What’s New
Remember back in June when Polar announced the Polar Ignite GPS watch? That unit had a huge amount of new features not previously seen on any Polar device. The $220 device was mainly targeted at non-endurance athletes though, competing for the same dollars as an Apple Watch, Fitbit Ionic, or Garmin Vivoactive series. At the time Polar didn’t anticipate exactly how much endurance sports folks would want these features, specifically, folks that bought the Vantage V or Vantage M units.
It was actually an interesting discussion with them at the time, because some of these features (namely FitSpark and Nightly Recharge) are in some ways diametrically opposed to the higher end training load and recovery features found on the Vantage series. By and large, the endurance-focused Vantage series tries to get you from doing too much to aide recovery, whereas the Ignite series somewhat takes the approach of trying to get you to workout, even if you’ve already worked out.
Now today’s update doesn’t quite require us to sort that issue yet, as FitSpark isn’t coming till December. Instead, most of the updates today are around the less contentious features, such as sleep insights and even added Galileo satellite support.
Here’s everything the Vantage V & M got today:
– Sleep Quality Insights & Sleep Plus Stages: Gives you a sleep score as well as provides REM/Light/Deep sleep data
– Recovery Insight & Nightly Recharge Option: Looks at breathing rate/heart rate/heart rate variability (ANS data) to figure out if you’re recovering at night
– Serene guided breathing exercises: Guided breathing exercises
– Added Galileo satellite support: Another satellite system that can in some cases provide better coverage or accuracy
– Added QZSS satellite support: Satellite system focused on Japan/Asia/Oceania
– Added footpod manual sensor calibration: Ideal for footpod users to manually configure their calibration factor
– Added Zone Lock for heart rate/pace/running power/cycling power: Brings back the older Polar feature for the Vantage series
– Added fitness test using the internal optical HR sensor: This wasn’t previously available.
What’s Next
Further, in December, the Vantage V & M will receive another update, which will bring:
– FitSpark: This offers one-off workouts on-demand, kinda like having a workout robot in your watch
– Race Pace: Running focused feature from the V800 that’s for pacing races
– Strava Live Segments (Vantage V only): Tells you how far ahead/behind you are to leaders on a given Strava Segment
Atop all those changes, the company also added a new color variant to both the Vantage V & Vantage M: Blue. I appreciate that Polar just calls it blue, and not something like Frost Blue like some other companies…cough, Fitbit, Garmin, and Apple. These bands can be purchased separately for $39 (Vantage V) and $24 (Vantage M). Finally, there’s also a ‘black copper’ version of the Vantage M coming on Thursday.
Got all that? Good.
Let’s do a quick look through some of these features and how they appear: First up is the Sleep Quality insights and Sleep Plus Stages. These are largely viewed within the app though you can view much of this on the watch itself, it’s just not as pretty:
Now there’s also Nightly Recharge, but that requires three days’ worth of data to get lit up, and at present I’ve only got one night’s worth of data on the new firmware.
But just to give you a picture of what it looks like, here it is on the Polar Ignite watch:
Note that even after one night though, you’ll start getting the ANS sleep details showing up, on both watch and app:
Next, if you’re on a Vantage V, you’ll be able to make the choice between Nightly Recharge, and Recovery Pro. Remember, this goes a bit back to features targeted at two different crowds. Polar’s put up an entire page on how to decide which one makes the most sense for you at that point in time. It’s likely for example that you might go with Nightly Recharge for the off-season, but Recovery Pro for mid-season. Another Polar Ignite watch feature was Serene, which is a breathing exercise focused feature. That’s now accessible by pressing the lower left button, right next to settings.
After that, Zone Lock has been added. This falls into the camp of ‘V800 things that are finally on the Vantage series’. This allows you to specify a heart rate target zone, but also a power or speed zone. And notably, Polar allows you to do so for running power as well as cycling power. Of course, if you’re on the Vantage V there’s also wrist-based running power too.
Next, if you’ve got a running footpod, you can go ahead and manually calibrate this. To which a lot of people are like ‘WTF, finally!’. This impacts not just Polar’s own footpod, but also companies like Stryd.
Finally, there’s the new Galileo satellite option. By default, Polar will still specify GPS+GLONASS (as does Garmin), but now you can manually change your preference over to Galileo. In talking to Polar, they recommended for my home training area to stay on GLONASS. This mirrors what Garmin says as well, though I suspect this frankly has less to do with my training area or Galileo, but more to do with the Sony GPS chipset both companies are using being less awesome in Galileo (versus the MediaTek chipset from yesteryear where I get excellent Galileo results).
In addition, they also added GPS + QZSS, which is aimed primarily at Japan/Asia/Oceania.
Now I’ve only done two workouts with the new firmware. First was yesterday, an openwater swim, and in that case, I was using GLONASS (since that’s what Polar recommended). Though, perhaps I should have tried out Galileo because the Vantage M track was definitely the worst of the bunch.
This morning I had a pool swim workout, so no GPS – nor really any of the new features. Though I did have issues where it didn’t track my distance at all. It just was null the entire swim. On the bright side, heart rate worked. This may or may not be related to the firmware update, I don’t know. I don’t typically take the Vantage M for pool swims, it was just sorta a case of the watch was on my wrist from the night sleep tracking, and off to the pool I went.
Final Thoughts
Still, bugs aside – I’m really looking forward to the continued updates here. Whether it be bringing back previously discarded features (as with the Zone Lock), or bringing in the new Ignite features, it’s good to see Polar hitting the release timeframes they’ve promised, especially when new features are involved.
With that – thanks for reading!
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Thanks for the review, bit one question. Yoe say Polar’s advice is to stay on Galileo, but the Sony chipset being less awesome on Galileo. Typo?
Sorry, yeah, meant to say they recommend me stay on GLONASS, not Galileo.
Oh, and sorry for my own typos ?
DCR: „ Added fitness test using the internal optical HR sensor: Previously this required a chest strap, now it doesn’t.“
Nope, there wasn‘t any fitness test on the watch before the update. There was only the orthostatic test (which sadly still requires a strap).
Ahh, good catch!
I wouldn’t do a fitness test using oHRM. For an easy run it might give you a fair average result but for a fitness test to be accurate, you really need the HR to be absolutely accurate, i.e strap
Can you see any logic in keeping the stride sensor per sport profile AND per unit? If I enter a factor on my VV it is not synced to my M430. Shouldn’t it just be a number stored with the sport?
/Mats
Spot Profiles should synch globally via Flow Synch (not Flow mobile!). That’s the reason you already could set a manual calibration for a Vantage watch if you owned a M430 or V800, When I unlocked stride calibration with yesterday’s update, the calibration factor in my Vantage V was the same that I set in my M430.
Well, unless of course they changed the behavior of profiles with Update 4.
Hope Garmin take note of running zone locks and alerts! wouldn’t take more than watch and scale to go back to Polar, just as I ditched polar 3 years ago because of the inability to really do structured HR/pace workouts properly because of being tied to 5 zones, rather than the Garmin way of specifying a 5bpm or 10s pace window. But for power which I’ve transferred over to 5 zones is perfect!
OK so I updated. And now I want to throw my Vantage V at the wall. If I have even one notification it buzzes once a minute until I clear them. If I have none it will randomly buzz and beep every now and then just to remind me I’m wearing it. I take a look at the screen and…nothing happening.
Could you give it a test on yours (anyone, not just Ray!) and see if it’s just me with the update? Thanks :)
It works fine for me after the update.
Thanks I’ll try rebooting etc. and see if I can calm it down :)
Still no plan to allow notifications other than phone calls during activity?
I’d love to see text messages during workouts!
Hi Ray,
Amazing to hear even you get 0 distance for pool swim?I have got that tons of times with V. It got better when I started gliding after turns but not every swim even.
The V tracks my swim every time. Only issue I have is when it goes above ~1000m or so, it adds an extra 25 for some reason. I thought it was just me doing something stupid, but it does it every time.
For my swims it tracks fine fore some time and then stops completely, or only adds 25m per 100m of swimming. And the pace is always off for every lap!
So seems like thats not your fault, the Vantage series is just a watch for duathletes!
I find it a little ironic that Polar now provide much better support to Stryd users for pace but, from what I understand, if you compare the power numbers the respective companies get with their somewhat different ways of computing it – they are way different. So when you say “if you’re on the Vantage V there’s also wrist-based running power too” is there actually a choice of using Stryd power over Polar power in the same way Garmin (at least partially through Connect IQ) allow Stryd power over their own offering which also is way different!
Most Power users with Polar will use Stryd. If you have a Stryd, its numbers are used without you having to do anything .
I have alternately used both, Stryd and Vantage V for running power, depending on what kind of runs I have done. Stryd for intervals and trail running and Vantage V for base pace runs. I did do quite some test runs (with V800) and Stryd and Vantage V to compare them and my AVG results were pretty close to what Stryd is suggesting: link to support.stryd.com
I simply normalized them by adding 25% to my weight on Stryd, so running power zones from both devices are adequately accurate for my usage.
Daily use is pretty simple: if I take Stryd w/ me, Vantage simply connects to the sensor and uses data from Stryd. If I leave Stryd at home (and make sure it does not connect to the running sensor), it uses Vantage V for running power).
To make the matter even worse, it seems that even Stryd is different between the versions. I upgraded to the new wind sensitive version a couple weeks ago. Now, my critical power is around ~30 Watt higher than before. Weight etc. in the settings is the same. Still loving the new version. But that renders the old version useless for me, since I cannot switch between them (was planning to use the old version on a second pair of shoes).
This is good to know. The difference in figures get between wrist based on the V and Stryd is massive. Have you found the inclusion of wind on the new one makes the power output figures more realistic to actual effort?
As I am living in a windy region: Yes, it really does make a difference. You can see the power values rise when wind comes in. Are those realisitc values? Kind of hard to tell. I only had a couple of weeks with it. Seems pretty accurate for headwind. But also tailwind seems to have raised the power in a couple of occasions. Still need more runs with strong wind to verify that. Maybe it was just wrong perception or positioning of the sensor on my part.
But power no’s are relative. There is no, accepted way of measuring power yet, both polar/garmin and stryd do it there own way. Which is right? The jury is still out, essentially force x velocity = power.
