Polar Grit X review | Live Science

The Polar Grit X is an open air journey watch, one a lot more durable than the typical health tracker.

It has glorious water resistance, flashier construct than the hardcore Garmin watches you may purchase on the worth, and it lasts a great lengthy whereas off a cost. Stat accuracy is usually respectable too. The Polar Grit X held up OK in our train check periods for each coronary heart price accuracy and placement monitoring, if not completely.

This watch isn’t as enjoyable to make use of as a Garmin Forerunner 265 (one in every of this greatest health trackers of the 12 months), with a lot much less refined software program and a much less useful interface model, although. It excels for exercise monitoring, however for the remainder of the day different watches can appear extra helpful.

Polar Grit X

47 x 47 x 13mm

64 g (44g watch solely)

1.2in 240 x 240 MIP show

32MB storage

Gorilla Glass display screen

100m water resistance

345mAh battery

GPS

Polar Grit X: Worth and availability

The Polar Grit X launched again in September 2020. It’s a little bit of an old-timer by tech requirements, however continues to be a present mannequin on the time of assessment.

You’ll pay round £369/$429 (opens in new tab)for a Grit X, though we discovered them promoting for round 10% much less on-line (opens in new tab).

Polar Grit X: price and availability

(Picture credit score: Andrew Williams)

Polar Grit X: Design and Show

The Polar Grit X is among the many most hardy sports activities watches in its worth class, providing a little bit greater than what Garmin gives. It has a troublesome chrome steel bezel, 100m water resistance and a troublesome Gorilla Glass display screen.

That is double the water resistance of extra lifestyle-leaning wearables, whereas notably robust rivals just like the Garmin Forerunner 255 lose the contact of sophistication offered by the metal bezel.

A lot of the remainder of the Polar Grit X is a plastic polymer, however we’re glad about that. Plastic is mild, and so is the Grit X at 64g. It doesn’t attempt to wobble round in your wrist whenever you go for a run, which is one thing we search for in the perfect working watches. The burden is notably low for the watch’s dimension. It has a 47.5mm diameter face and is 13mm deep. There’s additionally no smaller mannequin for these after a watch to swimsuit a extra slender wrist.

If you get nearer to the Grit X, you understand its show doesn’t practically cowl the complete entrance of the watch. It has a 1.2-inch display screen. This can be a worse screen-to-diameter ratio than both the Coros Apex 2 Professional or the Garmin Forerunner 255. They each are barely smaller, however have 1.3-inch screens.

The show itself is a 240 x 240 pixel MIP touchscreen, though 5 buttons additionally play a component in primary navigation. It’s a coloration show too, though Polar makes use pretty poor use of coloration right here.

Like different MIP screens, the Polar Grit X’s is “all the time on” by design, as this kind of show consumes barely any energy when simply displaying the time. It feeds off ambient mild, so could be very filter on shiny days, however wants to make use of its personal digital watch-like mild to allow you to see the show in darkish rooms. It’s a traditional hardcore health watch show.

Polar Grit X: design and display

(Picture credit score: Andrew Williams)

Polar Grit X: Options

The Polar Grit X has all of the {hardware} staples required of a great train watch. It makes use of GPS to trace your location when out on a run or trip, and a great variety of satellite tv for pc arrays are supported (GPS/Glonass/Galileo/BeiDou/QZSS).

Polar doesn’t provide the Multi-band GPS seen within the Apple Watch Extremely and a handful of the current greatest Garmin watches. However that’s no shock when the Grit X was launched in late 2020.

It has a barometer, a magnetometer and a coronary heart price sensor array that may additionally estimate your blood oxygen saturation. It has all of the fundamentals, and a bit extra.

The actually attention-grabbing stuff occurs within the software program, although, the place Polar gives some uncommon nuggets. Strava Stay Segments is the primary of those. Hook up your Strava account and you’ll import Strava segments on to the watch.

In the same vein, you may hyperlink your Polar watch as much as Komoot, with a purpose to import strolling and mountaineering routes. This watch doesn’t help on-watch maps, nor would we count on it to at this worth, however you may see a line-based illustration of a route you deliberate forward of time.

Teaming up with two of the largest and hottest health apps on the market? That seems like a profitable technique. Nevertheless, these are required partially as a result of Polar’s personal software program isn’t that superior in different senses.

It feels dated in 2023, in a handful of respects. For instance, you should long-press the “again” button to get the Polar Grit X to start out sync’ing. Compared to a Wi-Fi outfitted Garmin Forerunner 265, the place your final run will be uploaded to the cloud just about as quickly as you step within the door to your house.

