We've just created a video on how to plan training sessions with Flow / V800. It's a good UX walk through for those who haven't tried this yet or don't have the V800.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O38OTY2uuTQ

I doubt you get a response here. It will be construed as flaming, hating, trolling whatever. But I'm sure Chris probably agrees with you regarding ant+ but he can't say it. That decision was made way above him.

No argument from me. It was definitely an inflammatory post by design. Definitely not hating or trolling.

While I would love to hear a reasonable explanation of why they excluded ANT+. The only reasons I can come up with are that they wanted to stick it to Garmin (who owns the ANT+ protocol, although it is available for free) or that people use equipment differently in northern Europe than we do here, and Polar is completely ignorant of their North American market.

Either way, it is a massive fail by Polar that has guaranteed irrelevancy for their product, and it frustrates me because it is a product I am actively in the market for and would like options.

I got Polar V800 and so far I am disappointed

1. It's buggy. My main issue is that it does not show elevation correctly in Polar Flow web app. I set my watch and web app to Imperial system and it does not transfer elevation correctly. Essentially it shows eleveation as 3x higher than real one. Screenshot from app and watch for the same ride http://i.imgur.com/s8T0I91.png http://i.imgur.com/cDoMxLg.jpg
2. No export. I thought it's no big deal - I will just use Polar Flow. The problem is that Polar Flow is slow, difficult to navigate, illogical and underfeatured.
3. Daily activity does not show steps or any other number on the device itself. Makes activity tracker useless because it does not encourage to train more. There is no single page where you can see both activity data and training activity.
4. Update timeline does not look very promising with no set date for Android integration other than sometime this year.

What I like

1. Recovery graph - pretty good visualization.
2. Screen is very visible even outside in a bright sun.
3. Auto generated video of the ride. It will be even cooler if they add Instagram integration to pull photos.

Overall I do not feel I got my money's worth and I am contemplating returning the device.

No Strava!!!! Wtf I'm out. Not pink

---

"Base training is bull shit" - desertdude

The excluding of ANT+ is disappointing but the real judgement can probably be made 1-2 years from now. I have a Garmin Vector, so yeah.
Majority of the complaints on export/strava are on the website side - nothing to do with the watch itself. Considering it a "massive failure" might be a bit of hyperbole.

You can judge in two years. I'm judging with my wallet today. Lack of ANT+ is a complete joke. It seems Polar put all their efforts into the design, which is knocked out of the park in my opinion, and no thought whatsoever into how people might actually use the device.

Software is Mac compatible (yet)?

---

Proud Representative of Slowtwitch Anti-Atheists Society.

Endo,

You are certainly welcome to your opinion. As someone who was - and is still also - a Garmin user, while the lack of ANT+ is not optimal, the work around is incredibly easy and perfectly effective and costs only $50 which in the long run is cheap. Clearly you are unhappy with the available Garmin products as well... otherwise you wouldn't be so interested in this one.

I'm not trying to argue that leaving ANT+ out was the right decision. None of us have enough of the details to judge that. It does indisputably make it a little less convenient, but as I said... a very effective work around is available.

Mark

A $50 work around for a $500 piece of hardware? That's horseshit. But whatever, the reason you want the Ant+ is for power meters and how would I use it with the watch anyway considering there is no quick release or mount for it. But I bet there is a $50 workaround for that as well.
But this isn't the place for this stuff. It's for questions about the watch.

I'm just saying that none of these devices are perfect. They all have bugs. The designers have all made decisions on what functions they can and want to put into the device and what they will leave out. All customers are different. They made the right tradeoffs and decisions for some and the wrong for others. That is just how this stuff works. If you like it - great. Buy it. If not, buy something else.

I just jumped in to make a couple points:
1) A work around IS possible and does work. It is not Polar's design point. But it does exist if makes sense for you. If not... buy something else.
2) I'm new to this and Chris appears to be trying to be genuinely helpful and doesn't deserve getting harassed

If you bought something from Polar and they didn't deliver and are providing poor support, you deserve to be angry. If you haven't purchased anything I simply don't see how you have the right to be crass and angry at a company or their representative for not designing what you wanted them to.

I wasn't implying that heart rate might disrupt GPS, but the other way 'round. Hence my Suggestion to the OP to see if his swimming-HR issues are the same whn turning off GPS.