So Garmin/Polar account for rebound, which would dampen the actual power.
Ultimately when training, does it matter, what matters is consistency and if training/racing for an event, whilst you use that metric, currently racing is determined by time, not watts/kg, so use power like you do in cycling, as one of many tools to assess your effort.
I did a video on whether the wind was being detected. link to youtube.com Verdict yes but need more experience with it to properly assess it and they don’t tell you how much “Air Power” (the extra watts for the wind) you are getting on the run in real time which makes it harder to gauge I feel.
Peter C – for me it matters if say I forgot my Stryd. One might then have Garmin or Polar power available but largely unusable as you are not used to the differing numbers. Bike power meters are not always “exactly” the same but at least they won’t typically be much out from device to device.
henau212 – my numbers with the Stryd Wind and the old Stryd Summit are much closer than you. I certainly could use either or. My CP hasn’t really changed at all.
That is kind of interesting. I just checked. My w/kg went up around .4 (which equates to around 32 watts) the day I swapped the stryd. Maybe I will contact the support (although there are poeple reporting up to 50 extra watts in the stryd forum). Still apart from that, the device works like a charm and is a big benefit in a windy region. I just had to adapt my power zones..
My Vantage has given me 0 m on the first swim after every single firmware update. On the second swim, everything has been normal on the spot. Go figure.. Something in the swim tracking goes bonkers on update, but recovers. I think I expect the same with this one. Thanks for the reminder.
What is the general feeling/consensus re maturity of Vantage M and V at this point in time. I am am mostly interested in oHR and GPS performance AND coming from M430 perspective. At the time of the release and for a time after that, from the comments here and elsewhere I got the feeling that that at least regarding the performance of oHR and GPS, Vantage was not there yet (compared to M430).
Or in other, simpler words, would you recommend upgrading from M430 to Vantage M or V NOW. And again – I am not so much worried about feature set that may still be missing on Vantage as compared to M430 – but more about oHR and GPS performance.
I bought both the V+M on release because they were knew and looked promising. As a runner only I can honestly say that my old M430 does the same job and then some. I don’t use oHR but GPS on the M430 is way more accurate than my V, which is atrocious.
I don’t care about a rich feature set either, but miss many little things the M430/V800 had for training.
Thanks a lot for sharing our experience. Sadly, in a way it is not what i *wanted* to hear, as it does not warrant an upgrade for me (although I start having issues with charging/syncing contact of my M430).
So you ended up keeping V and not M. From snippets here and 5krunner’s review it appeared that Vantage M had better GPS performance than V. But there are other reasons for choosing V over M, of course.
I used both along with my trusted M430 and FR935 for about half a year and sold the M then. For one because the V lost more in resale value than the M, which can be sold for close to its retail price. Mostly though because the V is much better built and wears so much better than the M, which while not feeling cheap, does feel a bit flimsy for Polar’s standards (compared to the tank like M430, V800, and now V). The V just has a more premium feel to it in many details not seen/mentioned in the promo shots, like the much better screen glass.
Yes, the M has superior GPS reception, supposedly due to its plastic housing vs the stainless steel of the V. I use a Stryd so GPS accuracy is not something I care a lot about. The V’s tracks do lack the tightness of the M, M430, and most notably 935.
I have a couple of stretches on my daily route that I use to compare GPS accuracy between watches and updates, one of which the V NEVER gets right, no matter the time of day or way I wear it. Today though it nailed the segment to the T (GPS+Glonass). Of course one day is highly anecdotal, seeing that it is the first time in a year though makes me optimistic, that they – or Sony, for that matter, being under pressure from Garmin – actually made improvements to GPS accuracy.
The V is down to like €350, if you can live with small niggles like the lacklustre pause screen, useless lap alert screen or missing training views like Last Lap modifiers (this baffles me the most), the V is a VERY nice piece of training equipment. On the plus side you get very good battery life, and a sports watch that actually looks good. Is that what you wanted to hear? :)
But yeah, if you just need a piece of gear to record your run and sync it to Strava, a M430 is more than enough.
Thanks a lot for your detailed contribution, It helps me and others, I am sure.
Here is my perspective/ where I am coming from. The stable of M430 in my family (me and kids) are mostly used for orienteering – a) for training – to maintain and track training diary, and while running to give guidance on HR zones, perhaps some structured running workouts etc. – b) for orienteering event post-even analysis – and this is where a GPS performance comes into play (actually needs to be as good as possible). And it doubles as a daily watch – to know what time it is and other old-school boring stuff :-). The sleep metric, daily goal percentage, inactivity alerts – these are all secondary – nice to have a look at but not essential. The other sport is MTB and MTB orienteering and and so far M430 is quite sufficient for that too (no power meter for kids :-).
The orienteering crowd here are mostly using Suuntos and Polars (especially M430). Most probably for a good reason.
And actually M430 is close to perfect for our needs – quite good GPS tracks and reasonably accurate oHR tracking. Structured workouts (and Polar flow training plans in the background, if you want them). Also one of the nice touches we like is that the watch gives an immediate feedback on the training you completed – you know tempo, tempo+ etc. And one can look at a number of metrics and evaluations right on the watch – no need to load app for that.
Also, we would like to keep it is a single package as much as possible (i.e. of course one can improve HR reading with OH1 or chest strap, but that is not practical).
There are some issue with M430, hence why I am looking at alternatives at all.
– it is quite a brick, especially on kids wrists
– battery life could be better
– I have two M430, which have developed problems with charging socket on the back of it. (this might have something to do with a couple of swims in salt water Atlantic ocean.
– some of the new fancy metrics on Vantage M could provide further interest point/ motivation.
So when the new Vantage was announced, I was very excited, especially about Vantage M (because of form factor), but soon cooled off for obvious reasons.
We have no experience with Garmin watches so far, but one of the kids won a Garmin Forerunner 45. We now have a chance to test it against the old trusty M430 (especially I am curious about OHR and GPS performance). It is better that M430 in some aspects – form factor, battery life, but it is also lacking in comparison – for instance it lacks the immediate post training feedback that we value so much in M430.
I can definitely recommend the H10 for HR performance and STRYD or the Polar STRIDE sensor for pace performance ;-) (similar recommendation applies to Garmin products)
if you want accurate ohr then get a OH1+ and wear it on your forearm
it really is that simple but not the answer you wanted.
as @flokon says the M seems to have better gps/gnss prior to the latest update.
I usually appreciate the little things that are changed with major updates, that often go unnoticed:
– many changes of positions, and fonts to increase readability (notably date on “Polar” watch face, cog wheel and sensor icons in training mode)
– increased responsivness of the watch, and this is big: until now scrolling was halted until a confirmation (green checkmark) ran its internally set course, or a screen was completely loaded. You can change screens now despite animations not having finished, like on a Garmin. This improves daily usability quite a bit!
Will you get a Running Index score using a calibrated footpod with a Vantage V? If I ran in the past with my Milestone pod, those runs wouldn’t have a Running Index. Has this been updated as well?
You always got RI when running with a stride sensor, at least with my Stryd it worked. No idea about Milestone.
I get RI with and without Milestone pod on Vantage V.
Not to forget:
– Inactivity alert is back
– Constant backlight during training now possible
– Detailed lap information on your watch
– Vantage V only: by swiping down yot get the quick setting menu to set alarm, flight mode and do not disturb mode. You can see battery status (percentage) as well. Very convenient and usefull.
Hi Ray, I’m interested to know how accurate the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) tracking is?
Do you still need a chest strap to measure this – or has the sampling time been decreased (more measurements per second) on the Heart rate sensor on the watch to be able to calibrate minuet changes between heartbeats?
There is no HRV tracking. The orthostatic test needs a strap for good reason, and nightly recharge “tracks” HRV and puts out a 4h-avg.
Without wearing say a Holter at the same time, it’s hard to say whether Polar gets HRV right. From my experience with HRV4Training, Polar’s Orthostatic Test differs quite a bit.
I have to wear a 24h-Holter on a regular basis to monitor my training but as anyone who works with them knows it’s kinda hard to pinpoint a 4-minute Intervall in 80.000+ data points.
Who knows, the trends seem to be kinda accurate although I often get contrary recommendations from HRV4 and Polar. The linchpin is that you build the baseline properly, which unfortunately isn’t communicated well enough by Polar.
@flokon – You wear Holter for monitoring your training? That’s next level.
With HRV being such a critical indicator of recovery and with more and more athletes looking to it as a standard measure I wonder how long it’ll be till Ray does a deep dive on this with the likes of an oura ring and the likes.
Yeah, I don’t see me doing an Oura ring or similiar tracker type review. I’m not really a big ring person. Sorry!
Continuous heart rate tracking can now be used during night only.
This is very good for my needs, I really don’t need it during whole day, but need it to track my sleeping better.
How can you enable this? Or is it only an option if you use Nightly recharge? As I rather use Recovery pro on vantage v. Thanks.
Figured it out already. You have options off, on, or setting an hour. Thanks.
And in order to push selling of Polar products Strava disables direct pairing of bluetooth and Ant+ with their own app and gave me a discount code for buying a polar vantage product.
Better they would search for competent programmers
Hi Ray,
I have a question for you : Has the update improved the situation regarding the GPS accuracy? Or is it an hardware implementation issue which can’t be solved?
I am asking to your biblical knowledge because I am wondering whether to buy the Vantage V or the Garmin 945 as I am going to upgrade my Polar M600. I really like Polar Flow (much better than Garmin Connect) however I see GPS accuracy not really being Polar best asset.
Thanks in advance,
Bests,
Domenico
I have a polar Vantage V, and man, even with the new update, I’m still regretting that I did not go for the Garmin 945. In short:
– Hard to read screen in low light condition (finally back light on all time on.. but still doesn’t help in daily use)
– Very bad GPS accuracy
– Swimming record distance fail to work properly very often
– No lap metric during the training (ex. if you make a lap while running, you will get the time of the lap, but no other info like pace distance or so on… the old polar M400 had that.. )
– Optical HR sensor not really accurate… tried to perform a fitness test with it this morning.. and it failed 3 times.
