The Polar V800 Triathlon watch is here. Deliveries start in the UK TODAY (22 May 2014).
This is Polar’s best multisport watch to date. It’s good now and it will be further updated with it’s inbuilt future-proof firmware. The onsale version is the first iteration of high quality, aesthetically pleasing unit.
Key features are already included like: reliable polar HR (works underwater 🙂 ), GPS, training load, recovery status, full multi-sport mode with transitions, targets, diaries and much of the other stuff you’d expect.
The Polar Flow web service and Polar Flow app will provide the analytics you need.
What is not yet released: swim metrics, R-R/HRV analysis, Bluetooth SMART sensor compatibility, Keo Power compatibility.
Power Support scheduled for October 2014.
User Manual: Here is the ** Polar V800 Manual ** for a detailed functional look for anything specific that is important to you.
If you need a Triathlon watch then the V800 is certainly worth considering. If you already have Polar stuff/accessories then you will probably want to stay with Polar and this watch is the way to go if you have £400 to spare. If you are a Garmin user then your ANT+ kit won’t work with it, so bear that in mind.
Here’s a getting started Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ao3tFG2YvM
Here’s how you check your recovery status
& Here are some jump tests with the V800
Here are some more video thoughts if you have time.
The specs do seem to show that, although new functionality is still to be released, this watch eventually will do pretty much everything that most reasonably minded triathletes will want/need. For me that is: proper metrics for 3 sports for racing and training, sensible size and weight, intuitive interface, HR underwater, recovery/readiness stats, fitness tests, proper open communications to other devices, ability to pass data files to non-Polar software in industry standard format (TCX, FIT,HRM etc), general 24×7 activity tracker.
More to follow…