So I've got this exciting new piece of kit which has turned up on my desk, it's the new
Polar watch. So let's have a look at it. This is the Polar Grit X and as you can
see it's pretty similar to the Vantage which is the one I had previously the
Vantage V which has been a great watch but there's a few key features with this
one that I find quite appealing. So it's really really rugged it feels
like a very strong sturdy watch the the Vantage V was very rugged as well but
this feels like it's a step above again, there's a little bit more metal around
the casing the strap feels a little bit more durable as well so straight away
it's already got some thumbs up for me. The thing I really love about Polar Watches
is their Optical Heart Rate Sensor so this has got a really really reliable system
so it's wrist based heart rate and I found this to be faultless through the
Vantage model as well as with my experiences with the Grit X so far, so a really really cool little
device there so there's a few key things to be aware of with this
watch where it's different to the Vantage, the main thing is the battery
life so this has got a massive massive battery life and will go for seven days
without being charged for just normal day-to-day use and it's got up to 40
hours of battery life when exercising and you can even switch off certain
features and GPS etc and you can
extend it out to a hundred hours of battery life so it's that's fantastic
I mean it's so nice not to worry about charging your watch every few days so the other thing that we
really like about this is it's got weather information directly on the
screen now so as you scroll through the touch screen you have to wake
it up a little bit you can see that we come across to the weather screen and
the way I've got the set up is as it goes around the clock I know what the
weather forecast is coming up and then you can actually scroll through the
touch screen through notifications makes it a really really easy system to use
you can actually get into further more up-to-date information around the
weather as well so you can see the location, time of day, temperature, rain
forecast, humidity all those sorts of things so great for planning your
workouts knowing what's coming and one of the really good features with this
watch which the Vantage V had as well was the sleep stats, so I've been amazed at how accurate
useful that information will be saying you wake up in the morning you can tell
the device that you're awake and it will pull all the information together and give
you information on it on what your quality of sleep was, duration, how much
with REM sleep how much it was light sleep etc. And then it can also
give you information around your recovery in your recharge so using HRV
Heart Rate Variability it'll tell you whether or not you up to performing in a workout as
expected or if you need to have some additional recovery or maybe if you're
slightly under exercised all those little features make such a difference.
A couple of things with this is there are new features around the way you can
analyze workouts so it's got this feature called Hill Splitter so when
you go for a run the watch itself will determine what part of your
run was uphill or downhill and it can give you accurate information about the speed
you're doing certain hills relative to others so you can get a good idea while you're running how
fast you're performing on certain hills compared to other hills you've done in that workout. so it really is an adventurous watch
So it's great for Multisport athletes, but it's also going to be really good for people that are out hiking
mountain biking, long ultra-endurance events
and the other great thing about this is this is you can use this system
to help advise on fueling strategies so the way you set it up is you provide the
information to the software and throughout your workout depending on the
intensity of your workout and the duration, it will give you information on when you need fuel so I'm really
looking forward to using that feature as I go through this
I wore this watch for probably three or four runs but they haven't
been anything particularly long or strenuous so I haven't really needed to use
that feature yet, but I've got some longer stuff coming up soon so I'm looking
forward to using it so yeah it's this is going to be fantastic watch so if you
are looking around for an option to have as a GPS watch then definitely have a look at the
Polar Grit X and I don't think you'll be disappointed. I'm certainly very impressed with what they've got so far