Then if you are thinking to combine it with H10 HR sensor…. well… nice sensor… bought it mainly for the capability to record on the device directly… and when I try, as soon as I have a workout longer than 1h… it fail. Contact support… their answer: ” we are aware of a firmware bug.. this need to be addressed in a future update”… last update was July… since then nothing.. unbelievable how they could have a product out with the major feature bugged without solving it in a short time.
So stay with the old one or invest more and go to garmin (and this is from a old supporter of Polar products… their behavior with the Vantage series and lack of basic functionalities to maybe be addressed with updates…. is embarrassing )
polar has made several incremental changes to improve GNSS accuracy over the last year or so
The latest firmware introduces the availability of more satellites via GALILEO.
945 and Vantage use the same chip
Polar also use SBAS for GNSS, which I believe Garmin does not.
I don’t think you will find notably better GNSS with 945 over Vantage. (IMHO Vantage M is better than 945)
in what way and for what purpose do you need more gps accuracy than that offered by Polar/Garmin?
the5krunner, slightly off-topic, but is my understanding correct that the entry level Forerunner 45 uses the same Sony GNSS/GALILEO Chip as Garmin 945?
With all due respect, tfk, “in what way and for what purpose do you need more gps accuracy than that offered by Polar/Garmin?” seems a little denying of the problems this chip, especially in the VV’s housing has. Have you seen DCR’s tracks he released but didn’t include in the AW5 first-run blog?
Especially now that it’s getting colder and runners wear more layers the accuracy drops even more. My last couple of runs with the Vantage beneath a long sleeve or a wind jacket showed the worst tracks I ever experienced with that watch. And I’m not talking shifts of a couple meters but cutting corners by 20m and more, jaggies on perfectly straight paths, and the list goes on. I guess with ever improving algorithms average pace, and overall distance turns out fine, but it gets more and more useless for instant pace.
Thanks, 5k runner, I also read your website.
I would like to have a good gps accuracy within the limit of the current technology – which should be always largely reliable. Good gps accuracy in my mind means around 2-3 % difference in total distance covered ( I am not talking about current pace which is out of question with the exception of using stryd or any other good footpod). For instance, my polar M600 which use a mediatek chip ( the same of the 935 I presume but without Glosnass), it is sometime unrelieable with 10 % distance difference when compared to the gps of my phone ( I use two programmes to check on the phone and track is solid). It is ok if I do basic run ( 50 k running for week on average, sometime 90k) but as I am increasing my training for an half ironman sometime next year I would like to have a watch where GPS and HR accuracy are good, even in open water swim (within the limit of the current technology). ANT+ compatibility is a plus but not a must to have.
Garmin – according to most folks please correct me if I am wrong – gets gps signal faster than Polar.
In addition, I may moving to a city with high buildings ( Singapore) where my M600 never decently worked (sync with phone before to get the fix, restarted, etc.)
As far I can see the last update of the Vantage fixed some issue. Sometime I think that for Vantage V the issue is more hardware as the antenna is not well located and somehow shielded.
So after months of thinking, I narrowed down to two solutions: Polar V ( hoping to get a revised version) or M plus stryd or Garmin 945( rev D which is not affected by button issue)?
I hope now it is more clear and I thank you for your advice.
Best regards,
Domenico
I have returned the 945 due to the button issue，and I bought a COROS aprx 46，now the coros serves well.
My 945 gives as good GPS accuracy as any GPS device have used in the last 15 years and that is loads. No worries for me. Can’t speak for a Polar though.
If you’re going the Stryd way and your watch allows to easily setup the correction value, I’d go for it. I use a Stryd-pod (in fact two) for 2 years now. But you should take the time to find the correction-value for your Pod (no auto!). As I lost my first one I can say that those units have some deviation. So if the default 100% value is ok, then it’s luck. My first unit was at ~98% and my 2nd Stryd is now at ~103%. That’s a remarkable difference.
Anyway, once determined (I suggest a really good measured stretch or just go to a 400m track), the reported distances are really good and as someone who runs a lot of curved trails in forests, it’s more accurate than GPS for me.
Short: with Stryd you can select your watch by other means than GPS accuracy. They all get the basic track good enough to see where you have been running and to make navigation working.
Domenico,
In Singapore (never been there, though) you will definitely want to have a foot pod. No satellite position system will give you any decent track, current speed or total distance there due to the limited visibility to the sky, I’m afraid. As Markus G wrote, Stryd would be recommendable.
As you are planning to increase your running mileage and training volume, I guess you would enjoy Stryd’s additional running metrics, and – to avoid overtraining – Polar Vantage V’s recovery metrics. Both by far better than the rest on the market, currently at least.
VV + Stryd seems to be about the same price category as the 945, and it’s Flow compatible too, so this seems a no-brainer to me. But it’s just me, of course… VV’s gps track is nowadays way better than on the early days, not perfect but not bad either. Anyway better than its reputation… But no maps on the watch or contactless payments or ANT+ support there.
And as an athlete, you will need a HR strap (H10 with the VV unless you have H7 already with your M600, which would be good to go with VV too).
Happy training,
jp
“in what way and for what purpose do you need more gps accuracy than that offered by Polar/Garmin?”
I normally run with stride sensor and a Vantage V, I forgot to put my sensor one day, so Power came from the Vantage itself.
I live in a city, so GPS precision isn’t always good, but that has an similar effect on the power measurement, which you can see on Polar flow.
I wouldn’t recommend the Polar V without the stride sensor because of that.
Polar sells the V with power from the wrist but you can’t rely on the results, so yes GPS accuracy is an issue.
Thank you for the update!
Question: What is ANS data? “– Recovery Insight & Nightly Recharge Option: Looks at breathing rate/heart rate/heart rate variability (ANS data) to figure out if you’re recovering at night”
A strap is required for the orthostatic (HRV) test with Vantage V. How would the new feature work? sleeping with the strap? Ugh.
Cheers :)
1. Autonomic nervous system.
2. It’s not a new feature, it was in Vantage V from the start – link to support.polar.com
Nope, no strap needed. For some reason uncommented by Polar, during “Nightly Recharge” the optical sensor is accurate enough to get a HRV reading. I tried it for the last two nights, and it seems fine with only a couple of periods where it didn’t get a reading. Will stick to recovery pro though since the V really is way too clunky to be worn overnight.
I’m a Polar v800 user holding on to two features currently not ported or planned to be ported.
– time/distance alert with custom message
– last (auto) lap data field
Anyone got any word of these will make it to the Vantage?
Especially the omission of your latter item baffles many users, and this has been asked since the release of the Vantage line. When I contacted Polar support in summer regarding “last lap” modifiers that are missing from the Vantage, they told me they were working on “lap views” for this update but didn’t go into detail whether last lap was part of that process. Unfortunately their support has a strict gagging order, when it comes to what is planned, and so they knowingly misunderstood my question, and put me off with a caned answer. Latest info is, that according to the5krunner, who asked after update 4.0 hit, that Polar doesn’t see a use of the last lap modifier for training views, because in their eyes there are enough views that give the same information as last lap. Which in reality is plain wrong.
Agreed. I also hoped ”lap views” would be something more than they appeared to be on this fw update. And the pause screen could be more informative. IIRC details while paused were initially missing on V800 too, but Polar decided to add them later.
Good update, but still work to be done.
jp
Been using the V800 since it’s release. Only issue was its size. Bought the vantage M expecting similar features (I reckoned, why would any company want to downgrade features/functionality?) Big mistake. Two features I absolutely must have are last lap display, for racing, & countdown timer repeats, for track training. With vibrate alerts, so as not to annoy the hell out of everyone else around me. How difficult is that, the V800 has them. My original 20 year old Polar has countdown timer repeat. But no, Polar prefers to give us bling. Why? It’s a running tool, not something to play with & dribble over. I know how I’ve been sleeping thanks, I can tell when I wake up, or take my HR if I’m not sure. And a plain black strap is fine thanks, don’t worry about offering the full colour range. Anyway, I returned the M & reverted to the V800. Unfortunately I managed to fall during a recent X/C race ( I’m old, so not so steady on the old pins these days, especially when I forget to swap out my track spike pins for X/C pins in the mud & on the hills.) Cracked my knee, but worse than that, I cracked the V800 screen. I’m expecting it to expire soon. So Polar, please sort yourselves out, get one of your software programmers to spend a couple of hours writing the code for the blindingly obvious & simple upgrades that many Polar wearing athletes actually want.
Sorry to hear about your fall and damage to V800. That thing was a tank so you must have taken quite a tumble…. :-(
The strange thing is Polar marketed their approach as being different to Garmin (not worrying about pay / music / navigation) and focused on the athlete / serious enthusiast and what they need in a device. This makes the absence of simple stuff like last lap views even more baffling!
At this point, the stubborness to add something simple that athletes actually require (a year on from launch) is frustrating.
Come on Polar, bring back the Last Lap views – both automatic and manual (HR, Power, Pace, Distance, Cadence). This isn’t beyond you.
Thanks for your concern – the watch broke my fall ?
Actually I was running downhill on mud through woods/tree roots wearing track spike pins and dark glasses – an accident waiting to happen. You would think I might have learnt something after 40 years of athletics. Glasses also flew off. Ran the last 4k with my mud splattered glasses in my hand – I looked like the gopher on Deputy Dawg ?
Thanks for the update. I think, however, that most of the added features should have been available since release date. And I still wonder why a feature similar to Garmin Virtual Racer (or running against a saved workout) is not available in a high end watch like Vantage V
Hello ! Do you guys know if the bug fixes have solved the crashes during long GPX route navigation?
haven’t ear about it. mine use to crash after a few km
Is there still no way to turn off the Vantage V?
Does anyone use Garmin Speed Sensor 2 with Vantage (M in my case)? New fw apparently did nothing to solve dropout issue I’m having. Otoh Cadence Sensor 2 works great.
After the updates, which one do you think is a better purchase? The Ignite, now costs around 190 euros, or, the Vantage M which I find it on discount at 230 Euros?
Ignite
First long run after the update today and the watch failed to resume twice following an GPS connectivity related auto-pause … interested if anyone else has seen this.
This was on a route I run 4 days a week and it’s never happened before.
Vantage M Using GPS+Glonass
Sorry about the chicken
I haven’t had that specific problem, but I have had my watch restart several times just after a mile of running has been recorded, and it has been happening consistently since the 4.0.11 update.
