Polar Vantage V
ALMOST LIKE HAVING A COACH ON YOUR WRIST.
WE’VE BEEN WAITING for a successor to the Polar V800 multi-sport watch for a while and it arrived in 2018 in the form of the Polar Vantage V, a new multi-talented device targeted at anyone who cares about performance, from the elites down to the weekend warriors.
In addition to a snazzy new design, the headline features include improved optical heart rate tracking that Polar claims is its most accurate yet, and running power tracking from the wrist. The Vantage V is the first watch in the world to offer this – though there are apps like Power2Run for the Apple Watch 4 that do the job too.
The Vantage V also sports a broad range of extensive training load and recovery monitoring features tailored to the individual athlete, and a battery life that extends to a whopping 40 hours of continuous workout tracking.
From serious sports tracking right through daily activity and sleep, there’s a great deal packed in here and a lot to excite athletes of all levels.
DESIGN, DISPLAY AND INTERFACE
The first thing you notice when you pick up the new Polar Vantage V is how much subtler and more sophisticated the design is compared to its blockier, rectangular-faced predecessor the V800. We’d go as far as to say this is Polar’s best looking watch ever and one of the most
THE LEVEL OF DETAIL YOU GET ON THE WATCH ITSELF AFTER A TRAINING SESSION IS SECOND TO NONE THOUGH. EASY TO READ STATS FOR EVERYTHING WITH GRAPHS FOR HEART RATE, PACE AND POWER ZONES ARE ALL VIEWABLE ON THE WATCH.
attractive running watches you can buy right now.
What you’ve got here is a watch that you can wear all day without screaming to the world “I’m an Ironman competitor.” Much of this is down to the fact the Polar Vantage V has a more traditional round watch face that’s complemented by a sleek stainless steel bezel and frame that surrounds a touchscreen color display.
The display isn’t as sharp as you’ll find on something like the Apple Watch 4 and we found it to be a little dark and hard to read. The backlight fires up when you turn your wrist but not to full brightness. More often than not we ended up hitting the full display light to make the information more legible.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to customize the screen or light settings, for example to have the backlight always on during night runs or heavy sunlight, or to extend the time the light is on when you hit the button.
There are five subtle, textured stainless steel side buttons that provide a second way to navigate the watch in addition to the tap and swipe touchscreen.
The buttons were particularly useful on the move, and because the touchscreen controls are largely restricted to scrolling through and reviewing information, we found we used the buttons more than the screen even when we weren’t running.
There are some user interface oddities. You can use the touchscreen to scroll sideways through the Vantage’s main screens for at a glance stats on Activity, Training Load, Heart Rate and Training History, but it then feels a bit weird to switch to the up and down buttons to achieve the same action.
When we tapped to go deeper into the stats for each, we found the touchscreen to be a little laggy. Also, once you’re at a deeper level – say jumping from your current heart rate into the Max and Average BPM for the day – you can’t use the touchscreen to go back. You have to jump to the back buttons, again all a bit odd.
At 66g it’s 13g lighter than the V800 and also a fair bit lighter than something like the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus, which comes in 86g. When it comes to all-day wear and even sleep tracking overnight this is a huge improvement. Let’s start with the basics. The Polar Vantage V supports 130 different sports with individual sport profiles and algorithms to track each activity. As you’d expect, running, swimming and cycling feature prominently, plus there’s a dedicated triathlon mode. There’s also everything from CrossFit and strength training to hiking and mountain biking.
You can load up to 20 sport profiles on the Vantage V at any one time and you can customize the stats displayed during a session via the Polar Flow web service or smartphone app.
The level of detail you get on the watch itself after a training session is second to none though. Easy to read stats for everything with graphs for heart rate, pace and power zones are all viewable on the watch. Though there is also plenty of additional data, training insights and tools to be found on the Polar Flow app and the web service, which are both as good as any other tools out there.
One of the Vantage V’s big claims is that it’s the most accurate wrist-based optical heart rate watch on the market, thanks to what Polar calls its Precision Prime sensor fusion technology.
We tested the optical heart rate monitor on several different training runs against the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus optical heart rate and a Fenix 5 using a chest strap.
One session was an interval session with two sets of 600 meters. Our average heart rate according to Garmin’s optical sensor was 103BPM versus 108BPM on the Vantage V. Our max on Garmin only hit 141BPM against a 168BPM on the Polar.
Based on the session, we’d suggest the latter feels much more accurate against our perceived effort. A tick for Polar’s new built-in monitor.
For swimmers, the Polar Vantage V’s optical heart rate will track your BPM in the water, while there’s also GPS-support for open water swimming.
While most of our runs against the Garmin tended to finish within 0.05 of a mile of each other in the post-run stats, the Vantage V did have some pacing issues mid-run
There were several occasions while running intervals at specific paces that the Polar readings jumped around despite the fact we’d definitely maintained the same stride.
BATTERY LIFE
The Polar Vantage V claims an ultra-long battery life with up to 40 hours of continuous training using the optical heart rate and GPS tracking.
In our tests over a 6 day period we got 6 hours of running and general usage, with the continuous heart rate on but smartphone notifications switched off.
VERDICT
By far Polar’s best-looking and most capable watch to date, if you’re serious about your sport and you’re into delving deep into your data in search of improved performance then the Polar Vantage V has a huge amount to offer.
There are some genuinely impressive features you can’t find elsewhere, and this is a Polar device that takes us a step closer to having a coach on your wrist.