On a side note: Got my V800 yesterday!
Spent ages on obsessing over the optimal training views. I like the setup-GUI! What's missing is drag&drop re-ordering of the different views within one sports profile (like it is possible for the fields within one view, or like it is possible for the sports-profiles themselves). As I was already expecting after reading all the posts (everywhere), the tap-feature unfortunately isn't working all to well.

Ceterum censeo, Android supportem statim implementam esse!

---

if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Bingo.

An ANT+ vs Bluetooth Smart thread can go on for days, just as Android vs iOS battles go on in any mobile forum. The fact is we chose to design the V800 with Bluetooth Smart. One of the reasons is that we feel that's where the future is, and we're committed to advancing the market. It's a stake in the ground, we're happy with the decision. You as a consumer have a choice whether or not to buy. That's the last I'll comment on this here.

Yep! Of course.


Sorry, yes. I read that wrong. It isn't due to GPS either though. We'll have a firmware drop tomorrow morning that will fix this.


Awesome! We hear you on the view customization. That indeed would be great. You can drag/drop lines within the view to reorder, but I see what you mean with reordering all views.

On the tap gesture side - two fingers across the face with the sensitivity set to normal. You'll find your groove and it'll work good. Just takes a bit to find.

In response to earlier poster who spent most of the post bashing the Polar, I've had ZERO issues with mine. I've had mine for 3 weeks now and have put it through swims, bikes (long and short), runs (long and short), and a HIM race testing the transition pickup. I find the software full of useful information, the monitoring throughout the day very helpful, and the customer service when I had ANY question was over the top. Even with the missing swimming metrics, I believe I made the right choice in picking Polar. I've tried Garmin, Timex and now Polar. I had many more bugs with Garmin than anything else. Seems to me a phone call to customer service by the poster about any issues on the V800 would solve the problems.

Thanks to Chris and Wayne for their support. Proudly enjoying my V800!

I'm having an issue where driving a car and riding a motorcycle are counting as steps. I've never worn a fitness tracker before so I don't know if this is something they all do or if it's unique to the V800. I'd understand the motorcycle since it has some vibrations in the handlebars and I wear the V800 on my right wrist which is also the throttle. But the car is very smooth so shouldn't be doing this. A 30 minute car ride added about 4,000 steps the other day, which totally throws off the recovery tracking, which is a great feature. Any word on tweaks that might be coming for this?

---

--Chris

Is recovery/effort calculated differently for different activities? Or are the different activities just "labels"?

As an example: strength training for me is rather low pulse, but the effort is high.
Running at the same pulse level would be an easy run.


Another question on the Orthostatic tests: is it better to have low scores on RMSSD? I guess so judging from this page http://www.polar.com/...nalysis_for_R_R_data , but I'm not sure.

I'm not sure how the strength training figures into your overall recovery. I do know that the recovery time can be pushed back if you're very active after it. I guess the thinking is it takes longer to recover from an effort if you then go walk 10,000 steps vs. sitting on the couch doing nothing. That makes sense. Problem is that driving (i.e. sitting on my ass) is adding significant steps and thus throwing off the recovery.

---

--Chris

Chris,

I've been a Polar devotee for years. One thing I was hoping and expecting to see in the v800 was pulling speed and distance from the v800 and cadence and stride from the stride sensor when running. Unfortunately, I was seriously disappointed.

On a recent run mapmyrun logged a distance of 1.42 miles while my v800 logged 1.16. Gross error is an understatement. I have the Stride Sensor in Flow set to "Automatic" but that seems to be worthless.

I'm competing in my first half-Ironman on Sunday and it appears my option (if I want accurate pacing and distance) is to not use the stride sensor because Polar screwed the pooch by not using the gps for pace and distance. Of course, I bought the v800 and stride sensor because I expected it was a step up from my RCX5 for triathlons, but sadly it isn't.

You commented about not using us for beta testers, but you are effectively doing so. Actually, a more accurate statement is Polar put out a partially-functioning device to generate revenue hoping we'd be patient enough for you to catch up to industry standards.

Another, lesser issue, is Polar's non-compliance with BLE 4 standards. I ride and run with my phone and turn on mapmyrun or mapmyride to share. I turned on "Heart Rate Visible to Other Devices" to no avail. If my phone linked to the H7 first, then my v800 couldn't see the H7. If my v800 linked first then my phone couldn't connect to the H7. I discovered in another review yesterday that that function only works with other Polar devices. Well, I don't see myself using my v800 and RCX5 simultaneously, so what's the point?