Frustrated Vantage V owner…
Same here, lots of reboots. The dreaded “oops, something went wrong” message is gone, now the watch just reboots out of the blue. Ongoing activity is lost in the process, of course.
I haven’t had that problem at all on the M.
Only reboots are ones I initiated because of Bluetooth pair issues to the iPhone (about once a month the phone and the M don’t want to be friends anymore).
Happens on both my V & M. The V though is more susceptible to it because of the unstable navigation feature, which the M does not support.
After my second run with the new firmware, I had the same after 10k of running. I feel your frustration!
I am not having crashes anymore after turning off autolap on the running sport profile. Worth a try for those still having issues.
Still no response from Polar support.
I notice exactly the same problem. There is a big issue with the autopause since the last update. Actually, it seems that the GPS, sometimes, is unable to restart all alone…
A friend has exactly the same problem.
I sent a request to the support.
The only solution is to desactivate the autopause… this is boring especially bike workouts…
I finally received a response from Polar this morning. They are aware of the problem (admitting it’s a problem is the first step. Only took a week.)
Their solution until a hotfix is released is:
take autolaps/manual laps out of use
set vibration and sound “off”
try “Other outdoor” sport profile
I have turned autolaps off in my running and treadmill profile, and have not had a crash in two sessions on one of my watches. On another of my watches, I have left autolap on on both profiles, and it is still crashing. On my third watch, a white Vantage V, I am not seeing crashes regardless of the settings.
How long until a hotfix is released? hahaha. This is going to be a nightmare for Polar.
Exactly same problems – several times after update 4.
I’m having problems with watch not continuing training tracking after auto-pause (during cycling). Happened twice already on two rides. This never happened prior update 4.
Not an issue with my Vantage V at all.
I just run. No GPS issues, records HR as well as well as another model with Wahoo HR strap on. Even compared the watch HR to a Pulse Oximeter from a GE S5 Patient monitor, and spot on, even when moving around.
Lot’s of negativity here, Garmin must have it’s bot’s out.
My take on the Vantage V is it’s a Pro watch, so many of the features missing or not like Garmin are probably not there for that reason. I personally don’t want to run with maps, notifications, music, payment methods, I just wanna run. Lot’s of comparisons too with older models, back then, we didn’t have smart phones and other online stable platforms, we do know, and from my own experiences, just like post bike ride, I don’t pick up my device and browse it for stats, I pick up my phone. When I run, I look at my HR if it’s a recovery or long run, if it’s intervals it is programmed and I do as it tells me, and tempo’s/race I select a pace, lock it in, and run…
I’ve been using Polar since the end of the 90s, I’m hardly one of Garmin’s “bots”. I don’t like the company, and find their devices of cheap quality, bloated with casual lifestyle fluff, and overpriced.
With that said, I have to disagree with you on the negativity. Noone is giving Polar a hard time because of lack of smartwatch features (like pay, music et cet.). Instead, people are sharing their experience with the latest update, like with any other product, and rightly so, because as you said, it’s a “pro watch”, yet is missing basic features, that professional or any enthusiast athlete can benefit from
– I ran eight times since the update, and my VV rebooted three out of those eight times. That’s not very “pro like”.
– Hitting pause shows a huge icon of the activity’s profile, wasting screen estate, instead of giving basic information like distance, duration, avg. HR. I know what sport I’m doing, thanks. Not very “pro like”.
– Phased training doesn’t give any information on the last phase whatsoever. Usually you wanna know the pace or distance (depending on whether you do distance or time paced intervals) of your last interval. It merely shows the next phase, that’s usually rest/recovery after an interval, very useless information. You cannot even work around this flaw by using training views, because guess what, Polar for some reason decided the Last Lap modifiers from M430/V800 are not necessary anymore. Not very “pro like”.
Instead, we get lifestyle fluff, the very kind of features you mocked! Serene Breathing, more sleep stats, a useless fitness test. Next stop will be FitSpark, the epitome of features aimed at the casual/smartwatch crowd. That is the opposite of a “pro” watch in my book.
Vantage M is my first sports watch (picked it over Garmin because friends explained to me that Polar is an athlete oriented company, not lifestyle like Garmin). I have people telling me miracle stories still about their V800, I fully understand Polar veterans wanting all the features back from those days. First I wanted to buy M430, but turned to VM because of good price I got (and being current model).
I bought the watch to track my newly found running at the beginning, but since I’ve been cycling like crazy.
– There were issues with GPS on running (especially being close to tall buildings) and oHR behaving crazy on interval runs (that’s why I bought H10 as well).
– On cycling I find GPS much more precise.
– There were many syncing issues, inability to set CHR tracking during night only (which I recommended to Polar via YT) etc.
– Today, I find GPS behaving mostly fine (especially after 3.2.10 update), oHR looks better (even though I recommend using H10 always), syncing issues looks solved after 4.0.11.
– There’s this worrying post 4 update auto-pause bug I hit twice.
Hearing all the bad VV stories, I find myself lucky with M, too.
Polar, please solve the issue with new Garmin Speed Sensor, can’t be that hard to make it work. Otherwise, consider activating ANT+ support (which should take care of it) in hardware.
No bots – just asking if anyone had similar experience.
My watch has been absolutely great until this week.
My wife has a Garmin 245 – and that is equally great.
Then don’t use it.
I don’t have those issues of bricking, so maybe you need to contact polar!
Why do you need to see anything when you select pause? I hit pause if I have to stop for traffic etc. Using phased workouts, just look at your watch as the effort is ending, which you’d be doing anyways to see if you were on track!
As for Serene etc, Serene is very useful, just like yoga and meditation, taking time out of your day to choose (doesn’t prompt you, ever) Serene is your choice, same as choosing Fitness Test or Recovery Pro/Recharge.
Fitspark as DC said is contentious, but if they work it into an overall program, cross training is beneficial and something runners often neglect.
Sleep tracking; not sure you comment is worthy of an answer. As sleep is the most beneficial thing you can do for recovery, and advancements on that is warranted and you welcomed.
Again I suggest you contact Polar support, awesome in Australia.
Personally I’m enjoying a smaller
company getting out there and making changes, slowly, with thought, without bloat and without flooding the market with incessant product updates. I know I’ll have this watch for years…
I agree with Flokon and I also have been using Polar since end 90s. I find some of the decisions that Polar are making to be baffling. I appreciate they have limited resources and are not trying to compete against Garmin with smartwatch features e.g. pay / music etc.
But to remove things as simple as Last Lap training view that has been standard on their watches for years demonstrates to me, a lack of understanding of the market they claim to be targeting. I’m not against them adding the lifestyle stuff to the watch e.g. serene breathing etc, but again find it strange that they appear to do that at the expense of getting the training side of the watch back to the level of V800.
And then if they are going to add features like Serene Breathing, why isn’t this captured in Flow like Fitness Test & Orthostatic tests are. Why can’t you record how many times you have done this over a period of time and monitor any improvement….
That said, I’m glad they took the feedback and added back footpod calibration :-)
Personally, I’d like to see them open the platform up a little more to capture / display data from a broader range of devices.
I’d also like to see them exploring some of the stuff that Garmin are looking at e.g. acclimation to temperature etc.
No reboots for me at well. I had only a no start after an autopause while cyling home from work. will track that this week. GPS is the same as before. Will test Galileo this week while my daily commuting.
I have same problems with Vantage M – for hiking, cross country ski and downhill ski.
Lots of complaints on the Polar facebook page about crashing watches following the firmware update. I have three Vantage Vs in my household, and they are all having the problem. Polar is not being responsive at all. This is a bad situation.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to downgrade firmware?
I have perused reddit and the polar Facebook site, and it seems to be clear what may be causing the issue, based on a similar theme amongst them.
Have you changed your gps setting to Galileo? In 9 out of 10 comments I have read on this issue, the user has changed to Galileo, and it’s occurred on M’s and V’s!
No, all of the watches were set to the default (GPS+Glonass) before and after the update. I am going to try switching to GPS+Galileo today, just to see what happens.
My impression of the problem is it’s something to do with automatic laps. I will also try shutting off the automatic lap at X distance feature. We seem to have fewer problems with treadmill runs, where we typically don’t have that feature on in the tresdmill running sport profile, and we don’t manually take laps.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Still haven’t heard from Polar. I’ve contacted them via twitter and web support.
I have also experienced 3 crashes over 4 sessions since updating. I can confirm I have GPS+GLONASS setting. Since the first crash I’ve tried reinstalling the Flow app, as well as a factory reset, but to no avail. The only thing I still haven’t tried is removing automatic laps. I find it ridiculous that we have to try out all these things while Polar remains silent.
Fortunately, I still have my V800 as back-up. I hate to think of other users who are trying to follow a training plan in these circumstances, or who are experimenting these crashes on race day.
I have no problems with latest update on Vantage V. Did the update and after that reset of the watch. No problems with 5 running activities after updating. Now it even automatically syncs with my Motorola mobile.
So maybe there is a problem with earlier revisions of the watch as I bought mine in September or maybe people not doing reset after update.
Updated my Polar M and the thing now works as good as before plus has the described new features. So all good and well here.
No issues after update on my VV. The watch feels even smoother then before;)
Experience after a week: disappointing to outright frustrating
– GPS accuracy (GLONASS, no point in using anything else as Sony is only updating gps+Glonass algorithms) as bad if not worse as before.
– reboots during stride calibration
– Nightly Recharge useless when sleep tracking is not working properly (I sleep from 21:30 – 05:00, V tracked my sleep from 20:00 – 03:56. How hard can it be to not track sleep when I don’t wear the watch? The ohr sensor knows when there is no skin contact- baffling)
– Orthostatic Test still fails about 2/3 times, no point in wasting 15′ to get one proper reading, which frankly isn’t accurate anymore anyway after so much standing up and lying down
For the time being I’m back to wearing both the V and my 935 as backup to not lose my training data should the V decide to reboot again. For the record: I have yet to lose a workout due to a reboot/freeze in my 935 in more than 1.5years!
Regarding sleep accuracy.
Polar recommends that you wear the watch at least 90 minutes before you go to bed and not putting it on just right before bed.
Not wearing it before going to bed can confuse the sleep detection it says in the manual/support pages.
