Glad to hear the firmware improved the situation. The tweak was an improvement, but we'll still do some work to this. I'll report back here with an update soon.

Hi Chris, and thank you for making yourself and Polar available for questions and comments.

I only found this forum/thread after a bought my V800.

I have used Garmin Forerunner 405 for many years. I have both foot pod and speed/cadencebike sensor. It stood between Gamin Fenix2 and V800. I am very happy with my choice. As I see it both have some advantages and drawbacks. However, I like the heart rate part and the Flow better than Connect. For the Garmin side, I like the running dynamics statistics. I image that to be very useful tool.

To my questions and comments.

Developing Flow, I really hope you put energy and resources in developing Flow. (You have sad that this is a priority so no need to comment). I am remembering Garmin’s acquisition of Motion Based and their promise to implement all the features. Not happened yet. I really do not see the point in having to export my data to an external analytic service (ie Strava etc) because the delivered service (Connect) lacks features.

Running Dynamics, both Garmin and Wahoo Fitness are able to do this, via the heart ratemonitor; can/will you implement something like this in the future?

I want to be able to turn off activity monitor both on my watch to preserve battery and in Flow, I do not care or bother with the activity monitor and ALL the numbers in Flow are wrong since the watch is laying on my desk when I do not train, but I apparently still burn a lot of calories and have a lot of steps.

Thank you for reading, I am looking forward for the developing of Flow and hopefully we will see running dynamics with Polar also.

Hi Chris,
Many thanks for opening this thread.

Tap on display seems a nice feature, but during training I would rather rely on more reliable trigger such as HeartTouch.

I used the HeartTouch for two years on RCX5 to switch between views to practice windsurf and kitesurf(from heart view parameters to speed parameters), on both sports i have gloves,
now with the v800 i cannot change views simple by pass the watch by my chest.Why polar?
It has been one of the best features on polar watches for years, saving button presses and its not distracting.
Pleaase put this feature on V800.

Best Regards,
Jose

Chris,

I've been using the V800 for about 6 weeks now (I bought it the instant I got the email that we could get a pre-release version). I've run one triathlon with it, and I was disappointed that I couldn't edit the workout after I was done. I apparently didn't push one of the buttons completely coming into T1, so my entire bike ride registered as a swim. I realized this during T2 and was able to get the watch back to where it needed to be for the run. The GPS tracking was accurate enough for me to determine exactly when I entered/exited the transition area, but I couldn't edit the data. I know you mentioned that there are different development teams for the Flow app versus the Flow website, but if you could pass that along, I think many of us would appreciate that feature.

I've never owned a training computer of any sort before the V800. I only started running triathlons this year and had been wearing an UP24 band since October. When I was researching products, I liked what the V800 promised and so far (combined with my patience for future firmware updates), I'm not disappointed at all.

I echo what most of the posters are saying/experiencing (erratic GPS during OWS, heart rate skips, foot pod issues) and agree that you need to integrate with other apps - specifically calorie/diet trackers.

I do have one issue about the foot pod that I didn't see posted previously. My cadence data shows drops all the time. My graph looks like a seismograph during an earthquake. I've replaced the battery and tried re-pairing the sensor several times. I can't keep a consistent signal to the V800 during a run.

Myron

It does have heart touch, but changing the display view is not one of the options. Thanks for the feedback.

Will changing the " How do you feel" section of a session affect anything?

Personally, I'm not sure what to enter? I can feel great but to exhausted to do anything else than lying on the couch and eat ice cream :)

How is the tap feature supposed to work?

I have tried all three settings (light, normal, hard) and the only way I can get it to work is when I make my right hand into a fist and pound the face of the V800.

What's the secret?

I had trouble with it in the beginning too - i found that if i set it to "light" then tap w 2 fingers on the front edge of the glass and the band (right on the V800 lettering) then it works pretty well.

Once you get it down it'll work great. Trick is two fingers flat across the face, touching both "Polar" and "V800" at the same time =0)

No - will not change anything.

What it is good for - tracking long term changes in mood/feeling VS training volume.

Except that you cannot for example plot the mood/feeling vs training volume in any way to see a bigger picture. Who in the world would like to check each day separately to see how the mood/feeling is developing over a period of one month or more? At its current state, this feature is quite useless in my opinion.

Unrelated observation. The average pace calculation in the "Progress" page seems to be wrong for individual workouts and also for averages of several workouts. Also it does not contain the option to plot the pace in min/km or min/mi units.

The report in "progress" will be added shortly.

Dear Chris,

A little suggestions about the greatest V800.

May I have somethings like "Race mode" so that the "GPS signal is loss" message do not display and hold the screen. During my race, I sure I need/want to know about my duration/time, much more than the "GPS signal status". It is annoying when I take a look to my watch and all I can see is the white screen with the "signal is loss" or "GPS signal found" message.......(and most importantly, the "signal is loss" message do not timeout, I need to push a button to make it disappear......)


Secondly, when I push start the "Multi-sport mode" with "GPS Power saving mode", the watch asking me to confirm if I wanna use the "GPS normal mode". I lost my whole first lap record because of this stupid question. It may remind me about the setting (with timeout, pls), I can/may stop the watch and set it back. But it should not hold the clock and wait for my answer......


Great Thanks.

Hi Cris,

I know that changing the display view with the heart touch option don't exist on flow and that the great V800 has the power to do this.
But will be a future polar flow update with it or not?

Best Regards and thanks by the attention Cris,
Jose[/quote]

dcrainmaker - did you ever try the Viiiiva in the end?

Yes. I put some notes in my review. Though, read others comments as well, as the experience seems to differ from person to person (unclear why). For some people they get everything passed through perfectly and others it's inconsistent. It's a bit tough to know if everyone is on the same Viiiiva and V800 firmware levels, or why they diverge.

---

-
My tiny little slice of the internets: dcrainmaker.com

Thanks - sorry for not reading this thread (and your reviews) thoroughly!

Seems tricky.

The reason I ask is probably similar to many others: while we're waiting for data export and other V800/Flow features, I'd like to carry on using my Garmin. Obviously wearing two HR straps is a little be ridiculous (although I confess, I did that last night)! It actually looks like the Viiiiva isn't widely available in the UK, so the alternative is probably the Wahoo TICKR. According to your review, that works too, albeit without RR data... Your review hints that this might be coming in a future update, which would be excellent!

Chris@Polar - do you know when this sort of update might be coming?

You can order it from http://www.lovedata.eu , I did. No problems.

Thanks for the link.

The V650 is NOT available in Europe. Yet. Will be in August, says Polar.

Nice! I'll start using it, although I don't think the wording is good, but maybe that's just how I interpret the words. Sounds more like"I'm hurting" rather than "I'm exhausted" to me.

I'm starting to like the Flow website more and more, especially since I now have a Loop as well. But I discovered that training sessions on the Loop are only synced to the V800's diary when it syncing with the USB cable, not when syncing over BT to the app.

Chris,

Am I missing something, or is there no way to view recovery status on the Flow App?

Also, went for a run with the foot pod for the first time after the firmware update. . .the cadence and stride data was solid all the way through. No drops. Good job!

Myron

Hi Chris, i m new to this thread..how do i start a new topic? how to customise the view in training mode? Thank you.

I have only seen recovery status on the Flow web and in the V800 itself. Not in the app.