Hannah reviews this feature packed Polar Grit X, a GPS watch with long battery life, designed for outdoor enthusiasts. Price: £369From: Polar It must …

By ben_haworth

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Polar Grit X Watch Review

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There are actually models in Polar range which have similar features in less rugged (heavy) packaging, e.g. Pacer Pro is much lighter and has more rounded case.

I have had Grit for almost 2 years now and my biggest gripe with it is that it make my wrist sore on longer riding days as it bounces around.
Oh and for training recommendations and fatique control I rather look values from
TrainingPeaks which syncs automatically from Polar service.

I quite like my Grit. I’ve had it for about a year. I’ve found it’s more comfortable if I wear the watch a bit further up from my wrist bone. I’ve used it mainly for mountain biking and cyclo-cross. I’d like to see a slightly better automatic lap function, as it only does auto lap if you pass your start point rather than say if you start the watch on a start finish straight before going onto the course proper. That’s a very particular issue though!

I’ve been using the Polar Vantage for 3 years now – very similar to the above. The sleep stats is the best feature for me.

The optical HR thing isn’t as good as the electrical chest strap, so I use that when riding anything other than around town.

I LOVE my Polar stuff. It’s like Garmin only someone has thought about design, user interface and ease of operation.

I’m on the Polar Vantage M (sort of the poor man’s version ! The GritX is sort of the ‘robust’ version of the Vantage V, which in turn is the higher spec version vs M.)

I’m using it for everything – triathlon (original reason) and lots of swimming inc Open Water as well as biking and the occasional run.

3 years of daily use and still going strong. I did a little check of the battery just yesterday- charged, turned an outdoor activity with GPS on and just kept it on all day. After 12hrs the battery was on 51%. So that’s still holding up OK.

Optical HR is always slow to react vs a chest strap on any device and make, so I use a chest strap when doing sports. That helps extent the battery life too.

I really like the look of the GritX, but whilst this one is still going fine I can’t justify buying something else.

My previous Polar HRM lasted donkeys 20+ years ago, and took some hellish abuse in all sorts of conditions.
My subsequent Garmin watches … hit and miss with reliability.

Polar Flow as an App is light years ahead of Garmin Connect too.

Has anyone entirely ditched a bar mounted device in favour of a wrist mounted one?

I ask because the Boss has bought herself a fitbit versa and thus the Vivoactive 3 I bought her a while back (and she barely ever used) was going spare so I stole it, charged it and started using it. Having a wrist mounted HR/GPS multisport type watch is actually pretty good (I know this probably isn’t such a revelation to most people).

But I still can’t quite see me doing away with a bar mounted GPS for most of my riding, it’s fine for the commute, maybe the odd short loop. anyone only using a watch…

Polar Flow as an App is light years ahead of Garmin Connect too.

Also, the Polar Beat app is a brilliant way of recording too in the absence of a device. I use Polar Beat to record rides when I’m recording HR (paired with a Polar H10 chest HR strap) rather than Strava as Polar Beat auto syncs with Apple Health for Vitality purposes. Really simple and relaible app. I’ve got an aversion to wearing anything on my wrist when MTBing so this is my solution.

At the same time I’m also able to display my HR from the same strap on a £40 CooSpo GPS bike computer. Not that I look at it TBH.