Another thing I noticed: They ditched the trim function for sleep, even though they still mention it online. You cannot adjust the time you actually slept anymore, when your Polar has it completely wrong (again).
Also, why is there no sleep plus and nightly recharge on Flow Web?
Coming from the ride, two times I had this effin auto-pause bug (GPS set to Galileo) and I was riding like Tour de France pro. I want to smash this PoC watch!!!
Polar, you had six months to test this fw and you bring up this garbage. What are we, your unpaid beta testers? I want to have this fixed otherwise I’m returning watch as well as building anti-Polar environment here.
I did a 90km ride yesterday. My M didn’t record ANYTHING out of the GPS (set to GLONASS btw), so I don’t have no ride map in Flow, nothing, nada. I wasn’t “loosing” GPS during ride (at least I couldn’t see it, the icon was constant green).
Polar, common how cheap can you get? Did all of the software devs leave the company?
I’m seriously contemplating of filming myself wrecking my super-loved-pre-4fw-watch with the hammer.
Can’t you do anything right?
I’d like to give an update regarding the Vantage V. Purchased the watch last week and have used it for 1 hike, and 5 bike rides. The hike and the rides were in the mountains of New Mexico.
GPS accuracy is laughably bad. I used 5 devices to record the activities. The Vantage, a Fenix 5+, A Wahoo Roam, a Garmin 510, and a Samsung S10+. The Wahoo is by far the best, with very little deviation from the Google Earth images, as well as the averaged hot track of 100’s of rides from people. The Fenix 5+ comes next, with an occasional off the mountain or bridge moment, but only occasionally, and it quickly gets back on track. It generally agrees well with the Wahoo, and the hot track. The 510 follows, with the S10+ coming next. In last place is the Vantage, and god does it suck. I flew through different canyons for most of my MTBing, rode in the forest, sidewalks, or through houses on my commutes, and when the lone bridge showed up, I definitely went off it. While I realize this is only 6 different activities, it’s enough for me to make my decision to return it easy.
Which sucks…. because the oHR kicks the shit out of the Fenix’s oHR. Which is why I bought the watch in the first place, after I was literally told by Garmin that their products won’t work for me. In writing. The oHR worked well on my commutes, closely following the TCKR HR strap, throughout the easy paced rides, and when I went Grantaining, it matched well with the big upticks in my HR due to climbs, sprints, and hooliganing. Overall, I was very impressed with the oHR.
As far as other features and feelings go, the watch is incredibly nice feeling and wearing, although the band loops are horrible. The screen looks great, and the touch is very nice to have. The use of the watch is great.
I didn’t like the lack of ANT+, which means I’m SOL for my AXS stuff. I also didn’t like the complete lack of ability to broadcast my HR. It’s inconvenient to look at my wrist while I’m riding, which is why I also use the Roam or in the past the 510. I can add that sensor to my bike computer, and monitor my HR easily.
Overall, I really like some things about the watch. Its great looking, light, and comfortable. Sadly, usability is definitely lacking, and GPS accuracy is laughable. Its a swing and a miss for me, and that means going back to my Fenix 5+, which is seemingly completely incapable of measuring my HR. And I don’t mean accurately, I mean at all.
It likely won’t sway from the list of issues you had most likely, but if you use the H10 hr strap/monitor (and or OH1/+), those are broadcasting simultaneously on ANT+ now, so you can use them for capture by other devices. Can’t record anything in the watch from ANT+ still, which I’m assuming is the concern, but if you want to record the ANT+ to device #2, or something like Strava on a phone), it’s possible, that option is now there with the H10 and can still use the watches for the Polar BTLE signal.
Based on the number of “reboots” mentioned in the last couple of days, may be worth it (for H10/OH1 users) to simultaneous record workouts in their cell phone or an alternate ANT+ recording device, just in case.
Just out of curiosity what tool are you using to see “as well as the averaged hot track of 100’s of rides from people”. That seems like a very interesting tool.
After the update GPS accuracy is terrible. I’m running all over the place except on the roads I actually took. Changed to Glonass same issue. Running, walking, in open field, woods and high density urban areas doesn’t matter, it’s all very very bad, I’ve never had it this bad with any watch.
Really disappointed and hope they fix this soon.
#takeshisV800outagain
I have no issues with GPS accuracy on the Vantage V. Never had. But them I don’t zoom into max detail on google maps and check the path either.
And to the person comparing the accuracy of Vantage V to the Wahoo Roam. Of course the larger GPS device with bigger antennas sitting in an optimized position on the bike is going to get better position.
Quick question on polar watch (ignite/VM/VV).
Is it possible to view the heart rate in % MaxHR instead of BPM?
For me looking at %HR is more intuitive than looking at BPM.
Thanks in Advance.
Yes, you can set it to either bpm, %HRmax or %HRReserve. Also, it’s sports profile sensitive, therefore you can have it at bpm for say cycling, and at %HRmax for running.
Thanks! Much appreciated.
Had some feedback via twitter ..
I actually got an update today for my Vantage V, but it is still on firmware level 4.0.11. So a hotfix without increasing the firmware level? I’m curious what this update is about, update page of Polar doesn’t mention any updates after 4.0.11.
The hotfix is supposed to address an issue with the watch crashing when using the autolap feature.
Apparently Polar is pretending like this wasn’t a major problem and trying to sweep it under the rug.
Funnily enough, I had this for the first time yesterday during a run. Completely lost the session. I was trying to navigate between views when the display just went totally blank. 2 or 3 mins later it then came back to the watch screen.
Hi everybody!
Does anyone else have problems with nightly recharge – no metrics in flow or watch. Have been wearing watch for 7 consecutive days and nada (nothing, in polar flow app it says no data recoeded under nighty recharge).
Tried reset, did not work.
Thank you for your feedback
kosa
You have to enable nightly recharge under watch settings on Vantage V. It is disabled by default as orthostatic test is enabled.
the aha moment:). Thank you harv.
I was super excited for the 4.0 update on my vantage M, so I could finally get good distance/pace data coming from my Stryd footpod with the manual calibration feature. I was very quickly disappointed. I did some experimenting setting the manual calibration factor to 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 and did a short loop, for all three loops, my total distance for each was 0.16 miles. This would indicate that the data is still coming from the GPS rather than my footpod. I turned GPS off on my watch, and did the loops again with the three different calibration factors, distances came back at 0.08 miles (0.5 manual calibration), 0.16 miles (1.0 M.C.), and 0.24 miles, (1.5 M.C.). This is a clear indication that distance and pace is only coming from a footpod when GPS is disabled. I have asked Stryd and Polar for clarification and have yet to get a response. Anyone else test this out and get similar results? DC – this sounds like test with your name on it.
-Disappointed Vantage M user
I ran 42 laps of 400m track last night with calibration factor at 1.000 and GPS off. Vantage recorded 16.79km. Very happy with that. Would be interested in the answer on the GPS because previously had been led to believe that if a footpod was detected then Vantage would take distance and pace from that.
Now if they could stop being stubborn and add back “Last Lap” views in the to the training profile….. ?♂️
+1 for the last lap data fields
My guess is that distance is shown based on gps and pace on the pod. At least that is my experience with a milestonepod. Pace during the run mimicked the Wright and wrong calibration. But the distance was right.
Hello, KD.
I also use the Vantage M + Stryd.
I’ve read your post and decided to check if my finding would me identical to yours.
First run.
Calibration factor: 1,5
GPS on.
Distance: 0.46 km
Pace:03:56 min/km
link to flow.polar.com
Second run.
Calibration factor: 1
GPS on.
Distance: 0.31 km
Pace: 05:39 min/km
link to flow.polar.com
Third run.
Calibration factor: 0,5
GPS on.
Distance: 0.15 km
Pace: 11:38 min/km
link to flow.polar.com
Fourth run.
Calibration factor: 1,5
GPS off.
Distance: 0.41 km (really strange when compared with the distance from the first run)
Pace: 03:43 min/km
link to flow.polar.com
Fifth run.
Calibration factor: 1
GPS off.
Distance: 0.31 km
Pace: 05:36 min/km
link to flow.polar.com
Sixth run.
Calibration factor: 0,5
GPS off.
Distance: 0.15 km
Pace: 10:44 min/km
link to flow.polar.com
My Vantage + Stryd combo seems to be working as intended.
Piotr-
Thanks for the detailed replay and testing. I am going to disconnect and reconnect my stryd and reset my watch, redowload the update and try this again… Agreed, your data is more promising than mine, with the exception of the one outlier. I will follow up with my second round of testing.
Thanks
Let me know, please. I’m curious how you got those results on the 25th :)
Well Piotr, I have not idea what to say, I did 4 runs with a calibration set to 1.000, 1.500, 0.500, and 1.000. All the results came in 1.03 miles :( I did not due on runs with GPS disabled, but from my last test I know the manual calibration works with no GPS, so I am ruling out a defective Stryd and user error :) It is definitely an issue on Polar’s end. Tomorrow I will do the identical run with GPS turned off just to confirm a second time… Here are the links to my test runs if you are curious…
Test #1 – 1.000 MC, GPS enabled
link to flow.polar.com
Test #2 – 1.500 MC, GPS enabled
link to flow.polar.com
Test #3 – 0.500 MC, GPS enabled
link to flow.polar.com
Test #4 – 1.000 MC, GPS enabled
link to flow.polar.com
Bizzare…..are you using the new Stryd?
I own the previous version.
Is your Stryd and Vantage firmware up to date?
I have the non-wind Stryd, both Vantage M and Stryd have been upgraded, are these identical specs to what you are using?
Vantage M: Firmware 4.0.11
Stryd: Version – 1.2.0
Model – 13 Rev 3
Almost…
Vantage M: Firmware 4.0.11
Stryd: Version – 1.2.0
Model – 12 Rev 3
Works like a charm when GPS is disabled (same route as done yesterday):
Test #5 – 1.000 MC, GPS disabled
link to flow.polar.com
Test #6 – 1.500 MC, GPS disabled
link to flow.polar.com
Test #7 – 0.500 MC, GPS disabled
link to flow.polar.com
Test #8 – 1.000 MC, GPS disabled
link to flow.polar.com
So confusing, and of course Polar lacks any and all support. Going on 10 days with no answer.
