vantage V2, which costs $499/499EUR (the same as the Grit X Pro). Whereas the original Grit X cost $429.
Overall – they sell the same watch – grit x, vantage v2, grit x pro is basically the same, just software differences. If I own grit x I would feel cheated. As a owner of original Vantage v1 – I feel cheated.
The problem is that those upper-end features only exist because people pay more for them. It’s a premium feature, and thus a premium price.
We can set aside whether that higher price is appropriate for the market at large, but looking specifically and only at Polar’s offerings, they’re divided up into higher-end features costing more. It’s not about the hardware – it’s about the software. Just like if you buy a less expensive version of Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, you get fewer features (e.g. Photoshop Elements instead of full, or not all the Office suite).
The creation of features isn’t free. Someone has to make those features, test those features, iterate those features, etc…
But I have a proof that Polar never brought function to vantage v1. Polar wont answer me why they advertise function which doesnt exist. Its not about your explanation, its about bring promised function to vantage v1. Are you interested in seeing this as a tech guy? I can provide you with proofs :-)
Which promised feature?
Look at the “training with the key features” official video released along with vantage ver1. Go to 2:12 and you will see that zonepointer for power is available for vantage v1, you can get in on every screen. This is not available in final version. If you choose to have this “power” on your watch you wont get this graph only number. Check for yourself. It doesnt work like on video. Its a cheat.
I just looked at the video*, at the point in question, and it shows “HR Zone Pointer” – which is indeed on the Vantage V1 already.
I don’t see it saying Power Zone Pointer anywhere?
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV1IoYtS0Ow
If you look closer you will see that managing this field lets you add this zonepointer to only one view. Like on 2:08 and 2:10. Can you do that on your vantage? Of course not. It shows you how to make this view – and you can click “done” everytime. I also dont see this is blocked to one view, right?
Simple question: can you a view like on the video? Yes or no. (look on “cancel” and “done” they the same colour mean you can save it to use it. Its not about “I dont see an information to use it everywhere” because I also dont see an information this graph for power to use only on “fixed” view. Picture attached.
“If you look closer you will see that managing this field lets you add this zonepointer to only one view. Like on 2:08 and 2:10. Can you do that on your vantage? Of course not.”
Unless I’m doing something wrong,I just did exactly this. I added the HR ZonePointer to one field, and then again to another. Then saved it successfully. Then re-opened up the entire settings page and it still shows there.
Maybe you’re running into a simple bug on the smartphone app that doesn’t exist on the desktop side.
Mr DC who said ANYTHING about HR zonepointer? Its not about HR zonepointer, its about POWER zonepointer just like on the video – I even pointed it should look like on the screen (2 views, one with power graph, one with maximum power). (I call this zonepointer because you can lock zone, see min and max zone for power). If you add a “power” and mix it with different views (for example max speed) you wont get this power graph, only numbers. So its not a bug, it is made this way. Do you understand what I mean now?
Add power view and mix it with time/speed for example to any view using vantage v and look – you dont have this power graph. Only numbers
But what you screen-shotted isn’t ZonePointer. It’s simply your power with the max/avg. You can see this exact screen literally in my original Polar Vantage V review from three years ago, the third pictures in this section, out on a run: link to dcrainmaker.com
(Screenshot snippet above)
The official “Power ZonePointer” has a different look, which, shows your actual zones as color-coded. Polar never said anything about this for power, nor has ever shown it to my knowledge for the V1 (it came to the V2 a little under a year ago).
Lets make a test: make a 3 view with 3 fields on vantage v1 just like video suggest. Do you get this graph or not? Of course not :-). So this video shows a function which doesnt work like on this “training with KEY features” points out. Ok, so its not like typical zonepointer but its just a name – on video Polar shows a function which doesnt work like on the video. I can’t freely manage my power graph on vantage v. Do you agree or maybe on your polar vantage v1 you can. I bet you cant :)
I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know what you want anymore. I showed I could recreate what you screenshoted. I showed that they only promised HR ZonePointer (and delivered). That’s what you asked for.
I’m sorry that’s not the true ZonePointer you want, but that’s what they showed – they didn’t call it ZonePointer during the video. They actually literally showed the field names it was on the same slide (which, btw, is the default power setup for running on a Vantage watch).
“3 view with 3 fields on vantage v1 just like video suggest. Do you get this graph or not? Of course not :-).”
That’s what I did in the reply above (with screenshots), three years ago. It’s precisely what’s in that screen: 3 fields, including the one with the little graph thing, exactly like the video.
Maybe someone else can help interpret, because each time you’re asking for something, I’m showing it, and then you’re asking for something else. Cheers!
No, you showed me FIXED power view – its fullscreen, you cant change anything on this screen. Its something completely different than managing your own data fields like video suggests – mixing, changing positions. Do you understand the difference between fixed full screen power graph and adding different fields to view?
If you use the same data fields just like video shows you wont get a graph. And thats the whole point. Maybe Ill make a photos of watch or video so you can understand but you could easily just follow the video and notice differences. But not add full-screen power graph just add those fields – power, max power and average power. You wont get this graph.
Yeah, I think you’ll have to make a video or something. I’m just not seeing how what I showed isn’t exactly what they showed.
Or like me, abandon Polar after 6 years to see if the grass is greener on the Coros Vertix 2 side.
Seriously, the business model to update a device for as long as the hardware can handle it is what won me over.
Yes and no. If I buy an Intel core I9 or a core I3 pc, in both case I can have all the different version of Microsoft products. Here, if I want the software upgrade I need to put my Grit-x into the trash ….
In any case, it’s good that the firmware 2.0 will arrives end of the year with a lot of new features.
Probably they will be pushed to do also a version 3.0 if they don’t want to loose part of the polar community.
Why ANT have limited future? :)
Phones aren’t adopting it, and Bluetooth Smart on some devices has multi-channel connections (the main limiter for most consumers).
Don’t get me wrong, at a protocol compliance level, ANT+ continues to be far superior in my testing. And you’ll notice if you look at any of the sports tech reviewers out there, virtually all of us will use ANT+ over BLE every time we can (for a slew of reasons, some of them related to workflow, and others just due to it working reliably).
Nonetheless, for companies like Polar and Suunto (and seemingly now Coros too), the lack of ANT+ is absolutely hurting them in the cycling/triathlon realm. One only need to read the comments on the recent COROS Vertix 2 review. Maybe that makes a difference – maybe not, but there are real-world problems that Polar and others can’t fix without ANT+.