Right now I'm really having a love-hate experience with my v800. I'd return it today based on the low-level of available functionality in key areas - like accurate pace and distance while running with the stride sensor. I'm hanging on to it because I'm hopelessly optimistic that Polar isn't just screwing us and might actually provide software updates that fix the stupidest decisions - like the gps vs stride sensor issue.

On a positive note, I love the display, I love the activity monitor, I love a lot of the POTENTIAL the v800 has. Sadly, I can't use even the accessory I have now if I want accurate data. I've also read the speed sensor will also override the gps. How about giving us a choice? Simple software switch of GPS or pod, gps or speed sensor?

Finally, I am seriously disappointed by the 13-hour and 50-hr modes. I'm doing my first full Ironman in November. While I hope to finish in under 13 hours, it's quite possible I won't. So that means my v800 could die in the middle of my marathon. Why not have a 20-25 hour option? I could vary the data-gathering timeframe (rec.rate) on my old RS800CX from 1 second to 60 seconds. Why not use the same approach on the v800?

Again, this is a beautifully designed physical device with a gorgeous display and crappy, partially completed software.

Hi Chris,

I have tested the second route now, which didn't work either. I see from the post by @Lokiwthor that he has experienced a similar issue with a different iphone app.

The problem with erroneous average lap pace displayed is also confirmed ... all this is a bit frustrating to say the least ...

Let's start with HRM reading not displayed on V800 when simultaneously iSmoothrun on iphone. Since the "HR visible to other device" parameter didn't work, I tried your fix of unpairing the H7 from the V800, so that it picks the 5Ghz signal only. The positive with this was to get an even longer period of correct HR display (about 80%), but still not for the whole run. Here is an image of the workout recording as displayed on Flow afterwards :

http://imgur.com/EWMJbAi

As you see, I get HR reading for a few seconds at start of the run, then it disappeared from the V800 screen until I stop after 5 minutes and paused both the v800 (back button) and iSmoothrun. Then, I changed an audio parameter on iSmoothrun, and restarted both the V800 (red start buton) and iSmoothrun. From this time, I started to see again some HR reading on the v800, but same "frozen value" for a while, then another value, etc .. kind of staggered, until the 25th minute when it came fully alive and stayed correct till end of the run. Again, recording was just fine on iSmoothrun (iphone) for the entire run, and again the average HR value for the run on the V800 is strangely the same as the one given by iSmoothrun, although the v800 didn't display HR for about 20% of the run.

So, what to do to fix it ? Bug, or faulty device ? And what is the technical reason for this ? Hard to believe that it is Smart Bluetooth conflict ... else it wouldn't come back and stay stable after a while ... more a firmware issue ?

Also very annoying is the issue with incorrect display of the average lap pace when running in free form with 1km autolap. I tried a workaround by creating a "dummy" workout with 50 reps of a 1km step. I was hoping that the error would be only while in autolap mode, but even with this programmed workout, the average lap pace was in fact the average workout pace. Only at the beep at the end of each step did I see a summary screen with the right lap pace value. It is impossible to use the instantaneous pace, and the footpod is no option due to cost and recurring calibration issues (not Polar only, all footpods). Frankly, not having a reliable pacing info on display makes the watch kind of useless as is for me.

So, same question ... bug (if so, when fixed) or faulty device ?

I would really appreciate help and solutions for those two issues.

Jef

Request: please find a software solution to allow us to make lap when we want. It's already painful that we cannot choose to create automatically a lap at the end of a workout phase. It becomes really annoying when a big white box appears on the watch, preventing you to take a lap by pressing the start button. Especially when the phase is short. There is no way (or I didn't find it) to remove this box. Of course, the information provided are important and helpful but being able to create a lap is even more important to me since I will use those information later.
Additionally it would be great to be able to use the hearttouch option to create a manual lap. Maybe not useful for running, it would be a must have for the cycling profile, when use your two hands is not an option to take a lap.

Comment: why so many of you complain about the lack of Ant+. There is not so much if any previous Polar watch using it. The future is smartphone for most of people. Which smartphone is able to use Ant+? I am happy to use a watch for running but I would be happy to use my smartphone for biking. But here is the problem. Android (the so great open software...) is not able to manage bluetooth for Android version before 4.3. And guess what, my phone cannot be updated because the manufacturer prefer that I buy a new one. Oh yeah what a wonderful world is android. In the same time, Iphone products able to manage bluetooth smart since a longer time. Don't ask more why all the third party software company prefer to work with apple. So please, stop blaming too much Polar for not being able to work with Android, and let's them work on the Pc/Mac Version (ok, it's an extreme statement but you see the point).