Polar released a Hotfix that doesn’t show up on polar.com nor increases the firmware number. My VV updated today and it only says something along the lines of minor bug fixes. Pretty sure it addresses the auto-lap/pause bug that would reboot the watch but maybe they looked into foot pods as well.
Cannot say though, that I share the experience your Stryd/Vantage behaves. I have GPS on and played around with calibration factor on my run this morning. And as I would expect, pace instantly changed accordingly.
What exactly do you experience? Does instant pace stay the same with GPS on? Or is it only overall distance that comes out as equal in the end, no matter the MC? The latter would make sense since that’s how it worked on Garmin as well for a long time until they introduced the option to have GPS on and get distance from Stryd in addition to instant pace as well.
Thanks though for your testing. Since Polar didn’t include the option to turn off GPS in the watch (how hard can it be?), I know how cumbersome it is to test stuff with GPS on/off.
Thanks for the info. It seems like the issue may be specific to my Vantage, which seems unlikely given we all have the same firmware, but who knows. With GPS enabled, manual calibration does not change distance or pace. 1 true 10 minute mile will show a steady pace of 10 min/mile and total distance of 1 mile no matter the calibration factor. With GPS disabled, manual calibration works as intended, aka 1 true 10 minute mile would show Pace of 20 mins/mile and 0.5 total distance at a 0.500 MC or 6:40 min/mile pace and 1.5 miles total distance at a 1.500 MC.
I will see if the new hot fix update works!
Updated the watch and tested, no luck:( Reset to factory default and updated again, nothing:( Looks like I will have to wait for polar customer service to respond by sloth mail… I will let you know what they say next year!
Hi KD,
I have a Zwift pod, very happy with it, of course it is not a stryd but the pace and cadence are very accurate. Problem is I am suffering exactly the same behaviour you described, first time I tested the pod I saw the pace seemed to be very jumpy (as always with GPS between buildings) and then I was doing some tests and I realized the VV just was taking the pod when the gps was off, did you get any answer or fix?
Thanks!!
Thanks for your previous posts regarding the Garmin sensor 2 problem (speed), Ognjen. I haven’t read about this issue anywhere else.
I’m experiencing the same and wrote to Polar the other day. I haven’t received an answer yet. Cadence is fine under all conditions, only the speed value gets erratic after a certain threshold.
Hi Ralf,
yes, Speed Sensor 2 is useless with my M. It starts to drop receiving data immediately after more than 15 kph. I don’t think Polar will do anything about it. Look at all the issues there are out there, I think they have other pressing things to attend to.
Polar never said that you can use Garmin speed sensors with their products. It´s not listed as compatible.
True, but on the flip side it follows the BLE standard. Or, it should. The question is which party is to blame for not following the standard.
Yes, Fred, true.
And I consider this as a pity (or ignorance) on their part, cause everything else out there supports it (i.e. my phone with RWGPS via BLE, Strava via ANT+, Suunto watch via BLE). If you look at all the supported sensors on the Polar page, it turns out nothing works with their products except Polar, and we know it’s not true (there are many heart straps stated as not supported which work). How come Cadence Sensor 2 works without any issues (officialy not suported by Polar also)?
Why should I have to buy their sensors which are generations and feature-wise worse than Garmin’s? Same would apply to Garmin if the situation would be reversed.
So Polar eventually did get back to me, after waiting a few weeks (which required a reminder from my side). The answer was very short and referred to the ‘compatible devices’ list on their website and the statement that the Garmin sensors don’t seem to be compatible and therefore show no data.
Well, it’s true that it seems that way, but they’ve missed the point on the speed data actually working fine below a certain threshold and the cadence sensor doing so all the time.
As DC Rainmaker pointed out, there’s a standard (BLE) in place which does signal a compatibility beyond Polar’s (not so well) maintained list. I mean, what good is a standard if it does require competitor A to list competitor B on its own website to actually work?
Now, while I would accept a total lack of data as a result of an incompatibility, it does seem that the issue at hand is of much finer grain than Polar is able to perceive. I’m not an expert in the field of BLE ingredients, but these symptoms (data actually being transmitted, received and developing an offset above X km/h) seem like fixable ones to me. Means, if you are willing.
I do admit, if the Polar sensors weren’t from the last century (technology-wise), I might have chose those. Now the company is forced to shine on the support level only. Current status: much room for improvement. :-)
Ralf,
that short answer is the same one I got. That very attitude is what I have problems with (we don’t care, it’s Garmin). I’d argue about this attitude if Garmin behaved the same.
Polar, how about you get a handful of praise if you took some time to handle this small problem?
You’d get much more better PR, believe me.
I already bought the watch and HR sensor. I’d buy sensors too if they just didn’t suck.
I mean, if Garmin is so big in cycling gear, would it not better to say “we are 100% compatible with Garmin sensors, since our own are BS”. Isn’t that another good thing to say regarding Vantage selling points?
I am so grateful for your blog.Thanks Again
So, Polar issued 4.1.1 firmware for my M yesterday.
They still didn’t announce it on their website, yet today they announced new Polar Flow mobile version which is issued three days ago.
Polar, is this a secret version? What exactly has been fixed, added etc.?
link to support.polar.com
link to support.polar.com
Well, typical Polar update mess…. update process that crashes and doesn’t update as it should! Can’t find the phone again etc. Ugh….. I wish I hadn’t synced. Life is too short.
Since the new update I can’t sync with my phone – it keeps on syncing for an hour or so and nothing happens.
Factory reset didn’t help neither did reinstalling the app.
An update mess indeed……
After the last updates (4.0.11 and 4.1.1 firmware) my vantage started to freeze and show other issues, like losing my last workout. Factory reset didn’t help for me either.
Polar’s support wants me to send my watch to them, but I don’t think the issue here is the hardware, since it works very fine in the 3.2 firmware. Waiting for them to launch a hotfix fast….
Agree. I wouldn’t send the watch in either. I want an option to revert to the 3.x firmware.
I have been using Orthostatic Testing/Recovery Pro, not Nightly Recharge but cannot understand or accept why Polar does not allow Nightly Recharge data to be displayed also. I have been in contact with Polar and so far this seems to be their position i.e.that Nightly Recharge must be selected for Recovery Tracking to see any Nightly Recharge data. I understand that a selection needs to be made between Orthostatic Testing and Nightly Recharge to inform Recovery Tracking and this makes sense as these may conflict. I seem to recall DCRainmaker making this observation in his review(?) Polar flow app has a dedicated section for Nightly Recharge, it is odd to have this, if data is only available based on a selection? It’s not a good look at all from a customer satisfaction point of view, given these watches are all about metrics i.e here’s a metric, but not available to you!
Aside from the above (but related perhaps with regards to Nightly Recharge reliability), the sleep scores I have been getting are not correct given the data recorded, I can only assume the data is right. Since Sleep Scoring has been made available I got scores for 3 days, then a score of 0, then 2 scores, then 3 0s, I have now had 5 scores of 0s in a row! Last night sleep consisted of 2% long interruptions, 2.9/5 continuity, 94% actual sleep, 15% REM, 21% deep sleep. With a total of 7h29mins sleep time (preferred set to 7hrs), this gave me a score of zero.
At least my orthostatic test results have allowed me to continue training ;)!
I ‘m waittng for a function, that will send my HR from the watch to my bike computer (V600 and M450).
When i’m riding bike an wear long trikots, it would be nice, to see all data on my bike computer in my front.
In every sport profile i can allow that my HR will sent to other devices. I think, this is for ergometer in fitness studios.
But why not for Polar products?
Now i have to use two devices. One for the powermeter and the watch for my HR.
In summer, it is okay, because i can look at my Vantage, but in winter with long arms, i want to see my power in front
Sebastian,
there were talks about Polar enabling ANT+ support in Vantages which would be fantastic.
That would take care of your problem, and probably mine (Speed Sensor 2 not working via BLE with M).
So, Polar, pretty please do enable ANT+, since it’s possible to do it in hw.
No problems with my M, now have 17 sessions with 5-6 autopauses in each, works fine with both 4.0.11 and 4.1.1. Only cycling though. No crashes and no update or syncing (iOS) problems either. Just sayin’. Btw, I think sleep hours work quite well, when I use the Nightly recharge screen on the watch and press I’m awake in the morning.
I had a ride today. Auto-pause is working strangely, I was standing in the bike shop looking to buy something, and the training was still on (I have auto-pause set to turn on speed of 5 kph or less).
Didn’t notice issues like auto-pause not turning off like before.
Naar
Engels
I am very happy with my Vantage V. Especially after the last update. Everything works fine. It looks great, is easy to use and light in weight.
Tips:
Synchronize with your PC, for the latest A-GPS settings, for better GPS tracking;
Wear your watch tightly, for better heartbeat tracking; Use the nightly recharge screen and push I’m awake in the morning;
The nightly recharge values in the last update are fine. Now I can better interpret and value my sleep and recovery. Use it. Adjust your sleeping patterns and you will be really fit.
morning, so my v800 I’ve had for many years, great watch, has fogged up and is now failing electrically inside. time to replace. the watch has been great for all my training, mostly riding these days. always found it not feasible to wear the chest strap when swimming , each push off bent the strap over, cumbersome, etc. so a wrist heart rate watch i’m after. i don’t see the price difference justified for the v over the m. i don’t do any tri’s but i trained that way in the past and will again. opinions?? also are you still working with clever training?
thanks
i got the M at launch, and quickly shelled out for a V. I came from a 935, and M430, and found the the Vantage M to wear pretty badly. The V is another league in build quality, and materials used (hydrophobic glass, stainless steel), and overall design (strap connection to housing!), making it that much nicer to wear.
The OHR in water is hit and miss, and Polar knows that. Hence their “Yeah, it works, but I wouldn’t count on it. Good luck!”-attitude towards the tech when submerged. Any strap will bend under water, even Polar’s nubby one, which usually isn’t a problem because swimmers wear a suit anyway.
I bought a Vantage V and i see that some features are missing. For example the jump tests. Also the R-R Interval Recording doesn’t work anymore. It was nice cause i was able to extract data to 3rd party applications.
It would be nice if Polar could add Recovery Heart Rate. I was also expecting more data that have to do with power. Anyway its a nice watch and with every update its getting better. It need more features though.
