Polar F6 Heart Rate Monitor Review
'Reviewing a heart rate monitor?' You say, as you tut tut mercilessly. Nothing better to do?
Well hear this, ye! I'm getting fit, and I need all the help I can get, so: new trainers (two pairs, one in striking yellow the other for more subtle days), new gym membership (6 months: a walk on the wild side), new eating habits (haven’t touched meat in three weeks!) and this polar F6 whatsit - a gadget that captures your heart rate while exercising and calculates calories, time, and your own personal best cardio zone, all tailored to your own circumstances.
So what is it:
- A wristwatch (which is the receiver unit and displays the information in real time).
- A transmitter that is tightened around your chest with a strap that contains electrodes, and sends your heart rate to the watch on your wrist.
And here are my thoughts about this gadget, three weeks into using it:
- The basics are excellent: I know exactly how long I've exercised, how many calories I've expended and how long I've spent in my cardio zone.
- I can upload this information to the Polar fitness website where it stores it as a fitness diary, and shows me how much I've done, and how much I've improved.
- It uses a quaint mechanism for uploading information from the watch unit to the Net. Like the old Sinclair Spectrum, it produces a series of screeches and beeps that you deliver to your computer via any microphone ("SonicLink"). Sweet.
- It's fairly easy to use.
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I only found two negatives, though they shouldn't put you off, if you got here from the wider Internet, and are considering buying an F6:
1. The Polar Fitness website (where you track your results) is good, but not great. Usability could be better, and the information isn't always displayed in the most effective way, for example, even though you can update your weight, and the graph is supposed to allow you to chart your weight loss, I'm still not sure if that functionality exists and if it works at all.
2. I know male fitness-type-people should all have huge chests and abs, but I don't... and the transmitter strap is a bit too big for me, even when I adjust it to its minimum length So either I'll have to grow that muscle really quickly, or I might just have to buy a lady version soon.
But the two complaints above are small compared to the ultimate benefits of the F6. It keeps me focused and stops me from cheating myself with the old "Oh, I did some extra strides last time, I'll skip 20 minutes today". I know exactly how much I've exercised, and this has been great for my general fitness regime (and the amazing loss of 5 kilos in only three weeks).
Obviously gadgets in themselves don't get you fit, and unfortunately you still have to follow the hard slog and eat well, but I agree that every little helps, and the F6 certainly does just that.
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