The best and most economical route is a Power Tap, standard model. Polar has had a lot of complaints about the 720. The SRM is a little more expensive but has better software. If you buy the Power Tap, you will have enough money left over to buy the compatible software from www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com. Download the demo. ISS and IF are two cool tools added by Dr. Andrew Coggan.

How hard did you work in that last race? Did you overtrain last week? Are your easy days easy enough and your hard days hard enough?

Some people want to know what the numbers say, not what they think they felt. I'm one of them.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

I have used the Polar S720 with the power option for roughly 8 months now. There are several good features about this unit. I do not know how accurate the unit is as I don't have any other means to measure power. It found that the power measurement will repeat as I have used this on a stationary fluid trainer, that is at X mph equates to X units of power. I have done this several times at several speeds (18mph,23mph,and at 26mph) and the numbers repeat. The software that comes with the 720i is excellent, Downloading from the watch to the computer is a breeze with the IR download. The software maintains a personal training log, a calendar with the exercises done, graphs the data with speed, cadence, heartrate, power, altitude, (data can be taken a 5 sec intervals) The watch can be programmed for 2 bikes, one with the power unit and another without. Now for the bad news, the power unit is not wireless. There are 4 sensors (rear wheel rpm, chain links, chain freq, cadence) that are connected to a watch mount with wires. The watch is strapped to this mount and the information is passed by RF(radio freq) The heartrate is transmitted to the watch via RF. The Power unit is mounted the my training bike and I use it to measure my training progress.(Power divided by Heartrate) I also us the 720i without the power unit on another bike I use for Crits and Road Races.
Prior to purchasing this unit I made a comparison to the Power Tap and the SRM.
The negative to the Power tap is that the power unit is in the rear wheel hub and is somewhat heavy-
The ultimate is the SRM with the strain gages mounted in the crank set, allows any wheel combo, light in weight, uses Polar heartrate sensors. If money was not a object the SRM is the plan.
For me, the Polar unit has worked well and for the money is a good value.

Bruce

I agree 100% with Bruce - although I only have 3 months on the Polar. I understand there were initial problems with the unit however I have had no problems with mine - the installation was simple (about half an hour). It is really useful having an all in one unit with only one supplier if something goes wrong...

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