Polar RS800CX review

My super-cool girlfriend bought me a Polar RS800CX HRM with the G3 GPS Sensor for Christmas.  I hadn't really messed with it too much until a couple months ago.  I think I've played with it enough to have an educated opinion on it now.  It's not cheap by any stretch of the imagination (about $380 online.)  This is my third Polar HRM, having gone through a Polar Coach, then a Polar S710.

First some notes about the software...  The current software is Polar Pro Trainer 5, although you wouldn't notice much of a difference from Polar Precision Performance or even the earlier PC Coach software.  Kinda sad, really.  They've had years to improve on the software, and the changes they've made are pretty minimal for most people.  To their credit, they have added some capabilities like emailing your data to a coach...  But nothing I use.  The only useful feature I've found in the new version is to launch Google Earth to display the gps track data.

Also, I've found the device driver for the IR receiver to be very unstable.  Whether I'm running on Windows XP or Windows Vista, I will sometimes get a "blue screen" when disconnecting the IR receiver from the USB port.  This is Polar's "new and improved" USB device.  Their original USB IR device (that I used with my S710) was even worse if you can believe it.  I couldn't get that to work at all under Vista.  (Although it didn't even crash my XP machine, so it had that going for it.)

The software is adequate, though.  You can plot your heart rate, elevation, speed, etc all on the same chart.  You can have multiple workouts on the same chart for comparison.  All things that you'd expect to be able to do.

Polar also has online software as well and polarpersonaltrainer.com.  I haven't played with that very much, but what I saw did not impress me at all.  The charts were very small, so a long workout is going to be hard to analyze.  If you can believe this, the short-sighted developers provided no means of transferring data to or from the Polar Pro Trainer software!  You can only transfer data from the watch itself, via their "WebLink" software.  So, in this case, I had to upload the data from the watch to polarpersonaltrainer.com (which fortunately does not delete the data from the watch) and then upload it from the watch into Polar Pro Trainer.

The watch itself is a bit large.  One of the reasons I went with Polar is because the Garmin watches seemed a bit too bulky.  Even the newer Garmin 405 is a bit large.  But the RS800 is probably as big as the Garmin 405, so that really didn't end up mattering much.

Compared to my 710, I can't say I'm impressed with the watch.  The buttons are much more sensitive on the RS800 and it's easy to accidentally hit the lap button when I put my hands behind my back.  It also seems to lose the signal from the heart rate strap when my hands are behind my back.  When I would check my watch, the heart rate would read "0" for a few seconds until it could re-acquire the signal.  I no longer wear the watch on my wrist.  If I am wearing a camelbak, I'll just wear it on one of the Camelbak's straps.  Otherwise, I'll wear it on the HRM chest strap.  It's still easy to read & operate, although I still find myself ocassionally checking for it on my wrist.  Of course, if I ever take a fall and land on my chest, it will probably destroy the watch.  The strap on the watch doesn't seem to be replaceable, either.  That was a nice thing about my 710 - I was able to replace the strap with one that I liked more.  That's not an option on the RS800.

I haven't used any of the recent Garmin products.  The only one I've used it the 205 (before they had a HRM option.)  I also haven't used the Garmin software recently.  But it's my understanding that it has many more features than the Polar product.  I think that, for skaters & cyclists, the GPS features are more interesting than they might be for other sports.  We tend to put in a lot of miles, so being able to visualize that data is important.

Speaking of visualization, RoadSkater pointed me to gpsvisualizer.com...  The GPX file that Polar Pro trainer saves can be uploaded directly to gpsvisualizer.com.  That allows for some cool images, like color-coding your track based on how fast you were going at a given point.

I did have a problem with the GPS sensor as well.  During one exercise, I hit the lap button and it stopped recording distance.  It still showed my current speed, but it no longer showed how many miles I went.  When I uploaded the data to Polar Pro Trainer, neither the speed nor distance data was present after the first lap.  After some digging, I found this was a known problem, and the solution was to remove the battery from the GPS sensor.  Once I did that, it started acting normally again.  The GPS sensor only lasts maybe 10 hours on a battery anyway, so anyone hitting this problem isn't likely to experience it long, even if they don't find the solution.

The display on the watch is okay.  It's semi-customizable, but not enough that I could pick anything more useful than the default configuration.  If I could configure it to show speed, distance, heart rate and time on one screen, that would be ideal.  But, as it is, I can only have three things at a time.  So I have speed, heart rate, and time on one screen.  Then I have to switch to another screen to see my distance.

The heart rate features are where the Polar really shines.  The HRM has a built-in "fitness test" and can attempt to estimate your VO2-max.  Polar hypes the accuracy of its heart rate monitors.  It's probably true, but I also wonder how much it matters if the heart rate data is as accurate as hospital equipment.  I suppose if the HRM could alert me if I'm about the have a heart attack, that could be useful.  As far as I know, that's not a feature they have... ;-)

The watch does have a nice feature where you can specify the recording frequency of the data.  1 second, 2 seconds, 5 seconds, and 15 seconds are all options.  At 5-second intervals, a 5-hour skate only took up about 23% of the memory.  So I've recently changed it to 2-second intervals, since I upload after every workout anyway.

The watch does not have the concept of "courses" like the recent Garmin products do.  I always thought it would be a cool feature if I could upload the A2A (or other event's) route into the watch ahead of time.  Then, it could tell me how long until the next turn, beep if I miss a turn, etc.  Something like that won't be possible in the current Polar products.  I expect that, based on their rate of innovation, that it's several years away.  It can't even tell how far your are from your starting position.  The watch will *only* display your speed and distance.  No gps coordinates, direction, or any other gps kinds of things.  It seems the GPS functionality was really shoe-horned into the product.  I think the "CX" version was the first to actually record the GPS points and make them available via the GPX file.  Before that, I think that it didn't act much differently than having a speed sensor on a bike.

I *do* like that the GPS sensor is separate from the watch.  I have it attached to the top of my helmet, so I always have the best GPS reception possible.  I suspect that, with the Garmin 405, it might tend to lose reception when skating with your arms behind your back.  But that's just a guess.

I like the heart rate strap.  Polar recently redesigned the wearlink strap, and it's the best one they've ever had.  It's very comfortable to wear.  The battery is user replaceable.  The previous wearlink strap used snaps as the "clasp".  The snaps were somewhat problematic for people, though.  The newer wearlink strap has a simple "hook" for the clasp that works very well.  The HRM sensor itself still snaps onto the strap, but the snaps aren't used as the clasp.

I know this review seems overly negative, but I am fairly satisfied with the RS800.  It does what it's supposed to do.  Yes, it has a few warts. But it's easy to use and it's nice to see Polar finally get with the program and offer GPS capability on their products.

So, to summarize:

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Separate GPS sensor allows for optimal reception 
• Comfortable heart rate strap
• Easy to compare workout data

Cons:

• A little pricey
• Loses HR signal if hands behind back
• Buttons are sensitive to accidentally hitting them
• No advanced GPS features like Garmin products
• No significant software improvements in years