The fact that Polar’s cycling test requires another device to actually do the test is a great example. Or the fact that I literally couldn’t get the Polar watch to pair to any of the power meters on my bike, or the trainer (because the trainer connection was used by Zwift…as one does in 2021). These are problems that should have been resolved years ago through a firmware update, and while it’s easy to brush them away at this point – they just won’t go away.
People aren’t buying new trainers every year, or even every 3-4 years. Unless you bought a Wahoo KICKR18/20/CORE, then anything you buy – even today’s latest models – don’t support dual BLE connections.
Hi Ray,
what do you think about BT FTMS? Would that solve the issue? Is there any reason at all why it is not yet widely adopted (by companies like Polar)?
Thank you!
why they should support a proprietary protocoll that is owned by Garmin and not use a industrial standard as anybody else, did Garmin’s ANT+ did anything the last decade to support notification, assisted GNSS routing, music playback or controls over ANT or likewise? Why anybody should use two protocolls sharing the same frequency band just that Garmin can still call it a day and collect royalty?
“why they should support a proprietary protocoll that is owned by Garmin and not use a industrial standard as anybody else, did Garmin’s ANT+ did anything the last decade to support notification, assisted GNSS routing, music playback or controls over ANT or likewise? Why anybody should use two protocolls sharing the same frequency band just that Garmin can still call it a day and collect royalty?”
This kind of comment is funny, as it shows lack of knowledge. I presume you know that Polar is part of the ANT+ group, right? And I presume you know that’s like 300+ companies these days.
Frankly, there’s more products supporting the power meter profiles over ANT+ than over Bluetoth Smart (mainly due to legacy history). Sure, it’s owned by Garmin, but that hasn’t stopped all the rest of their competitors from it – and thriving on it. Literally nobody cares when I talk to companies about that.
(They did however very much care when Garmin decided to rename ANT+ officially to Garmin Canada, which I content was a highly stupid decision…but hey…).
But in terms of productization, none of what you say actually holds water in real-life when talking to these companies. Nor, does it hold water in real-life when dealing with what consumers sift through. After all, at the end of the day, Polar’s stuff still doesn’t work with leading power meters and trainers. It’s a non-starter. That’s all you really need to know, isn’t it?
“what do you think about BT FTMS? Would that solve the issue? Is there any reason at all why it is not yet widely adopted (by companies like Polar)?”
Sorta. It solves the cycling test bit – definitely.
But it doesn’t solve the dual-connectivity bit, namely people wanting to use Zwift on their trainers (which, is what close to a million people do), plus another hundreds of thousands on TrainerRoad, and hundreds of thousands more on other platforms. If I was designing a watch for endurance athletes, I certainly wouldn’t make a product that doesn’t integrate properly with the leading platforms that people use for training.
Just a comment regarding smartphone ant+ support… actually most (of not all unless hampered by some design decision) Android phones can support ant+ either natively or just adding a small software module download. Of course iphones don’t support it in any fashion, so if that constitutes most, I get the theory, the reality is Apple, specifically and mostly in isolation, doesn’t support it. Nearly all other smartphones can or do. So it’s perspective on whether it is waning at all, the ANT+ consortium might actually have metrics to back that up, don’t know, but it seems more likely it is just one more software attack that manufacturers would rather cut corners on dev costs by leaving out, than a truly market driven perspective. BT is good enough for the 80%, so take the money and run, leave the 20% out of luck or forced to adapt it if other (costly) means that need more/ open connections. (I guarantee there are more gymlink enabled devices worldwide in use today in commercial guns than bt and ant combined, because it was so pervasive and inexpensive to implement that only the past few years have seen it fade away in new products, but the past sales are tremendous worth bikes, treadmills, rowers, etc… market and tech evolution didn’t drive it out, just business choice of supporting the new (and pc, phone, tablet compatible) bt diving the old standards out.
Gymlink and ant+ are limited to one market, sports devices. Tech programmers on the computer side (that everything talks to now) have no exposure, they know bt and wifi stacks…. so cheaper to go bt with a dime a dozen bt programming team and widely supported bt stacks and simplify chipsets and internal circuitry, than keep the skilled niche (thus cost more) teams for the old rf methods in spite of their many benefits and (yes) a few flaws, which never really matter in sports device usage. IMO.
Software “stack” not attack, stupid phone
GPS accuracy makes me sad… Do you think there is any way polar might someday return to the glory days of the V800? Or is the current gps chip just not good enough.
The current chip family lacks a significant amount of horsepower that the sirfstar family had (channels, deducated anti-jamming/noise rejection circuits, and quite a few other in-chip functions that made (make) it a far more capable chip. But also it was 3x more power hungry (basically it was a commercial implementation of military grade gps tech). On v800 it also had a substantial antenna (under the black “extended” chassis of the watch). The Sony family everyone is using now is far cheaper, less powerful, but less power hungry, and takes less internal space for a full design. It’s also less accurate natively, and some of the sirf features really can’t be reproduced in software without huge amounts of code and processing (thus consuming memory and battery).
The main problem is the v800 and its siblings (m430, v650?, and similar from Garmin such as 935) were actually the exceptions to the rule. So the market a a whole (not many had those models) never knew that level of accuracy. So an ignite m2 today is just asaccurate or more so, than a fitbit, or apple watch 4, or pick most any other fitness product from 2015…
So us lucky privileged few who could clearly see on the gps track where we moved 2 feet to avoid a car half over the sidewalk or dodging walkers, know what “could be”, the other 99% of the market are happy if the watch stayed somewhere near the road they were on, lol, so by that standards these new to them devices are “better”. And battery life, cost, and size, ARE better, just at the expense of EVERYONE is ho-hum now.
My v800 has “track mode”… when I run in a track, it follows me dead-on (might slowly drift one direction over the course of a workout, but with Covid in particular I could easily see where I swung out a couple of lanes for 50ft to avoid close contact vefore swinging back to my lane) Modern “track mode” is a forced fix to the reality of crappy gps, and in fact will falsely change your distance in any case of changing lanes unless using a footprint for distance tracking. No such problem with accurate models of 5 years ago. But 14hrs training vs 40hrs… that’s a tradeoff some needed to make too.
So tired of autocorrect… footPOD for distance, lol
What about the chip use by Corona Vertix 2? It is not a Sony chip apparently
I keep reading stuff like this, but I have to say, I’ve never seen it in practice. I had two 935s, and a good day was when they showed me on the right side of the street, but there were still plenty of cut corners, jumping over buildings, etc. The 945 is slightly worse, but it always gives the same distance for the same runs as the 935. The 620, which used a Mediatek GPS chip, was actually the least accurate watch I’ve ever owned. The TomTom Cardio Runner was a Sirfstar watch, and it was probably the most accurate I’ve ever used in terms of the tracks, but it still wasn’t as night and day as you’re suggesting. It had good days and bad days, and it’s only after looking at all of my runs for a long period of time that I was able to come to the conclusion that it was slightly better.
