Polar IGNITE – New Fitness Watch Announced by POLAR

FTC: Affiliate Disclosure: All links pay commission

The POLAR IGNITE is the new Fitness Watch from Polar and it’s just announced today. I’m working on a ‘First Run’ post now. In the meantime here are some images and info from the press release and a few of mine that I’ve already managed to change the strap on.

It’s a nice-looking sports watch based on a one-button plus touchscreen format. It looks like a decent piece of kit that also utilises Polar’s impressive-looking PRECISION PRIME heart rate tracking technology. Perhaps even more interesting is that there are some totally new features appearing in the Polar IGNITE that are not (yet) available for the higher-end Vantage models.

Here are the new features

• Sleep Plus Stages – accelerometer and Resting-HRV derived sleep stages which, when combined with other measurements give sleep insights
• Nightly Recharge – Uses overnight HRV to combine SLEEP SCORE and DAILY RECOVERY stats to give more insights into recovery. This then refines the guidance for your next workout.
• FitSpark – personalized training guide that gives daily, adaptable guidance for you to use with cardio, strength training, and performance workouts.
• Serene – guided breathing exercises

Don’t forget, you will also get these: Polar’s Running Index, personalised/adpative5k-to-marathon training program, continuous HR and calories; along with Polar’s excellently-focussed “FLOW” health, fitness & sports platform.

Polar Ignite is available today for £200/$230 in white, yellow, and black wristband options. Silicon accessory bands are $24.95/€24.90/£21.50 each and available in black, white and yellow in size medium/large and in black and white in size small.

Pre-order: at Wiggle (UK/EU) and Power Meter City (USA)

Thoughts?

It’s great that Polar are innovating and continuing to add new products and features.

This is a release that is clearly aimed at the ‘fitness and health’ athletes rather than competitive runners or triathletes per se. My perspective is that this is the physical format typical of a SMART fitness watch like a Vivoactive 3 with music, apps and smarts; or like an Apple Watch or indeed even Polar’s own M600 (WearOS) – yet IGNITE comes without the wide range of ‘advanced smarts’ that those watches have. So IGNITE really NEEDS to do all the fitness/sport/recovery stuff well to stand out and succeed. I’ll hold fire on a detailed opinion on that but, suffice to say, my partner is looking greedily over my shoulder right now.

So that’s my only initial reservation…will lack of SMARTS limit demand? Sure, Polar could have re-vamped the M600 but such a project would have NEVER ended up with a watch like the IGNITE that has an eminently usable 4-day battery. Put more positively…IGNITE looks good!

Like just about every new product, the price is probably a tad on the high side of where it will settle but it’s ‘about right‘.