POLAR VANTAGE V

£479 Can Polar’s new top-end watch compete with Garmin?

The V is the elder sibling of the Vantage M that we tested in issue 359. Ours came with an additional chest strap. Without, it’s £439, which is £190 more than the M. So what justifies that extra spend?

The headline upgrade is the addition of power; in fact, the V is the first wearable to feature power without the need for a third-party sensor. Arguably this is a futureproof hit as these remain early days when it comes to the importance of run wattage, yet some will love it. The ideal is marrying power data from your bike and run for perfect multisport harmony, but we’re far from triathlon utopia.

Training Load Pro measures muscular, cardiovascular and perceived load to deliver a useful training audit. Like similar features on top-end Suuntos and Garmins, accuracy and usefulness improves over time. It’s the same with the Recovery Pro feature, which requires the chest strap as state of freshness is based on heart-rate data. Its battery life – 40hrs compared to the M’s 30hrs – is superb; GPS via its Sony chipset seems accurate; it supports over 130 sports including tri; like the M and its 9 LEDs, optical HR accuracy is an improvement on many of its rivals but still not perfect; and the usability is impressive.

Moot points: it lacks the range of running dynamics compared to Garmin; you must manually sync with your Polar Flow app; and the digits are dull. Overall, though, with a couple firmware updates such as the addition of notifications, this is a well-thought-out and stylish training watch. polar.com