I can’t believe they don’t add a barometer view…
they have!
An other joke by polar ….with 2 years late
they have!
Hi DC, got few question:
1. Does navigation view can be zoom in/out during activity ?
2. How watch performed if you’re going to get off track ?
3.Does the watch, in mountain running mode, automatically draws a gps track for later return ?
1) Yes, you can zoom in/out on the breadcrumb trail. I think I showed that in the video, but I can add a picture above.
2) There’s no re-routing if off-track, it simply gives you an arrow back towards the track.
3) I’m not sure I understand. If you’re recording a GPS activity, you can at any time choose to reverse the route and get back home. Is that what you mean?
Cheers!
In point 3 I mean: If you do not use the uploaded route during activity, does the watch still create a GPS track that you can view and possibly return to (as in Garmin watches).
Yes. You’ll get not only a GPS track you can reverse (and follow), but also get the elevation graph (of historical elevatioN).
That is a good news, does Grit X also have this kind of availability ? I’m asking only about plotting the route during activity not elevation graph.
Polar needs to release a watch with 44 or 45 mm size.
And contactless payment✌🏼
V -> V2
Grit X -> Grit X Pro
M -> M2
All to save development costs.
Boring “new” watches.
Is the barometer the same as on the original Grit X? I had serious trouble with that, returning it four repair for the fourth time now…
I liked my original Grit X, but ended up returning it mainly for this. I’d always start and end my route at my front door, but with 200+ feet in elevation difference according to the barometer. That also threw off the Hill Splitter. I’d always have mismatched climbs & Descent counts on an out and back route (not to mention the hill splitter normally didn’t kick in until I’d been climbing for over a minute, so hill repeats had to be long)
Same here, I had it fixed twice but ended up with the same problem of going downhill for 50m at the start of my run and the altitude being off 100m or so after a few weeks of use, despite keeping my Grit X clean. Finally I accepted this, and in the Alps the altitude map in Polar flow looked ok, even though the exact altitude in the moment was usually off.. I always let Strava correct the altitude now. Might be a reason to go for the new Grit X but am curious if it’s any better…
Nice new features and good to see they are coming to VV2. Did they finally add Vertical Speed as a metric? The only thing that I miss….
I don’t see anything on any of the data field options on Polar Flow showing Vertical Speed for the VV2 or Grit X Pro units I have with the new firmware. :(
Polar is reputable brand for sure, the design is still far from optimum if we look at latest suunto watch for example. It would be great if the increase the screen size compared to the bezel size & made it slimmer. The sleep matrix still assumes that your never wake up during your sleep compared to other brands. Always true to the subject DC keep it up.
Is it possible to see your recorded trajectory while -not- following a route?
Sometimes it would be handy to see if you are crossing a road you have already passed, or orient a bit where you are relative to where you have been/see your starting point/etc..
As a followup question, can you see the recorded route when using the bee-line back to start function?
Hello,
I understand elevation profile are available with Komoot. What about GPX files ? Do we still get elevation or Komoot is absolutely mandatory like it is to get turn by turn, please ?
Cheers Riri.
No Ant+…not interesting. Stopped reading at that point.
Oh wait…did not connect to P1/P2 pedals…I have P1
Glad I was not looking forward to this device.
Hey Ray, slight type:
“Regular Polar watches will note that almost all of these were around new Polar watches over the past year”
Presumably should be “Regular Polar watchers”…
Cheers!
lol, slight typo, clearly
Such pour spelin on mai part :)
Thanks!
I see you are branching out from fitness+gadget reviews into the battery charging industry?
Gotta keep all these things charged somehow!
I know that every company needs to make money, it’s obvious, so why Polar cannot provide any paid software updates? I don’t want to change the watch after 1 or 2 years when is still working and looks nice and has the same (similar) hardware. I don’t want to produce electro trashes when I really don’t have to. If someone wants a new grit x pro it’s ok. If the same or similar functionality could be a part of grit x, Polar should make a software update that you have to pay for.
As the owner of vantage V1 (style of V1 is the best for me), I don’t want to buy any other Polar’s watch for now, unless they will create something significantly new (not a new watch face). Even my m430 (not a premium watch) has a more usable training pause screen than V1 (premium watch!). In general, I think Polar made a step back with the “circle series”. A few months later they presented V2 and abanded V1 (even paid software updates). So I stopped buying new polar products, I don’t want to be cheated again.
Now they do the same with gritX, the upcoming update will be the last one (for V2 also). I’m sure!
I do agree there – I think paid software updates is the way to go in this space. Now, I don’t know logistically how these companies pull that off business-wise.
I think that’s a much tougher problem to solve for the sports-focused companies (e.g. Garmin/Polar/Suunto), and to a lesser degree Wahoo.
Figuring out the right ‘cost’ of that upgrade is tricky. For example, let’s say you go from a Polar Vantage V1 to a Polar Grit X Pro. In that case, if sold direct with middleman, they’d likely stand to make hundreds of dollars (profit). Yet, would you pay, let’s say $150 for those added features? Sure, that allows Polar (or whomever) to remove the retalier/distributor, but that’s not enough to account for the total income loss.
Obvously, some features will never quite fit into that, as they depend on hardware advancing (such as higher end displays, more processing power, etc…). But in terms of the Vantage lineup, the hardware doesn’t seem to have functionally changed much – again, at least from an outsiders standpoint.
I think back in the Fenix 3/3HR days (maybe it was a model or so earlier), Garmin actually publically talked about how tight they had gotten on firmware space, in terms of optimizing every last line of code to fit extra features in and eventually reaching the ‘We ain’t got no more space’ point. At that point, they had added a boatload of features, including added CIQ capabilities, and basically said they never expected the platform to grow as fast as they did. Obviously, we’ve seen them take a different stance in the past few years. Products like the Edge 1030 are now 4 years old, and basically getting all the same features as the Edge 1030 Plus (save the handful of features physically requiring faster processing). Of course, there are also watch examples to the contrary too.
Thanks for your reply, of course, I’m talking about the same line of products like Vantage, also I understand the hardware restrictions, then “your watch hits the wall” and to get more you need to change it to the new model. No problem.