Hi KD,
I have a Zwift pod, very happy with it, of course it is not a stryd but the pace and cadence are very accurate. Problem is I am suffering exactly the same behaviour you described, first time I tested the pod I saw the pace seemed to be very jumpy (as always with GPS between buildings) and then I was doing some tests and I realized the VV just was taking the pod when the gps was off, did you get any answer or fix?
Thanks!!
What behaviour, exactly? It’s unclear whom your question is in response to.
sorry, i had an error in the submit and the post came here, it is refered to the post #136
Problem is in my case with zwift pod(milestone) when I have the gps on I don’t get instant pace from the pod and just when I turn it off I see good values. No matter the calibration factor it seems with gps on the pod is not being taking into account, I have a green circle before I start a session and I have a foot icon for stride lenght after in flow analysis so it looks polar found the pod but the instant pace is just nice with gps off.
Jose-
No fix. I did the same tests on another Polar Vantage I narrowed, and got the same results. Polar technicians have told me both the footpod should be proving pace and distance while connected and others have said it will only provide pace and distance when GPS is disabled. Basically they don’t know how their product works… I have been playing phone tag with a Polar supervisor that can hopefully help resolve this issue.
Thanks kd!
It is not too bad training with gps off but it would be nice to have both, and to be able to choose between pod or gps would be great but in any case if a pod is found better use this instead.
I use strava which has challenges and segments that require GPS for your miles to count, which is my biggest issue with disabling GPS and just going by the pod. Even with my frustration on this topic, I still am very happy overall with the watch for the price point.
I can see that there is a update scheduled in december but any info anywhere about upgrades after that? I need to replace my 920xt in the near future and would like a Vantage V. But I still miss some functions and would like to know whats planned.
Coming in clutch finally polar been waiting for this type of update. Just found a new vantage V for 150 at the rei garage sale with some haggling. This confluence of events finally made it worth the purchase.
I just had the first test run on cross country skis with the V800 and Vantage V together. I did a 10.6 km skate skiing pass and repeated on classic skiing. There was a 0.18% (20 meter) difference in the GPS reading between the Vantage V (on Glonass) and the V800 on both accounts. The track goes through forest and open forest roads. In both cases the V800 read 20 meter longer than the Vantage V.
I certainly don’t see this cutting around corners and big differences that others see. I admit this is a first test run in nature. I have not yet tested in the cityscape. The Vantage V is on update 4.1.1.
Hi Jens, nice name lol!
For me there haven’t been much differences in GPS DISTANCE for me with VV. However when I look at the satellite map the actual track is often times much further from reality than V800 usually is. I guess for skate xc ski it’s not as easy to check vs classic but I’d like to know how you find the differences in satellite map vs where you actually skied. This can(will probably) show the difference IMO. The lines are likely not to overlap so well as one might think. A good tool is quantified-self.io and upload the gpx or fit files there if you don’t want to use DCR’s own. Remember to zoom in as much as you can or the difference might not be visible ;)
Hi Jens ;), I already did that here: link to hotigris.wordpress.com
Here is a picture from the Vantage map in Polar flow. This is approx. 3 km of the track.
The V800 looks pretty similar:
I promised you a picture of how the Vantage V fairs at home in Copenhagen. I did 4 x 2.5 km in order to also check the consistency.
To me it looks pretty good. Ok, it isn’t so much tall tall buildings here.
Update 5 was just released!
In addition to the 3 new features, it also adds haptic feedback to the VV, a storage of 100 favourites for the VV, and “minor bugs and improvements” (need to test the watch to find them).
– Haptic feedback is hardly noticeable
– Percentage added to battery icon is nice for M users who don’t have the quick access swipe down like the V
– pool length got a new icon as far as I can tell (could’ve been in 4 as well, hard to tell since I don’t swim)
– HIIT was renamed to High Intensity Interval Training on the watch
– Phased Target icons are in colour now
They delivered as per their roadmap schedule. That’s pretty nice!
Race Pace was something I missed from v800. And fitspark seems interesting as a concept, curious to find out how it pans out.
I do hope they update their roadmap for 2020. The gap with v800 features is a lot smaller than one year ago. Would be nice if the progress continues.
Info on pause screen like v800, last lap fields and more lap info on lap triggers, time/distance based reminders to name a few.
I’m waiting a week to see if anything is screwed up by this release. ?
“Info on pause screen like v800, last lap fields and more lap info on lap triggers, time/distance based reminders to name a few.” All of this. Less fluff, more athlete-centric stuff.
With that said, GPS is still as horrendous as before, thus my VV remains in the drawer because like this it’s unusable.
When Polar sort this out, as in info on pause screen like v800, last lap fields and more lap info on lap triggers, time/distance based reminders, all nearly 2 years after launching the Vantage, I will then purchase this watch (I returned my initial Vantage because of the appalling lack of athlete-based features compared to the now 5 year old V800). Until then I’m sticking with my knackered V800. The other blingy stuff they offer on the Vantage is a bit like putting a go-faster stripe on an old banger.
Hi,
just updated my M to fw 5.
First thing I saw is my profile data is not synced (weight, height, V02Max etc. is completely wrong than one in Polar Flow).
Thanks for reporting. I just checked and personal details for me were all correct except VO2 max….
Well…at least you can get yours to update. Mine remains stuck on the current/previous release. I have a funny feeling it may be tied to having me listed in an early access group for that release, we’ll see…
I’m sure you already know this but I think you have to be charging the watch whilst you are trying to do the firmware update. Otherwise the firmware update will fail.
Yeah, it’s been charging all day, save for the points I’ve taken it off the charger trying to get it to re-start the sync. Well at 100%. And then tried it via smartphone, but nothing happened after sync there either. My guess is my watch is in a special group.
Bummer, i’ve got a whole post ready to roll, but want actual device picture.
Um no Marathon Man, I just pressed lower left button to sync my VV, opened Flow app (iOS) and after sync it asked to update and I did, update successful without charging. Perhaps it’s because I was at 97% battery?
And I was already at 92%. Wouldn’t update unless the watch was charging. And I tried at least 6 times before reverting to charging as I remembered that last time it was the same issue….
I had to restart Flow mobile on iOS 2x after VV listed a firmware update in the devices section of the app. Marked as 5.0.10
After the sync that followed, the OTA firmware update screen appeared.
Battery must have been at + 80%, not on charger.
Update:
After a while (and a wach restart) my profile synced.
waiting on the post here…
One more thing:
My M is still on 100% battery for eight plus hours since the v5 update.
Looks like battery percentage is not going down at all.
My Vantage V is on 95% after a 32.6 km cross country sling. Awesome.
I have had no trouble updating.
But I had som hi and lo heart rate spikes on the training. I think it may be the H7 strap, since it also behaves like that at times on the V800.
The Haptic Feedback isn’t working when swiping on my Vantage V.
Scratch that. The haptic feedback is indeed working. It is just so weak that I can hardly feel it on my wrist.
I also thought it wasn’t working, it’s effect is hardly noticeable. Definitely not as as strong as on the M430.
Not a big issue for me but if they advertise it they should really make it noticeable.
I also have a hard time hearing the 1 km pings but that has been a common issue with all three polar watches in the family.
I really like the real time HR graph on the polar a360 and a370 and have been disappointed that this feature is not on the Polar Ignite. Is it on the polar vantage M and/or V.
Nope, just a number for current HR.
I had issues with my Vantage M pausing during a run for no reason in late summer. Customer service said it was a known issue and firmware update 4.1.1 would resolve the problems. It did resolve the problem until this week when during my last two runs, the Vantage M again paused on its own and only started recording again when I manually pressed the button located at the 3-o’clock position. I’m in the L.A./SoCal area without any high rise buildings that should affect the GPS. Anyone else encounter this problem?
I had the same issue a few weeks ago even after disabling the auto-pause set. My watch always froze when trying to access the quick mode (the light button from pre-training mode) loosing all my train session.
But that was surprisely corrected when they updated the favourite system in the polar flow web/app (probably the problem was in their system, not in the watch itself in my case), since then I haven’t any issues anymore.
However, I have to mention that I’m not still pleased with my GPS accuracy, even though I’ve seen an improvement since the v4.0 when using GPS+Galileo (in my place the GPS+Glonass still have big issues, I don’t know why).
About the GPS accuracy, I read in the Garmin forum similar complaints about the accuracy (wobblings and cutted corners) and they mentioned that the Fenix 6 it’s the worse of them due to its metal bezel (similar issue when the accuracy of VV vs. VM is compared).
Let’s see if in 2020 Polar can listen to their users and focus on the accuracy, but I don’t know how far they can go with the Sony chipset…
I’m getting a notification that my Vantage V would like to open Polar Flow every 15 minutes or so?? It appears to only sync now with the phone app open, but having to open the app multiple times an hour is driving me nuts!!
After update 5.0, when I start route guidance on the Vantage V, the watch now tells me to calibrate the compass. I don’t think I have seen this notification in previous software versions. Does this mean the V does have a compass after all?
@Frank: I´ve use route guidance in the past without any problems. When starting it yesterday, the VV (firmware 5.0.10) asked me for calibration. I had to perform a figure 8 motion and failed a couple of times. Now it looks like I have to calibrate it in advance to every activity with route guidance.
I get it too every time I want to start route guidance. I always assumed the V did not have an electronic compass; at least that’s what I read in many reviews. Moreover, previously if you didn’t move during route guidance, the V asked you to keep moving, to me another sign there is no compass. Haven’t seen this notification either recently.
Do you know if any of the Polar vantage units show HRV in real time??
I haven’t found a way to do it. Iirc there used to be a profile view on V800 that would show you HRV as you worked out. That doesn’t seem to exist in the profile views for Vantage. Neither do simple things like “Last Automatic Lap” views etc…..
If you do the orthostatic test in the morning then you can get a snapshot of HRV.
Thanks for the info! I have an old Polar with HRV but it’s outdated . My Garmin is getting a little old and may just go for another Garmin .
