Polar Grit X gets v2.0 Feature Boost
Polar Grit X owners will today be pleased to find a sweet feature boost awaiting them in Polar Flow. This matches some features already on the Polar Grit X Pro
Must Read: Polar Grit X2 PRO Review
What’s New?
First up is the addition of music control. Here you can use your Polar Grit X as a remote control for the current source of audio on your smartphone – handy for navigating around a playlist and cranking up the volume.
Then come the more running-focussed features, namely these:
- Running Performance test – Polar uses this to assess your Maximum Heart Rate which is then used to personalise your heart rate zones and all the physiological metrics that follow on from that.
- HR Broadcast – you can send the HR from your watch to gym equipment that is compatible with BLE.
- Create Power Targets for running. Like this and now on the app too…
- Change your route on the fly as you navigate
- A new weekly summary screen on the watch
Take Out
The features are not new for Polar but they are new to the Grit X. It’s great that Polar promised last year to pass on some of the Grit X Pro features to the original Grit X model.
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Music remote control, HR broadcast, and rerouting during an activity?
Oh dear. Polar are much farther behind on contemporary watch features than I realized.
Features aren’t everything. Quality, accuracy, and analytics are a valid way to compete and hold a niche. I love the H10 because of the quality and accuracy.
I hope that Polar is going to be able to survive.
Which kind of useful features you feel like it’s missing for a sport-oriented watch?
The5krunner, what’s left for the grit x pro now, with th grit getting this update?
For a watch marketed for ultra trail the battery range is poor. The display size is puny and uncompetitive. The absence of maps is uncompetitive and apparent until now you could not change the route during an activity — which shocked me.
Meaningful lifestyle features that matter are missing and uncompetitive specifically nfc payment and music playback on device. A guided workout that talks to you to tell you the target for the next interval etc over the BT headphones would also presumably be missing.
I want Polar to succeed. I like the aesthetic and I’m a fan of the brand. I’ve used Polar kit since the 1990s. But this isn’t competitive.
They are squeezed between Apple on smart features and marketing, Coros on value, agility, and range, and Garmin on features and range.
I don’t think they have the scale to develop a custom OS in the current competitive environment and will eventually be forced to pivot to WearOS and differentiate on superior sensors, analytics and design language.
40h for ultratrail market is quite large. Seriously, how many people ran >40h races? (but I assume this is a best case scenario, real-world would be around 30-35h…and the inability to charge it during activty is really lame….)
I mean, i’ve ran all my ultras (up to 100 miles) with Suunto (AMbitn, Spartan, S9) and never had an issue with the battery life…but I was able to give them a little bost at aid station…
NFC payment and music storage, really, I don’t think it is meaningful – the watch is targeted and marketed as a sports watch, not a smartwatch wannabe (and I intensively use Apple Pay with my AW)
You can also consider that they fit in the middle of the road between effective sports watch with some nice features (recovery, workouts, outdoor dashboard…) and “put all you have in the watch” like Garmin and Coros.
(yet, I’m still badly tempted by an F7..even after some “let the night be your advisor”…)
Anyway, this is from a Suunto watch owner, so you might take this with a pinch of salt :p
There is a difference between can and have-to.
If you have to top up your watch at aid stations, that kind of sucks and it’s one more think you have to keep track of. If you are doing an unmarked race without many aid stations or an FKT then the watch navigation working is in the category of safety equipment. Not having to charge is better than having to charge.
It also turns out people like to listen to music sometimes when exercising and maybe you would like to not have to take your phone.
Similarly if you can pay for a bottle of water or a coke during a long run with tap that’s better than “oh shit I forgot cash or a card”.
Don’t forget that a product you don’t have to ever worry about charging for a week or two at a training camp or adventure in the mountains is a wholly different experience than one that definitely cannot so that. Coros Vertix owners will wax poetic about the change of outlook when you charge your watch monthly not daily or weekly.
It would be even better if they were nuclear or fusion powered or more realistically a future solar and battery combination that means you never need to charge in normal use. My mechanical watches were like that: no winding if you wear them daily.
Generally speaking these are features that are nicer to have than not have. If you can have them from one vendor, then why do you buy the wares from the vendor that doesn’t have them?
I think it is totally disingenuous to argue that features like extreme battery range and music and contactless payment have no value because your preferred brand doesn’t have those features. It’s nothing more than motivated reasoning.
And look the truth is Apple and Garmin are bundling a more compelling constellation of features than Suunto and Polar. Polar and Suunto are the niche offering in the “all others” market share category. The main selling point today is they are European, but the technology is way behind their completion. That’s why they were just sold to a Chinese holding company nobody in the West has ever heard of. Polar is in a better position but crikey they just added re-routing during an activity to their trail watch offering. That’s really, really far behind the standard.
How about if they supported their own analog GymLink protocol so the H10 could give accurate HR in real time to the watch while swimming. They have the technology and that would be a big differentiator for triathletes and swimmers.
I know there are people holding on to the V800 because it is *still* the best solution on the market for swimming HR and it’s discontinued.
you would think they would do the same with the original Vantage V? no !!!
I just realized that this, though much appreciated, added a great unmentioned feature to my Grit X : A big old “Polar” is now crampted on the watch faces. How lovely of Polar to remind me of the brand name and make watchface look overcrowded. But the greatest bit is, that “Polar” is already stated in shiney grey letters on the bezel itself! How great is that. I get a double “POLAR” slap in the face each time I check the time or other stats. If that’s not great product design, I don’t know what is. Thanks for that hidden feature. It’s good to know in which camp you are sitting and not accidentally mistake it for a Garmin or Sunnto. Double thumbs up for this tiny annoying “feature”. Especially after the delay, I can’t believe that this was not part of the review after the decided to delay the release. Or Grit X simply does not matter, plain and simple
Worth to mention this new gen of Polar watches cannot be charged during activity starting 2018 first vantage gen till now. Pity
🤦♂️
No on-the-fly charging?
No.