I think (from my point of view) the software update could be even more expensive (half price or 3/4 of new watch), still, it would be the better option for me. I’m a programmer, I know that software is important and expensive :), but (I guessing) cheaper than the physical product, trashes, whole production line, factories, parts, and the whole other things around the process of creation.
Polar could add an option in the Flow app where you provide bought file with new firmware, I hope they will provide such an option in the future, now I’m waiting for V3 or V4 or we will see :)
Of course thanks for the great review ;)
> V1 (premium watch!).
Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe, Rolex …. – it’s premium class. Polar this is a massive cheap!
“It’s a really nice looking watch that, as I did last week, fit in perfectly fine in a suit in a high end restaurant. Yet a few hours earlier was throwing down intervals on trails.”
That’s what I like about the Girt-X Pro. I’m currently on the Polar Vantage M, which is still rock solid and reliable for my personal use (except for some Polar Flow integration things that I would love to see, as well as the compatibility with some 3rd party sensors). However I do understand that with limited time and resources a development team needs to choose its battles wisely.
My question regarding the firmware upgrade plans for the original Grit-X is also answered.
Thanks for the good work again, Ray !
Thanks Remo!
Hi Ray – glad you used the Apple Watch SE in your testing. Since watchOS 8 was released. I have seen a noticeable improvement in the ‘cornering’ of GPS tracks. Your screen grabs of your tests also look promising. Have you noticed it too in wider use too?
It does seem pretty good in my testing lately as well. The other day I realized I never released a full Apple Watch SE in-depth review, so I figured I’d slot this into things as Apple is keeping the SE in the lineup with the 7.
Hi Ray, great review. I may have missed it but can you confirm whether you can create a route directly in Polar Flow, or do routes have to be created in Kamoot and uploaded that way?
And, if routes can be created in Polar Flow can you import them from GPX?
Thanks.
You cannot create routes on Polar Flow, but you can import a gpx file. Or Komoot works well and syncs directly to Flow.
Thanks Nicholas! I’m currently using the Vantage M but this looks like a strong option for my next upgrade.
My V2 does not have the navigation “Zoom in / out” option, so i believe this is a new feature as well. Pretty minor, but maybe worth calling out as such. I would be curious to know if this zooms the new elevation profile, or just the breadcrumb track’s scale.
Good deal, will add in there!
Side note: what was once called PU/polyurethane/synthetic leather is now called vegetable tanned leather.
So I wondered/thought the same thing, and thus basically asked ‘what the exact is vegetable tanned leather’, and I don’t think that’s the case. Here’s what they said:
“Perforated Leather bands are light and add a touch of class to your everyday look. Premium FKM bands are both durable and functional and feel great against your skin. The perforated leather band is made from real leather and it has been crafted using vegetable-tanning. Vegetable-tanning uses only natural ingredients, and there are no chrome used in the process. This gives the leather a soft, natural-looking finish.”
That matches what the interwebs says when I look it up. It’s still animal leather.
Ah cool, so it’s really “vegetable tanned leather” and not synthetic leather looking cool as “vegan leather”. They should have gone with Genuine Leather (vegetable tanned) for bums like myself.
At first thanks for the – as always – comprehensive review!
As a long time Garmin User I looked forward to this watch. For training load and recovery features I like to change over to Polar. Also for the IMHO better design compared to my actual F6pro.
But I’m disappointed. Still the old 1,2″ display with the large bezel space, looks old. But the real bummer ist the lack of ANT+. It is a simple and robust protocol that I don’t want to miss. In 20 years as participant at sport events I never had a single problem with my ANT+ sensors, but a lot of hassle with all the BLE stuff.
Sorry Polar…
I second your concerns. I see that bezel, and it is a no go.
I have never had one issue with an ANT+ device in 15 years, not one. I have problems with bluetooth stuff every day. Just yesterday I had a problem because my edge wouldn’ connect to my phone, because why 935 was somehow blocking it. ANT+ just works, all the time, every time.
Great review Ray
@Marcus…I’m totally with you on the desire for ANT+. The ‘just works’ part is super valuable, especially will all of the other little tasks involved in getting me on the bike or out the door for a run. I’m not interested in adding ‘dorking around with sensor pairing’ to that list. For better or worse, that will likely keep me in the Garmin ecosystem when my 920XT dies (and it seems to be having more troubles lately – froze after a run yesterday that was recovered by a soft reset, but the writing is on the wall, I think).
Like allways, a great review!
But du you have anything about the map coordinates showing, ie what kind of map-ref. it shows?
Is it only DD.MM.SSS, or can you choose ?
it seems that polar is trying to compete with Suunto rather than actually introduce anything groundbreaking .
it is a pity…
My understanding is that Polar tries to capitalize on the success it had the previous years with the previous watches. Polar Vantage V2 was not a great hardware update over the Polar Vantage V. Same for Grit X Pro. I think it is pretty much the same with the Grit X. Just differences in SW updates and features.
It is the same as the Suunto path back in 2017. Spartan Sport WHR succeeded by Suunto 9 and then updates stopped. Now when someone spends a lot of money for the top product a company offers, she usually expects the company to support the product in terms of updates AND new features. At least for 2-3 years. Because she already paid top money for it. When I spend more than half a thousand dollars for a product, then the least I expect for it, it is not be outdated in a year or two. Because I’ve already paid more than VFM money.
Real screen size :D
I think these watches are really great, and I find reviewer’s lack of enthusiasm simply stunning :) Of course I’m a fan of polar, but still – polar and e.g. garmin or coros are perfectly comparable in terms of quality of watches (of course polar has best web interface ;)), yet is seems terribly hard for reviewer to acknowledge it.
You dedicated a summary of huge interview to points like 1) well looks improved 2) they are $50 more expensive than some other watches 3) your personal guesses about for whom polar made this model (now THAT’s a mystery). No summary of most useful or liked features, no summary of precision… and then one last sentence of degrading compliment “polars customers (not we – them) dont have to choose ANYMORE”.
You may have great methodology and be thorough, but you sure as hell can’t hide your antipathy towards polar – so please don’t even try man, it will be easier for everyone.
PS the nick similarity is by pure chance
“No summary of most useful or liked features, no summary of precision… and then one last sentence of degrading compliment “polars customers (not we – them) dont have to choose ANYMORE”.”
Umm, because the accuracy hasn’t changed, because it’s the same sensor and chipset, as discussed. Sure, I could have added that in the summary – but it certainly wouldn’t have helped the situation – since it was the worst of all the units I tested for both GPS and HR, against COROS, Apple, and Garmin. Did you want me to add that in?
As far as antipathy – I don’t have any towards anyone.
