Polar Beat: Running & Fitness

To be honest I’ve only used this app a handful of times, after a recent purchase of a Polar H10. I wanted an accurate heart rate tracker for walking. The reviews I could find online were all for the 7 model, but those were highly favorable for accuracy. Pairing the device to the app could be easier, I’ve been walking and discovered it wasn’t paired, my heart rate wasn’t being recorded. I have learned to make sure to pair it to the app and NOT to my iPhone X. Strange, but I can live with that. The first time I used it I selected walking for the workout. I started it prior to actually being ready to leave the house, putting on sneakers, running upstairs for a tissue, and the coach’s voice told me to slow down! The next time I forgot to select the walking routine. Unbeknownst to me at the default running workout, I was disappointed not to be advised to slow down, or to receive any encouragement at all, being a humid 90 degree day and my fat little legs pumping away. I’m learning! I think the app itself is great. I want to know that I’m getting the most out of my walks, health and fat wise. I can see where my heart rate is, if I need to work harder or can slow down a bit, track my route, time, elevation, pace and fat calories burned. This app has all the bells and whistles plus dozens of types routines from mountain climbing to wheelchair activities.

The app is easy to use. The display is well laid out. I especially like that the app keeps the iPhone awake which is great for treadmills and other indoor workouts, and you can lock the iPhone manually which is good when in a pocket while lifting weights or jogging outside. There are a lot of sport profiles to help organize your workouts. Inexplicably though while there are profiles for obscure activities like squash, floorball, and Finnish baseball (kudos on that), there are no specific profiles for very common gym activities like elliptical and stair climber. It would be nice to be able to name custom profiles. My old Polar/hr watch allowed you to set an upper/lower limit and you’d get alarms for going out of range. I’d like to see something similar in the app. Say I want to exercise in the 145 to 155 bpm range I’d like to be able to set that range and then the app voice coach would tell me to speed up or slow down (that could kick in after a warm up period getting up to range). That functionality would be especially useful when doing certain activities like boxing (heavy bag punching) where you are wearing gloves and the phone is not immediately nearby. Overall the app is good and provides use info and feedback to effectively train.

I use a Polar heart rate monitor (“HRM”) to track my workouts’ intensity and calorie burn. I transitioned to Polar after my 5-year old Suunto HRM wouldn’t consistently connect to the MovesCount app and frequently dropped the signal mid-workout. The Polar HRM consistently connects to the app and, after 1 month, only lost signal once (I’m not sure why—signal interference, maybe). The app display is easy to start a workout, read, and add on optional “upgrades, ” which I have not explored. The app shows lots of information, and everything I want: heart rate (including a graph of heart rate over time of the work out), duration of the workout, calorie burn and % fat burn. The app could be improved by taking some cues from the Suunto Movescount app: The HRM is pretty small, and there’s no estimated EPOC. A big improvement would be to: - Arrange the info so the upper part has one large middle number display, and smaller numbers in each corner. Each display should then allow you to touch & hold to customize what the display is showing in that area. This would allow each user to pick what to display most prominently, and where to arrange the other info. Suunto’s Movescount is a good model for an excellent user interface (Movescount is not compatible with Polar’s HRM). - HRM large and in the middle - Add EPOC and training effect

I think this app has some serious potential, but it needs work. I think the info it provides is great, and tops what the Apple Watch workout app provides. The thing is, there are some major downfalls when being used with the Apple Watch. The first problem is when the screen isn’t active for more than a few seconds, the app closes and most be reopened to view data during a workout. This is pretty frustrating and would be much nicer if all I had to do was glance at my watch to see the data. The second problem I’m running into is the app doesn’t fully transmit data to the Apple Watch activity app. For example, it shows that my active calories were counted, but it does not add to the daily total. This is frustrating because even with an hour workout logged with polar beat, I’m not achieving my activity goal for the day. These two problems have lead me to stop using the app altogether. If those issues were resolved, this would be my go/to 5 star app.

1. Any simple BT headphones will link to my iPhone—minimal effort, just does. NOT w the initial connect w the H7. Required hard reboot of phone AFTER downloading Pilar app, and registering. THEN remove battery and reinsert on polar chest piece. THEN it will connect 2. This IS not detailed in the support on the website. I just played around w it until I figured it out. I DID blow about ten minutes on the website trying to troubleshoot however. Thanks for that... polar IT. 3. Call for support—“sorry, wait times are longer than you have set aside to waste in the phone service queue”. I hung up after about 8 minutes or so. 4. Polar bear—while running w the app track my you cannot pause it to quick change the voice prompt menu. It requires you end the workout to do so. Really there are other apps that I prefer to run in parallel to polar beat for my run/training data tracking and prompts BECAUSE the polar app is just not competitive w the other apps out there. Needs more data crunching ability and more flexibility—just more whistles and bells. 5. BUT...the H7 does what it supposed to do—track HR very well. That’s why I bought it and so I am not upset. MAYBE though—since apparently polar doesn’t want to put a live person I the phone for feedback—they will read this and consider polishing the product. It could be a very robust product—it just needs a little work on the rough edges.