Unless I’m being dim ( likely) Polar seem to have confirmed that there will be no further software updates to the Vantage series. Which means that many of the athlete-based functionality found in the V800 will never make it to the Vantage. How dumb is that? A product released in 2014 has a better spec (let’s not count the ‘Blingy’ nonsense that masquerades as progress) than a product at a similar price point being sold as their top of the range offering in 2020. It’s like Apple releasing a top-end MacBook running on OS 7. It’s nuts. As well as commercially stupid. Or do they have a V800 Mark II waiting in the wings?
Where and when did they announce that there will be no further updates? :o
Agreed, no such announcement or anything like that has been said.
See below from Polar Twitter. Obviously there could be “unplanned” future updates but I think this is where the initial comment came from.
From Twitter
Polar
@PolarGlobal
·
Jan 3
5.0 is currently the final planned feature update for the Vantage. We’ll continue to maintain and support the devices of course. We’ll take a note of your wish.
This announcement really reads like there’s nothing more coming down.
I wish:
– ANT+ support
– broadcasting HR
– problems with Garmin cadence/speed sensor solved
– solve issues with battery – since 5.0 battery is worse than in 4.0/3.2
And of course I fail to understand how come V800 stuff is not there (even though M is my first watch).
Write it to Polar. As I read it they are tuning in to the user community so if enough wants a feature it will probably be made.
It was the same with the V800 as I understand it.
Not only have I previously written to them, I have called & spoken to them. I might as well have called my Mum for the good it did, & she’s 90. The basic stuff like displaying time of last pre-determined lap, repeat timer countdown, repeat stopwatch listings, etc., all basic features sought by athletes in training & racing, & all previously available on the V800, (and my previous 20 year old Polar) were not ported to the Vantage. Polar seemed bemused as to why an athlete would want the half dozen things I asked about. Never mind, at least with the new features they did give us we know whether or not we’ve had a good
nights sleep, and how steep the hill was in the middle of our latest race. That and the other fancy pants stuff they’ve added isn’t even worth discussing. They professed to wanting to offer a watch for serious athletes. Instead they produced a watch for the ‘all the gear, no idea’ brigade.
On their website. It’s quite clear. ‘5.0 is final planned feature upgrade.’ No ambiguity there.
So What on Earth made you choose a Vantage over a V800 if you think the feature set of the Vantage is garbage?
I have the V800 and I got the Vantage because I wanted the new features.
If you don’t then it is beyond me why you would want to disappoint yourself when you can buy a used V800 for 80$.
Set aside if we disagree on whether Polar closed the update circle for the Vantage series or not, the smart choice for you is to get the product that fits your wishes. Always.
It is not smart to buy something that you already decided you didn’t like.
I can only talk for me, but it wasn’t clear at time of purchase that the Vantage either wouldn’t have, or that Polar wouldn’t bother to port across simple features that an athlete would need over the life of the product e.g. lap views etc. Previously, Polar had been pretty good at supporting the V800 until there was a replacement (e.g. Stryd support) so I think it was reasonable to presume that the same might hold true for Vantage. And I bought the Vantage because my V800 buttons had stopped functioning reliably, so I either had to jump ship or move to the new platform. It was clear at time of purchase that Vantage V was severely lacking features compared to V800 or the competition, but that Polar had a roadmap to bring those features and enhancements to it. The “enhancements to existing features” was a clear part of their roadmap.
If 5.0 really is the last feature upgrade, then it’s beyond baffling that Polar presume to market this watch to the semi-serious athlete.
I’m sat here hoping that they do indeed have further releases to come that bring back some of the core functions that were on V800, and that they just won’t announce the plan ahead of time.
I didn’t buy it. I’d been awaiting sensible feature updates before doing so. My V800 still works, for now, although it has damage to the screen after a fall in a cross country race. I wanted the Vantage to work because it’s lighter, it’s a better looking watch that I could have worn as a non-sport daily use watch, & because eventually my V800 will die. I’ve been loyal to Polar for 20+ years & I like Polar Flow. But I think they’ve list their way, all for the sake of a few software tweaks, whilst they chase the gadget loving customer
Just go get a used V800. I have à Vantage V and I love it for cross country skiing. I also have a V800 and 99% of the time I don’t use the lacking features. I do use the new features 100% of the time. So maybe Polar actually did listen to some of their athletes. So maybe you should actually try it??
I do not see much difference in gps accuracies between the Vantage V and V800.
Since you can get a V800 for next to nothing then just get both. Then you will see if Polar follows up on updates.
Just go get a used V800. I have à Vantage V and I love it for cross country skiing. I also have a V800 and 99% of the time I don’t use the lacking features. I do use the new features 100% of the time. So maybe Polar actually did listen to some of their athletes. So maybe you should actually try it????
I do not see much differences in gps accuracies between the Vantage V and V800.
Since you can get a V800 for next to nothing then just get both. Then you will see if Polar follows up on updates.
Love Polar products. My last acquisition is a Vantage V.
I tried to jog a pre saved route and the watch asked me to calibrate the compass. I followed the instructions (wave the watch in a fig 8). I tried all fig.8 i could but the watch did not finished such calibration. What did I do wrong way?What should I do?
Should I buy the Garmin Swim 2 or a Polar Vantage M? Will be grateful advice!
I’m wondering if any major wearables vendor issued patches for recent major Bluetooth bugs (Polar didn’t).
There were patches for Android, Linux, Windows etc.
What takes them so long?
I would like to know if the Polar Vantage V could have “payment” as a new feature. Is it a possibility?
And I wonder if it could also be a new feature that the Vantage controls the music of the mobile.
Thanks in advance!
I don’t think so… The Vantage V is a dedicated training watch, not a smart watch as such.
Yes, but Garmin Fenix 5 and on are also training watches and have these features that are really convenient. Going out running and knowing that you can listen music without your mobile or stop some place and buy water with your wrist is a plus. But I agree with you, I don´t think so… who knows.
Realistically, no, there’s virtually no chance for Polar to add that. The reasons are two-fold.
A) First, they’d have to have the NFC related hardware inside. I’ve heard no rumors that they do. But that’s the easy part. Likely, silly easy in comparison to the hard part.
B) Next, they’d have to put in place a payment processing system. This is incredibly difficult. And the only way to get banks onboard is if you’re massive – Apple, Samsung, Fitbit, Google, and Garmin. That’s actually about the only ones at scale. And it takes many years to get there.
Now, Polar could theoretically partner with a company that does that, but I haven’t heard of any major players on the market that offer that to others these days. FitPay was a company that Garmin used for all their stuff, but it looks like that has gone from being a separate 3rd party company, to one that now redirects to Garmin’s site. NXT-ID owns FitPay, but I’ve gotta wonder at this point if there’s something more than that. EIther way, point being Polar is SOL here unless they’ve got some cards up their sleeves to break into the market, primarily on the bank relationship standpoint.
There’s another factor…. Polar can’t even get Last Lap views on the Vantage, so who thinks they could realistically accomplish payments…??
Hi guys, does anyone is using cycling power meter (Inpeak or Stages) with their Vantage? Does it work ok? Does it work together with the chest strap? I’m asking because it is BT and as far as I’m aware you can only connect one BT device at the time? The reason I’m asking this: I love Polar Flow and my Vantage M – but because I’m more of the cyclist than a runner I was going to buy Garmin Edge 530 – but the will loose my Polar Flow data (full synchro isn’t possible). I also have heard rumours that perhaps Polar will release V660 Cycling computer – so maybe it is worth waiting for it….
If you buy the H10 strap you can have 1 x BT connection to Vantage and one BT connection to another device.
You also could enable the ANT+ connection to connect with any Garmin device.
Hi and thanks for quick replay. I actually asked if I could use power meter and chest strap at the same time with my vantage M?
I use multiple BT devices with Vantage V. See no reason why you can’t use with the M. I have PowerTap pedals connected via BT to Vantage and H10 or a Scosche HR strap. Also use the Tacx Neo with Vantage and HR strap – both connected via BT.
When running I have Stryd via BT as well as H10.
For cycling I use Bluetooth to connect to Vantage (pedals and HR) and also use the ANT+ connection (pedals and HR) to connect with Edge device. Vantage is very poor for collecting data from power devices e.g. limited data.
Hi Kam,
I bought Garmin speed/cadence sensors to use with my M, and I can tell you speed sensor is not working (it shows low speed all the time rendering it unusable). It pairs ok, but it’s not fully functional.
As for connecting H10 to M and other devices, it’s all good (I use it all the time).
Being a big IoT and fan of wearable devices I follow all updates in this industry. Wearables are the new future. Smartphones are just the beginning. Just like how computer evolved from big enough to fill your room to small enough to fill your palm, in future all your needs will be taken care of by IoT and wearable devices.
Thank you for the information you provide, it helped me a lot! it’s great .
I’ve been breaststroke swimming for 1km with my M every day for past ten days improving my non-existent form. Everytime my training data synced to Strava adds in 2-3 minutes time(?). I opened a support ticket to both Polar and Strava but nobod is replying in days. Polar is terribly slow as always even to send a ticket accepting mail, let alone to send any reply, whereas Strava support isn’t replying at all. So much to say about these companies, I think Garmin would reply sooner with their outage still going . Did anyone have similar issues?
I set up a training plan with polar flow and did a sync with my Vantage V.
Now I’m wondering were to find the trainings?
At the V800 they were clearly located in the training menu together with the previous ones.
Am I the only one who misses the calendar?
Polar ignite GPS watch is my best choice. Thanks for sharing this.
Please see #249 here: link to dcrainmaker.com
. There is a big issue with the autopause since the last update. Actually, it seems that the GPS, sometimes, is unable to restart all alone
Polar Flow Web Service
• When will it be possible to create a training target in Polar Flow with Power based phases besides duration and distance for Vantage V users?
• When will it be possible to export multiple TCX files at the same time, by selecting several training sessions and export it?
Polar Vantage V
• When will it be possible to select a training at the watch, scheduled another for another day to do it earlier, repeat it or catch up with the plan? Like with the calendar function in the V800.
• When will it be possible to enable the training reminder for duration, used kcal and time? Like it was in the V800.
• When does the navigation function automatically recognizes that you are on the way back and ask you if you would like to reverse the track? Like it was in the V800.
You forgot full Stryd metric support!
DC can the Polar Vantage M let you install gear to track mileage and use?
Running mode – shoes?
Cycling- bikes?