Polar Vantage V3 - Is it accurate? More: Polar Vantage V3 Review TL;DR - GPS is good but could be improved, oHR is not quite good enough, elevation seems OK, ECG/EKG seems too varied and SpO2 might be OK. GPS Accuracy Over a variety of exercise types in a variety of situations, the Vantage V3 produced generally good results but certainly not the market-leading results I would expect. It's new tech for Polar, so let's hope they will bag a few tweaks over the coming months. An easy 5km parkrun The 5km parkrun at Bushy Park should present Vantage V3 with no GPS challenges whatsoever. There were two dubious points of error but nothing to be overly concerned about in and of themselves. [gallery size="medium" ids="85470,85469,85468"] More: Polar Vantage V3 initial thoughts Surrey Hills Ride Through Trees on Roads This was perfect. Absolutely zero issues on this ride from any of the devices including Polar Vantage V3. If you go down in the woods today... This is a walk in the woods with the dog. The tree cover is fairly dense and reasonably tall with, say, full-height silver birch and the leaves are still on. It's hard to determine the correct track from the satellite image but I know the route and where it should be. The Vantage V3 isn't the best I've seen here but it's better than most and pretty good on the day as well. You can see how the Apple Watch (yellow) cheats by smoothing its track when it's unsure where it is. [gallery size="medium" ids="85478,85477,85476,85475,85474,85473"] Kingston Town Centre Vantage V3 does not perform as well as other similar watches with similar GNSS chips where there are tallish buildings (6-8 storeys) [gallery size="medium" ids="85460,85459,85458,85457,85456,85455"] Teddington Suburbia Vantage V3 is a match for the GPS challenges of boring, English middle-class suburbia. It's not the best track I've seen but it's good. [gallery size="medium" ids="85461,85462,85463,85464,85465,85466"] Polar Claim: Dual-Frequency...Pin-point location tracking for every twist, turn, and step you take – wherever you take it. 10-Mile GPS Test covering most common reception scenarios Link: here (dcranalyzer, compares to Epix 2, Vertical, Ambit 3) Whilst the V800 and Ambit 3 from many years ago remained the most accurate for a long time, the current generation of dual-frequency chipsets can be better. Polar has the latest generation chip, however it is how the chip is integrated that makes the difference between excellence and good. The antennae is important but many of the other internal components play a significant factor and can almost be considered part of the antennae themselves. I have put pretty much every GPS sports watch ever through the following test. Let's see how it does (methodology) In a nutshell, it did pretty well by the standard of a few years ago. Then it would have been classed as one of the best, now it's a well-placed also-ran. At present GPS reception is, simply, not as good as Garmin Epix, Suunto Vertical/Race and Apple Watch. That said there are some very difficult GPS conditions on parts of this run and Vantage V3 absolutely did excel there. It was more in the open and under trees when it lacked precision. thus I suspect Polar will tweak its algorithm over the next few months and we will see an improvement. to what extent, I don't know but I don't see anything inherently unfixable. [gallery size="medium" columns="4" ids="85553,85552,85551,85550"] Heart Rate Accuracy Heart rate accuracy is not quite good enough. It's fairly close to being good enough across the board but there is no further point in testing it to prove the consistent findings so far. As a new piece of sensor tech, no doubt Polar will make significant improvements by the end of 2023. Polar claims: "Our most elaborate arrangement of LEDs and sensors to date deliver a Polar Watch with the truest OHR measurement ever." My response: I don't see that with my data Run - Easy Jog This easy jog looks pretty good. But the subsequent charts are less flattering. Run - Steady Excellent accuracy here with the exception of 3 drops towards the end which are forgivable. Run - Steady but harder This one is an interesting steady run on a mixture of tarmac and quite slippery mud. It was very wet and I had the dog on a lead around my waist. I'm not sure what's happening here, Vantage V3 is wrong. If you notice, even the HRM-PRO PLUS is wrong at about 11 minutes whereas Polar Sense and Apple Watch are correct. Run - Tarmac with progressively harder efforts Vantage V3 looks accurate enough here. However, when I was running I could have sworn that the HR readings were taking MUCH longer to come down after the effort periods. this is not shown on the charts other than very slightly after the first interval. So I'm not entirely convinced that what is displayed is what is recorded. Progressively harder 4-minute running intervals Nope... Bike - Varied Effort on often Bumpy Roads this is kinda Ok but wrong in the sense that the peaks and troughs are too pronounced from reality. There is one extended period of under-reporting two-thirds of the way through the ride after a coffee stop. Another bike ride on normal UK roads...some smooth, some bumps. this is pretty good but some minor under-readings lower the whole ride's average by a couple of BPM. Short Indoor Bike Intervals with 100% Recovery Nope... Swim I've completed one rudimentary swim test and it's not accurate. The Garmin track might not be 100% correct but it's pretty much in line with what I did, especially for the 4 peaks at the end. Elevation Polar Vantage V3 supports an initial elevation calibration either by GPS or manually. I did neither for this! Had I done so it looks like it would be good. That said it's clearly not recalibrating on the fly throughout the ride as it would have corrected itself. So it appears to be working by barometric pressure alone and hence will be impacted by weather system pressure changes over several hours. hmm. guess it needs manually setting every time #sigh ECG/EKG This is a new feature for Polar and requires you to hold the top left button with the index finger from your other hand for 30 seconds. I took 5 successive readings. I would expect them to be very similar. They weren't [gallery columns="5" ids="85555,85556,85557,85558,85559"] SpO2 SpO2 is blood oxygen and not muscle oxygen, the latter is critical to sport the former is not. SpO2 is a wellness feature that links to altitude, jet lag and sleep metrics. I took 4 successive readings of 45 seconds each. They require your arm to be still during the reading. The values I got were 97%, 96%, 92% and 97%. It seems to me that you would need to make a series of readings to be sure of the indicativeness of what the Vantage V3 tells you. Take Out As always, if you're bothered about sporting accuracy buy a Polar Sense armband (or H9/H10) and get a Stryd footpod. If you are bothered about the accuracy of wellness sensors then buy an Apple Watch.
