It’s been a three years since I started using Polar products — I started using the Polar H10 chest strap in 2017 only for bike rides and other outdoor exercise, and then got a Polar A370 watch in 2018 for general fitness tracking (step counting.) This year, with the pandemic and all, I went to town using my Polar gear. Bike rides, running, walking, So so much data collected, and yet, not enough data. Check out the summary report that I pulled from the Polar site below:
Do you know how many feet I climbed with heart-pounding intensity this year? How many fast descents I made? I sure don’t, because phones don’t have barometers to gauge your elevation. Also, while the A370 is a pretty nice fitness tracker, it only has A-GPS (“A” stands for “Assisted”) so you only get GPS location data when the watch is paired to your phone. Let me tell you, this does not work well, if ever.
Are any of these dealbreakers? No, but I’ve been finding them sufficiently irritating that I wanted more. Also this summer, what with all of my riding, I found that while using your phone as a bicycling computer is convenient, you’ll be lucky if your phone has enough battery to get you back home after a long ride.