The difference, and I think the reason why people read here over marketing fluff reviews – is I’m going to call it like it is (both good and bad…and blah/shrug). One only has to read the comments on *ANY* of the YouTube reviews today on the Grit X Pro to find reality (or social media – pick Facebook or elsewhere). The reality is Polar is in a very dangerous spot pricing-wise compared to a base Fenix 6.
No amount of hand-waving or fanboyism changes that.
I’m a long time Polar fan but have used Garmin, Corus and Apple watches over recent years. However, I have gravitated back to Polar with a Vantage V2 this year. What I don’t understand is the performance delta I see between a Polar Grit X that I also have and the Vantage V2 if they are supposed to have the same intervals.
GPS performance on my V2 is excellent even under heavy tree cover whilst my Gritx X was noticeably poorer. My Apple Watch 5 series was really bad, my Corus Pace 2 struggled under heavy tree cover and a Garmin 945 I had would veer off course (by miles) every now and again. I don’t know if these issues are caused by me using a Stryd footpad at the same time. The combo of Stryd/H10/AirPods really seems to affect Apple Watch GPS performance.
Optical HR performance at rest is great on my V2 but with my skinny wrists not so good on the move but now actually out performing my Apple Watch. However, I find my OH1 outstanding so it’s not the technology just the positioning which seems to the challenge.
Overall I’m quite happy with my V2 when paired with OH1/H10 for my Trail Running needs. GPS lock is fast and trails are accurate I love the Flow, Sleep racking and recovery tools. Better battery life would be good for me (although I am swapping with Grit-X so less of a pain and I don’t do Ultras) and a larger screen. As a man in his 50’s who now needs reading glasses the 3 field views are a challenge to read on the move, Hopefully next year we’ll see Polar adopt a bigger circumference screen and slim the bezels.
I did get very annoyed with Polar when they under delivered on the original Vantage only to release the better Grit-X quit soon after. Now it seems they are getting better at delivering new features to older models but might help if they were up front about this. They could say new models will receive updates 2 years from launch but some new features will always be limited to new models (whether technically or commercially limited). Perhaps by handling expectations better they might not annoy some of their long terms fans so much. This batch of firmware update will go someway to repairing the damage.
Cheers for the review.
Grit X Pro seems to be a very nice watch indeed. However, as a Grit X owner I already opted out of this holding back software business model and went with a company that explicitly states all their models will get all new software upgrades so long as the hardware supports it.
As a consumer, I prefer that business model…
Really nice In-Depth review, again. 💪
Ok, I just switched from Vantage Titan to V2, should I take another step to Grit X Pro. So let’s hear some opinions – Vantage V2 it GRIT X Pro?
The only difference is the sapphire glasses, operating temperate and ruggedised features that I can see. Functionality will be identical following V2 3.0 update on 20th October.
Thanks for the great review, as always and pardon my engrish :) Some time ago I upgraded from v800 to Grit X. Totally love it and once again thanks to you – I made the correct decision. What I really hate in routes function from Polar is that I have to find Start point and in some cases, tracks are planned 0.5 kilometers away from the actual start point and if I miss it, instead of route guidance watches will try to lead me to start point. I’m kinda frustrated why Polars can’t stick to the closest route point and I can’t find if this was finally solved in Grit X Pro. Maybe there is a solution and I simply fail to find one? And btw, is it possible to completely turn off touch screen functionality?
I know exactly what you mean. Very annoying.
They have added the possibility to start navigation on the go and even switch route to another while trainong. So, yes, your problem will be solved.
Honestly I think they did a pretty good job. They didn’t change a ton and that’s a little disappointing, but every single update addresses something that I’ve heard people complaining about. From the screen brightness, changing routes mid-run and zooming, proper trackback, compass outside of activities to the sapphire screen. Might not be enough compared to what Garmin is doing, but it seems like they are listening to feedback and working on the right things. I’m also happy that the V2 gets all the updates this time around.
Thanks for the review Ray!
Polar seems to be following a path to get more premium out of packaging than actual new hardware capabilities / competitive features.
Until then, happy with my Fenix 6 and 945LTE.
Are any of the polar products yet automatically updating / syncing to flow? (as it was the main reason / annoyance contributing to my Garmin switch 3 years ago). M430 and Ignite we still have in the household require you to manually connect every single time (unless we’re completely missing something
Yes, Flow and the newer polar watches do background sync. I’ve found it works reasonably well for me on a Pixel 2 and Pixel 4 with the Vantage V2. Can’t attest to any other watches, phones or platforms (iOS). Bluetooth will be Bluetooth on occasion (and just not work).
M430 will autosync, but there is a specific setting(s) in the phone permissions you have to configure right. (Don’t recall offhand but I think you have to allow flow to always do whatever in the background even when not running, something like that) this is true for Android anyhow, as mine does it all day long (periodically at intervals). V800 no, that’s always manual, BT in m430 is a better implementation in this regard. iPhone ymmv, maybe someone else can answer that.
I like the idea of passing the updates to the Vantage V2 which I already have, so will probably not move across to this, unless it was bigger screen, I see it has new backlight settings? But hopefully there is a backlight improvement.
I still don’t understand why Polar persist in annoying their previous customers with not pushing out all updates to older models, E.G. the original Grit X is only 18 month sold, yet no running/cycling tests on the update?
Also it’s seen as a Trail Watch yet still no safety feature like Live Tracking it really isn’t giving people an option to move across from Garmin or forcing people to stay with Polar. I understand it has a backtracking feature, but not great if something happens to you. Safety features really are a must have feature now.
Even in other watch reviews we are looking for hints to next generation Fenix, that is sad. I was not impressed with Polar, I don’t want to buy 6x pro now in case the new model is announced soon, so I just wait in frustration. If I knew there isn’t going to be a new model in the coming 6 months, I can purchase a 6x pro in peace.
I understand the business decision not to include new features to the original Grit X. But I can’t help myself but feel even more attracted to Coros with their policy of trying to add new features to old models. Sure, after some time it will be impossible due to HW limitations. And maybe with more and more models they might not manage it for all models. But compared to Garmin and especially compared to Polar, they are doing a great job.
I’ll definitely consider future updates when buying next watch – and after Vantage M2, V2 and Grit Pro “updates”, it will not be Polar for sure.
My thinking exactly. After 6 years or so with Polar (V800, Vantage V, Grit X) I decided to go with Coros Vertix 2. The two main reasons being top notch hardware and the business decision to keep that device updated with new software for as long as the hardware will support it.
After seeing Grit X being left without many software features due to pure business decisions, I’m pleased I made the change.