+1 for being able to reorganize the order of the view.
+1 for the tap gesture. It's not really working for me, or 1/10.

Isn't that ironic! I have the look Keo power pedals. I can't upload my data because it doesn't use the apple platform. I am buying the V800 so I can eventually get all my power data online. What are you doing with the Look Keo Upgrade?

Sorry, but that's a completely bullshit answer that does nothing but demonstrate Polar's complete arrogance. It's perfectly fine (even expected) that Polar would focus first on compatibility with its own sensors. (From the footpad calibration issues, it looks like there's work to be done there, too.) But to completely dismiss other products betrays the whole point of open standards. After all, God Forbid!, it might be Polar that has the poor quality data and working with other vendors could be a great way to discover and resolve any discrepancies.

Did you know, for example, that the home page for the Flow web site (http://flow.polar.com) has nearly 300 violations of the HTML/CSS standards. They're there so that the site works with Internet Explorer. If the Polar web team adopted the same Holier Than Thou attitude of the quoted post, then the web site would have a lot fewer happy users. It's a shame that the product team can't demonstrate the same flexibility and actually put the needs of the actual V800 users above the company's pompous egotism.

 

It sounds like your stride sensor isn't calibrated correctly. I'd suggest using the manual calibration method and try it out. Yes, speed/distance is from the stride sensor - because when calibrated it can be more accurate and instantaneous. So it's that way by design. This is how we've had it in many other products, and it's worked well in the past. Though we've had some feedback on it with the V800, and it's certainly something we'd consider changing (or offering an option)



We comply with all Bluetooth Smart standards to a very high degree. There's a lot behind the scenes with how devices work here that I can't comment on right now, but we're working through this.




That's slightly different. GPS power & data sampling work a bit different. The RS800CX basically took a snap shot of data at those intervals for data storage. The GPS power modes here are physically turning on a chip, sampling data, turning off. In this case GPS. Adding additional power modes definitely is a possibility, from a technical standpoint. I'll pass along the need to our R&D team.


Shoot me an email, we'd love to look at some of the data and figure out what's going on. chris.zoller@polar.com


Not sure what to tell you here. Here are two facts.
1) The V800 follows Bluetooth Smart heart rate profile to a T - all levels of certification
2) If a third party sensor has R-R data and also is on spec. We do nothing to prevent it from being used with the R-R based features

I've been using just my iphone for my exercise tracking and bought the wahoo blue sc and HRM when I started cycling, and also a wahoo RFLKT. I'm running my first tri this weekend, so while the iphone works great for the bike part, and ok for the run, it obviously doesn't track swimming at all and fiddling with an app during transition is a waste of time obviously. So the V800 is a product I might be interested in if I decide to stick with this.

I definitely prefer having a bike computer or something mounted for the ride and it doesn't look like the V800 has any kind of quick release mount or anything like that. Strapping it to the handlebars also falls in the time wasting category. Is it feasible from a technical standpoint to use something like the RFLKT over BTLE as a sort of second display the polar could send data to? I realize this probably doesn't work now and wouldn't be on the list or priorities, but is it possible?

Chris, Thanks for the reply. As for the stride sensor - give the user the option of pulling distance and pace from either the v800 or the stride sensor. In my experience using my RCX5, the calibration on the foot pod was worthless. My stride length varies depending upon my speed. That's why I want the data from the gps - it's more accurate. As for telling me to use the manual setting - this is one more piece of evidence the v800 was released with partially-developed software. Why offer an automatic setting if it doesn't work? How do I get the automatic calibration to work? Like I said, manual calibration is worthless because my stride length varies. I tried it multiple times on the RCX5 on a treadmill and outside and never received an accuracy closer than 10%.

As for adding another GPS power mode was requested months ago by dcrainmaker in his review of a prototype that Polar sent him! Given the v800 is supposed to be targeted at triathletes it would make sense to meet the needs of the audience you're targeting. 13 hours is too short for an Ironman and 50 hours is not useful. Gee, 20-25 hours would cover the cutoff time for every Ironman-length triathlon. Seriously, who made this decision? Sounds like the product owner needs to research their target market better.

Thanks again for your response. The fact is Polar made some dumb decisions on design that are obvious to anyone not involved in the design process. So now Polar is trying to justify decisions that didn't make sense on earlier models. Please just give us what we want, which is a usable device with accurate data.

Thanks