Time to upgrade my Polar V800

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http://www.verynooty.com

Really nice. Would love to upgrade my V800 to the Vantage V. But won’t upgrade until they fix their tcx export for pace.

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Personal best:
Ironman 9:22:02
Ironman 70.3 4:20:00

The new models look really nice, but I will still keep using my V800 for some time. I've read DCrainmaker's pre-review of it and it seems to need some software streamlining before being as functional as the V800.
The optical HR looks very promising, though. I'll keep an eye on it.

Not sure how the running with power is gonna work on that...

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

No Downloadable Routes?
This means no breadcrumbs (perhaps? or likely not this cos Q1 supposed to have back to start)

but not being able to use a GPX file - isn't that a BIG thing?

You could say I am a bit of a Polar fanboy, but other than looks (Hardware and Display) I am not overly impressed in terms of announced feature-set.

1. I don't understand the rationale behind the distinction between M and V model.
   First off: Those names! I have trouble remembering which is the "better" one, what the heck do "M" and "V" stand for? Is the M the "Racing"-version? More light weight but still enough battery time for an Ironman. It seems like a perfectly valid (and pretty cheap) Tri watch for training and racing if you can accept the lack of barometric altimeter (which the V800 has). As I am seeing running power as an absolute gimmick (like all those stride-metrics, optical HR, L/R-Power balance, Step-Counting, Activity tracking, Recovery-Mumbo-Jumbo) to be honest, I don't see a reason to get the V over the M. What am I not seeing? The touch-screen? Future software enhancements to make a more clear-cut distinction between the two?
   
2. No navigation = Non-Starter (for me)
   The whole point of a multisport watch for me is that I don't need any additional devices (i.e. a garmin for route navigation). Whenever I am trying out a new MTB route or I am abroad, I always pre-plan my routes and throw them on the V800. If anything, the expectation would be that its successor improves the somewhat lackluster routing implementation of the V800. But not (initially) having it at all? Ridiculous.
3. "Software enhancements down the road"
   Ok, we've been there with the V800. I was on board with it and got it as soon as it was released. Back then Polar had quite a bit to catch up in terms of a modern GPS watch and the V800 was a big change I think. In a way the frequent updates and new features were almost exciting, but there was also a lot of pain with some stuff being introduced, then broken in the next update to be fixed with another one etc.
   But now they had 5 years for this new watch and are still - it seems to me - releasing a product that is not finished from a software-feature standpoint? I guess this time I'll definitely wait and see and stick to the V800 until I can be sure that the Vantage delivers.

Apart from the admittedly cool looks, the only reason for me to get the Vantage would be the battery life as my V800 only gets me through the first 9 hours of a race.


Oh well, rant over...

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Very interesting. As a current V800 user, I'll be taking a close look. I may wait for the software to stabilize a little.

I don't see it mentioned, but I am kind of assuming that it is Android based, like the CS460. So it makes a little sense that it'll take a bit to rewrite the software and get to feature complete compared to the V800.

I have an OH1 and have found the optical HR to be super accurate, and more comfortable than the traditional chest strap. I hope the wrist based optical is just as accurate.

It's definitely a lot better looking than other Smart Watches. Good enough for daily wear at work, etc.

How does Polar integrate with TrainingPeaks? I know you can export your workouts to the platform but can you import planned workouts to the watch the way you can with Garmin? If so, I will definitely give this watch a try.

The optical HR looks very promising, though.


Just purchased and used a Polar Vantage M for the first time on a 90 min, steady state trainer ride with 10 minutes of "Sweet Spot" riding at the one hour mark.

The Optical Wrist HR Monitoring lined up nicely with my chest strap based reference that I was using at the same time.

Looking forward to using this new Polar model and putting it to more use.

Went with the M because for me, I only really care about HR (for indoor winter riding) and GPS (for outdoor rides) functionality.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Hi all
I got a Vantage M a week or two back.
I have a Q... have any of you folks paired it with a non-Polar chest strap HRM ?
I have a wahoo TickR which outputs both Ant+ (not supported by tje Vantage) and also bluetooth low energy.
I was hoping/ expecting that it would pair with the BLE from the chest strap as the watch tech spec says Bluetooth / BLE.

But no joy. Doesn't recognise any sensor when I try.
(The Tickr itself seems to be Ok - that connects with BLE to my android phone, as i can see from both the Kurt Kinetic Inride app for the turbo, and also via a BLE hrm app (and shows up on the bluetooth settings page too foe the phone).

Any experience ?

BLE can only pair to one device at a time. Try unpairing from your phone. Some Androids have ANT+ so maybe that’s a choice too. As far as experience goes just purchased a VM waiting for it in the mail. Excited to start training with it.

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I still lapped everyone on the couch!

I have V800 for 3+ years now and i was looking at all the features and data displayed (mainly) on Vantage V.

So can any user with Vantage V or M please let me know if Vantage really does not have gradient data (%) during ascent or descent during exercise? And the same for environment temperature?

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Don't stop when you're tired. Stop when you're done.

- D. Goggins

I've got the Vantage V - it has total ascent and descent, and altitude, but no gradient %. Also no temperature.

Thank you for info. I like to climb and i think that's a huge disappointment. Unless they will add it with later updates.

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Don't stop when you're tired. Stop when you're done.

- D. Goggins