Disappointing, but I hope Polar sells these watches nevertheless so they have more money for development of new features. Better Screen-Body-Ratio, Maps and dual-frequency GNSS would bi nice.
I think it’s a great outdoor companion. I have Grit X and i preordered Pro Ti version. Never had Garmin or similar so i stick.
As for all Coros lovers (i also wanted to take a plunge and go for Vertix 2 but …) did you read internet ? Did you read DCR Vertix 2 review ?
This might be the most handsome GPS watch I’ve ever seen.
The things that keeps me stuck with Garmin at present are music and payments, and those are really hard for the smaller players to do because it requires the cooperation of third parties. I wonder if there’s potential for a consortium of all of the other guys to come up with a solution that could be licensed to any wearable. SportPay? SweatPay? Something like that. They’d have a much easier time negotiating with the banks if they did so as a single unit with a lot more total users. Ditto for music. It wouldn’t solve the problem that they’d have to write their own code for their own unique devices, but it could at least give them the green light to do so.
“I wonder if there’s potential for a consortium of all of the other guys to come up with a solution that could be licensed to any wearable.”
Roughly speaking, that’s what there was for Garmin. It was technically called FitPay (by NXT-ID). At the time though, Garmin was basically the only meaningful customer on the wearable side. After a couple years, Garmin acquired FitPay (or the assets of it). It’s all a bit fuzzy, but basically, that blocked anyone else from leveraging it.
The challenge is you’ve basically got payment solutions from: Apple, Google, Samsung, Fitbit, and Garmin. Collectively, after you cover those platforms/user bases, the user bases beyond that get super small (excluding China).
Realistically, I think the best approach for the Polar/Suunto’s of the world on the NFC/Music side is to do what Suunto is doing with the Suunto 7 – utilizing WearOS. With Fitbit committed to going WearOS, that platform is going to get far better, quicker (namely in terms of battery life). WearOS solves many gaps for Polar/Suunto. It does create new gaps for the ultra-endurance crowd, but frankly speaking, that’s a very very very very very very small portion of the market (people needing that kind of battery life).
Garmin has shown that people are happy to find middle-ground with a Venu-style device of mostly good display but still respectable battery life. I think 2022 will be a strong year for this type of device.
I agree that the watch looks amazing but I am biased as I have always liked the look of Polar’s watches.
I agree that not having payment and music on watch looks like a massive gap, but I am wondering how many consumers actually use payments and/or music on the watch. I am one of the ones who use music. I do so on my 945, although, I always run with my phone for safety. The positive side effect of running music from the watch is that instructions for structured workouts do get transmitted through your headphones. This is a big one for me, as I regularly miss the next step of a workout on my V2.
Having said that I really like how Polar does things (e.g., the Flow platforms, sleep tracking, training load, native running power, setting up the watch in the app, Zone lock) and I think that Polar has gotten to a feature set that works well for most (if you have separate bike computer).
Literally, the only things that always drives me back to Garmin after a while is the fact that the software of the V2 seems just not fully baked in terms of reliability. I sometimes have crashes during TBT navigation. When that happens, you lose all data (In contrast when my 945 crashes, which it has only done once, it restarts the activity you where in at the moment, it crashed.). As long-distance triathlete, I find it too stressful to not be able to be able to 100% trust my watch. I would argue that that is the same for the target group of the Grit X pro and I really hope that reliability is better with the next firmware.
There are also sometimes problems with pool swimming where the watch thinks that I did not swim more than half of my time in the pool, which have been around since the original Vantage and I do think that they will ever get fixed, as the group of people swimming Polar watches is just too small, I guess.
I agree that music and payments are basically issues for people who run without phones. I’m not sure how big that market is. It absolutely includes me and most of the people I train with, but we’re far from a representative sample. (We’re sort of elite-amateur/semi-pro types who rarely run fewer than 70 miles/week; we’re also mostly Gen-X or older millennials who started running before we even owned phones, or in any event before phones were used for music.) I suspect it’s the more serious runners who tend to go without phones, and that does seem to be the market that Coros, Polar, and Suunto are targeting.
Hello,
Does the Titanium has a better scratch resistance compare to the DLC model ?
I have a Garmin Marq Athlete, in perfectly state, like new after 2 year compare to the media Loaner you tested here which looks patina.
Thanks , Zenon
Yes and no. DLC is harder to scratch, but when it does, the scratches can be very visible. Titanium oxidizes, so scratches fade over time and become almost invisible unless they’re very deep.
Correct me wrong, on the new Grit X PRO watch you can no longer catch laps with a tap?
According to the manual you still can. The omission of this in the specifications is likely just a typo.
Neither backcountry or competitive sell Polar Grit X Pro (didn’t show up when I did a search). I ordered from Polar Pro because of your write-up.
No worries Russell – I appreciate the support attempt nonetheless!
Hi Ray, great review as always, I very much like both your articles and the video reviews!
Stupid question – I have the feeling that the Grit has been way more popular in the Polar community than the V2 and I donˋt get it at all. The V2 has the same specs but is much lighter than the GritX, more comfortable for trail and street runners and and it came in late 2020 with even more features. So why now the GritX Pro? Fancy titan bezel and saphire glass? After 11 months of daily use and > 200 trainings, hikes and trails in the Swiss Alps my V2 still has not a single scratch. Itˋs super durable and light. So why a new model with the same functionality and hardware? I would have expected a better battery life or offline maps – the new watch looks nice but imo is for nothing (making money?).
Looks, it’s all looks.
And to be fair, that is what’s changed the trajectory of watches in the category over the last few years. The overwhelming vast majority of people don’t want plastic-looking watches on their wrists. Some don’t mind (myself included), but the market has shown super-clearly that people want to wear the same watch all day (and night), and that watch to be stylish.
The Grit X series delivers on that. It’s as simple as that.
Now, I do agree with your second part in that there’s value in Polar differentiating with additional features like offline maps. With COROS in that category now with the Vertix 2 (and Suunto sorta there with the Suunto 7), Polar really needs to focus on that for a Grit X 2 or whatever they call it in a year or two.
How does the actual screen size and overall watch size compare to the original Vantage M?
Thanks Ray for yet another useful review!
Being a Vantage V user, who has never had a single issue with my current watch, I’m seriously debating whether or not to upgrade. Ah, well..
The thing that I’m currently missing the most is average pace for an entire interval, or an entire set of intervals (each) in a phased workout. Now I would have to contend with pressing manual lap.
@Ray, Do you know if any of the other major brands offer this option?