The Polar Movement cellphone app doesn’t present that satisfying a dashboard, a glimpse at what you’ve been doing, and the usage of display screen house on the watch itself is at instances remedial. For instance, whenever you press the “up/down” buttons from the watch show, the background of the face cycles by means of totally different information panes, like your coronary heart price, exercise degree, the climate and so forth. Nevertheless it’s all a bit threadbare. Different wearables do a a lot better job of becoming extra data on watch faces.

There are only a few watch faces right here — 4 analogue, 4 digital. And also you’ll usually discover the analogue watch arms block among the information content material in an awkward-looking manner. Some elements of the interface don’t cling collectively all that effectively. From time to time shifting between screens feels labored and sluggish. In different areas it’s completely snappy.

You possibly can count on quite a bit from the Polar Grit X by way of health monitoring substance. Don’t count on to be coddled with plenty of beautiful smartwatch-style gloss, although, because the software program will be clunky and at instances mildly unintuitive.

Nevertheless, a whole lot of the stuff we wish from the angle of oldsters who train to a regime is right here. For instance, you may run structured “urged” exercises, and the Cardio Load characteristic works out whether or not you might be understanding an excessive amount of, or maybe not sufficient to make progress.

The Polar app additionally presents 130 monitoring modes, though you’ll solely discover a small fraction of these obtainable on the watch to start out with. You possibly can select as much as 20 to maintain on the watch itself at anybody time.

Polar Grit X: features

(Picture credit score: Andrew Williams)

Polar Grit X: Efficiency

Polar says the Grit X ought to last as long as 10 days between expenses. That appears to be on the cash. For instance, it misplaced 32% after three days, together with two hour-long tracked runs. Not unhealthy in any respect, even when it’s not near the “as much as 32 days” of the Garmin Intuition 2.

The watch makes use of a little bit magnetized dock to cost, interfacing with 4 steel factors on the again — it doesn’t use wi-fi charging.

Throughout all our check exercises, the Grit X’s recorded distances, and placement information, have been extraordinarily just like these of a Garmin Forerunner reference system. It’s pretty snappy to hook onto a GPS sign too, so long as you pair the cellphone often to maintain its GPS information up-to-date.

Coronary heart price accuracy was acceptable other than one exercise, the place it was a complete state. We solely observed after coming again to the outcomes a while later, however readings can naturally be affected if the strap isn’t finished up tight sufficient. Or if clothes interferes with the sensors.

At different instances the Grit X’s coronary heart price readings can begin a little bit wobbly in the beginning of exercises, a traditional difficulty of older wrist-worn coronary heart price readers. Nevertheless, other than the one defective exercise the watch’s most and common coronary heart price outcomes have been excellent.

The Polar Grit X HR {hardware} positive has a whole lot of these sensors too. It makes use of what Polar calls the Precision Prime array, which makes use of 4 mild sensors, and 5 units of LED lights. It isn’t fairly on the degree of the newest Apple and Garmin Elevate v4 tech, however with stable reliability for many of a exercise’s period, don’t be too delay when you discover the watch promoting at a great worth.

Polar Grit X: performance

(Picture credit score: Andrew Williams)

Polar Grit X: Ought to I purchase the Polar Grit X?

The Polar Grit X is a stable hardcore health watch with good {hardware}, however its software program is beginning to present its age. In consequence it’s much less interesting as an informal health tracker than a lot of the competitors. And we discover Garmin’s newest provide higher coronary heart price accuracy and stability.

Nonetheless, there’s so much to understand right here if you’re simply right here for the train monitoring. The Grit X has sufficient instruments in its belt to supply longer-term insights into your progress and health routine. And it’s commendably robust, with 10ATM water resistance and a part-metallic construct.

Polar Grit X

(Picture credit score: Andrew Williams)

For those who don’t love this product

With this sort of funds to spend, your different choices embrace the Suunto 9 Peak, the Garmin Intuition 2 Photo voltaic and Garmin Forerunner 255.

Of those two manufacturers we sometimes head to Garmin first, as Suunto attraction its at its peak – no pun meant – in bargain-price watches just like the Suunto Tempo 2.

The Forerunner 255 is maybe the strongest Garmin various, providing the same vibe however with a slicker and friendlier interface. Plus stacks of options and good stat accuracy. A few of you might need to improve to the newer Forerunner 265 too. It has a punchy OLED display screen, however does value a bit greater than both the Polar or Forerunner 255.

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