After years with Garmin 5 and Garmin 6X Pro, I am unsure if I should switch to either the Polar Grit X Pro or the Suunto 9 Peak…would you recommend me to change environment outside Garmin? if so…Grit X Pro or Suunto 9 Peak?
This Wiggle video shows that the backlight setting may have been updated since this review – it now appears that you can increase the light setting beyond just ‘low’ (3:50 in). link to youtube.com
Love the looks of it and I even would consider buying one, BUT the 1,2inch screen is a dealbreaker for me?
Why can’t they fit in a proper screen? The gap between the bezel of the screen is too big for me, it blows my mind that nobody is adressing this in reviews? It’s like having a TV from the 90’s …
I know the will drain more battery but give the option to go for a bigger screen (screen to body ratio). Every respected smatch watch supplier now offers a 1,4inch screen.
I’m curious to learn if Polar (flow) is also enabling the synchronization of sleeptimes from Polar Flow to TrainignPeaks. The data fields are in both data models, but in a multisport scenario it all makes sense to have a proper integration.
From what I understand, it’s (still) not possible to view any of the new “outdoor” dashboards (or any other dashboard for that matter) while a sport profile has been activated and the watch is in “training mode”. So which of the new “outdoor” data (sunrise, sunset, GPS coordinates, …) can be added to custom sport profile views?
Regards,
Kristian
I see from your screenshots that there is a training view named “Watch face”. Maybe that is the solution?
I have purchased one of these ones. It looks great and I like the APP more than Garmin’s.
HR sensor works decently well for me… at least the average beat count is the same as with a band (I need to compare the peaks)… but as a previous owner of a V800 , I have to say that GPS accuracy is poor… I have tried GPS+Glonass and GPS+Galileo. It has too many mistakes in my opinion.
I simply don’t know why accuracy cannot be like V800… did they use forbidden military technology, or was it a gift from aliens, or just too expensive to integrate in a watch… I don’t know, but we are wasting big amounts of money in poor GPS accuracy. And my (other) Garmin FR 630 does not do it much better.
About everyone being worse than V800: I believe it has been covered on DC Rainmaker elsewhere. It’s not that the GPS chipsets of today are bad, it’s just that the V800 was exceptionally good, based on military standards. But the reduced accuracy has the benefit of longer batter life.
If you have the Grit X Pro, would you be able to test which hiking specific custom data fields are available in training profiles? Is it possible to view the GPS coordinates while in a training session?
Well , battery is not an excuse for accuracy. What’s the point of having wrong data about your exercise?
To me the GPS accuracy is the most important thing… I use the device for training, not for work, going out with friends or just the gym. The mistakes seen during trainings are so many… simply unacceptable.
Ah about your questions, I am not sure what you mean, but I think the answer is that you can’t. After the session, I usually check the route in the map they show in web , and they allow deep zooming … that’s when you see all the mistakes clearly.
I identified a difference of more than 200m in 10K running sessions. I have been doing the same circuits for years… so stepping the same tiles each session … and comparing my V800 old sessions with these ones…
Hey DC,
I came here after looking at your keynote for 2021. Lots of insights and I leave it to Garmin and Coros to take the lead in cramping features into their watches. I have one question though, I am a long time polar user and the basics of what a sports what does (again my opinion) polar does accurately like HR, GPS, Recovery, Sleep and how much better you are getting. May I know your opinion on the same, if you consider others are on par or better than Polar on these points.
Hi Ray, I heard that the barometer opening has been redesigned for the Grit X Pro compared to the Grit X because of the many issues with it (I had a lot of problems myself). Do you have any more insight into that? From the pictures of the Grit X Pro it looks like the two holes on the bottom are not there any more, but other than that I can see no difference.
YEA, THIS OR BUST.
In answer to a question I posted on Facebook, Polar confirmed that they have redesigned the barometer casing for the Pro. Furthermore they have implemented a fix for the Grit X, specifically saying the following:
“After the repair we’ve added a protective covering as a holder for the barometer which fixes the issue previously experienced with your Polar Grit X.”
The outlook is beautiful with outdoor spirit. I like this design.
However the route navigation function is not so versatile as Suunto.
Suunto allows user to start at any point and to any direction of routes.
And change or correct routes in the middle of activity.
If greet x pro want to be real outdoor watch, it need to improve navigation function.
Well, with Grit X Pro and before end of year, Grit X, you can do that
Is there any Polar watch model that has NFC payment function?
Nope. Not with Polar.
been using the Grit X for over a year. Found this weird thing with its route when downloaded a 360km GPX Alps route – shows as 360km on Polar Flow and Komoot – but only about 250 on the watch! tried to download same gpx files few times with same result.
any idea why?
the inability to charge the watch during the long multi-day run (like i believe is possible on Garmin) is very annoying – any idea if it will be addressed by Polar?
I’ve asked Polar about the charging stuff but they have no plans to change this, claiming sweat will cause corrosion.
This is the main reason why I now have a Vertix 2 and after a 24hr run with route guidance on all the time still have 74% battery left…
I hace been a long Polar user for more than 10 years. Starting with an RS800, then M400, M430, Vantage M and finally upgraded to… another M430!!!!! I found so frustrating the problems of the Vantage M mark 1, that it always seemed a work in progress no matter how many firmware updates it had, that I finally bought myself a new M430 to substitute the much battered previous one. That experience has made me very wary of the new generations of Polar watches and so far what I am reading hasn’t convinced me otherwise.
Well after 2 months comparing my old V800 and my new Polar Grit X Pro, I confirm that V800 has much better GPS accuracy by far. The mistakes Grit X Pro make, belong to 15 years ago (crossing the streets, sometimes running on rooftops like Spiderman?)… Polar exchanged the Grit Pro with another one and I see the same results. I don’t really know if it’s hardware or software, maybe a mix, but it is so dissapointing. And I have plenty of visibility … buildings are decently separated, only sometimes random trees as I use to run around parks but not inside. It’s a pity, the rest is super cool and heart rate works good for me compared to HR band, good for the average, maybe not for peaks but I accept that.
Hello,
Thanks for the review Ray,
Is anyone swimming with the Grit X Pro (or the Vantage V2)? How does it work? I have a Suunto S9 which works really well at tracking lap swimming (at least, it might just work well with my very personal freestyle swimming), on par with a Fenix 6 i’ve used for a year, and wonder if the V2 also woks well?
Does it keep track of the intervals, as it recognizes pauses at the wall, or do you need to push the lap button to have the auto-interval distance displayed on the watch?
Has anybody updated to the latest firmware on the Grit X Pro?
link to support.polar.com
That update is for the Grit X, not the Grit X Pro.
Polar knows exactly how to disappoint long term users!
Coming from the RX3 GPS, V800 and Vantage V, the last and the last I bought was the Grit X Pro.
Recently the last discovery was, that you have to calibrate the compass again after you paused the workout during following a route.
What is Polar thinking?
You set up the watch to follow a route during biking, you fix the watch to the handlebar until you pause the training.
If you would like to proceed with your training you have to re-calibrate the compass. Therefore you have to loosen the Grit X Pro from the handlebar to do so.
Once you went through the setup you can fix it again to the handlebar.
Every time you would like to start the training again, you have to do that!
Now I’m questioning the whole compass functionality.
Why you ask?
Because there is a compass watch face running all the time without permanent calibration!
Polar, please change your philosophy back to “Push a button and everything is done”.
I do not want to spend half an hour before everything is set up. I want to do my training instead.
Agreed Polar needs to get with it and add a “bar mounted” calibration method for all cycling sport profiles. Seems like basic common sense, considering they sell a bar mount!
However, on the V2 (and i assume the Grit X Pro?) you can cancel out of the compass calibration while in a session. Just push the lower left button “back” button, and it will cancel calibration, and then rely on GPS to calibrate compass direction while you are moving. The compass still wont’ be calibrated, but at least you can stay riding and not fiddle with the watch.
A year has gone since that post. Still – I experience exactly this constantly – re-calibration of the compass needed during training, which is annoying no matter if the watch is mounted on a handle bar or on your wrist.
Second issue: The watch doesn´t wake up way to often if you have set it to automated pauses when not moving.
I wonder if the firmware update of today fixes those issues. I fear, I will be disappointed….
I have been using Polar M400 with H7 sensor for over 8 years and it still works as it should. Right now I got an offer for used (like new) Polar Grit X Pro for 270 USD. Based on this review, do you think I should take this offer and upgrade? As a landscape photographer I see a lot of useful features I can use and as a man that likes hiking, skiing, running, swimming, crossfit etc. it looks like it is not necessarily an overkill for me.
Does Polar still only support one alarm at a time? I really like Polar products – but little things like this make it hard to use them as a “daily driver”.
Why is there no calender function included were you can see what training is next in line?
Were you can even choose to do the previous missed training or do the training which is scheduled two days later because it fits in today?
I believe there is, but you need to turn on the watch face view. Go to settings, choose views, enable the “latest training sessions” view. If you have a training plan on polar flow it should show past and future sessions you’ve planned and completed.
Have ete and eta ?
Hey DC Rainmaker!
I use the Grit X Pro Titan since May 2022 – the firmware update in July introduced a nasty bug that lets the Grit X Pro crash in the middle of training sessions – with all data lost.
Polar supports plays as if they are dumb. Ask me to reset the device which I’ve done several times now, try to accuse “3rd party sensors” like the Wahoo pedals or speed sensors. But it also crashes without any sensor attached.
Then they replaced the unit with a completely new one.
Guess what… First week now and again it crashed.
I am 100% convinced they have a software bug. It’s horror when a training session is lost after some hours of riding.
And they don’t react professionally nor do they really want to find out what the circumstance are – like type of phone connected and such. It crashed with and without sensors, with and without notifications on or off… It’s such a painful situation.
What do you suggest to really get Polar’s attention?
Thanks!
I can relate exactly to your experience with Polar support, buggy devices, and general frustration with their “pro level” devices. As i understand the Vantage V2 is nearly identical (under the “hood”) to the Grit X Pro. On my V2 i had frequent mid-ride watch crash/reboot/data-loss incidents. For me, the 4.0.9 software updated seemed to resolve those crashes. I would be sure to NOT use any of the watch features during a workout, if you can avoid them, my crashes seemed to occur more often when using FuelWise, Drink reminders, etc.
When i contacted Polar support about the crashes, they basically told me “factory reset your watch”. I asked “so every time i have a crash, i need to factory reset my watch?” “yes”. “But that doesn’t fix the problem, it does nothing to fix the bug, what should i do?” “Please factory reset your watch”. utterly useless.
Unless Polar publicly announces their update policy, frequency of bugfixes, etc, i do not plan to buy another of their watches. In an era when Garmin actively wants users to help them fix bugs, frequently releases updates, blows past Polar with features (both hardware and software), it’s hard to say Polar is better in any way in 2022. (In 2018/2019 their FitSpark, Recovery Pro, and other features were years ahead of others, and chronically slept on by DCR in my opinion. IMO they squandered the early lead and now can’t compete at the high end).
Thanks for sharing your experience.
It’s the same for me here: support *always* replies with “reset your device” and refuse to take customers who find terrible bugs seriously.
It’s a complete fail.
I tried not to use “advanced” features, no notifications during session, no reminders – but it still crashes.
This is the most annoying and frustrating experience in a long time.
Sports watches can and will have bugs – but they should never ever lose recorded data. Why do people like DC with a lot of “power” not help us increase the pressure on Polar?
Right now I would say NOBODY should buy a Polar watch anymore.
Should one mostly do the leg recovery test when rested? I mean it will affect the baseline if you’re always doing it right after a workout, right?
Hola DC
Estoy interesado en renovar mi reloj de deportes, actualmente tengo el Polar M y quisiera actualizarlo al Polar Grit X Pro, pero antes de hacer una inversión me gustaría validar si el Polar Grit X Pro hizo algunas mejoras respecto a la medición de ritmo.
Con el Polar M, Cuando salgo a correr o a hacer bicicleta, cuando cruzo en una esquina o hago paradas puntuales, bien sea por esquivar algún obstáculo, noto que el tiempo del ritmo sube, 1:30 a 2:00 por encima y se vuelve a normalizar luego de 20 a 30m aproximadamente.
Muchas gracias por el post, es muy buena la información.
Saludos
Much as I love Polar hardware, am I the only one who finds their UI and software in general extremely poor? Not quite unusable, but boy do they make it difficult to use many of the features…
Ok, this may be a silly question, but is there a way to increase or decrease the sound volume of the alerts? Not the volume on the music controls but the volume on the beeping sounds when starting or pausing an activity, the FuelWise reminders and so on. I am afraid the default is very quiet, and I will not hear the fueling alerts when riding my mountain bike.
Yes, it is! You can do it in the settings of the specific sport profile on Polar Flow mobile app.
Thank you! It is not the most intuitive place to have the option in my opinion; that being said, this is exactly what I needed, and although I would like it to be louder in the max volume, it surely helps 90% of the time.
After skimming some of these comments, Ray is a saint!