Then I tried cycling. As a material publisher, I have a stationary bike in my basement. However, I was unable to use it for the bike fitness test because I did not have a third-party power meter. Okay, I thought. I can’t leave the house because I’m at home with the kids, but I’ll just move on to the treadmill to do the walking aptitude test, because again I’m a team editor and I also have a treadmill .
This did not work either, because the gait test has to be mapped to the outside. Well, I thought. I waited until my spouse got home, changed again, and left to start the race test. I ran three blocks down the street, keeping my heart rate within the warm-up parameters carefully prescribed by the Polar Pro, until I came to a traffic light. The clock informed me that the performance test had failed because I had to stop.
I began to wonder: who is this for, again? What kind of watch makes you travel, not only outside, but on a closed outdoor track, i Do you have a slightly obscure third-party sensor just for reference testing? I finally did the test, which took about 40 minutes and gave me a VO2 maximum score of 30. Of these, the only test the operation and whose results made sense to me was the one I lay on the floor.
Paper work
None of the features that Polar offers in this watch are especially new. We’ve seen software like FitSpark, which recommends different workouts, FuelWise to tell you when to eat and drink, and Training Load Pro, which acts as a Garmin Coach to tell you if your workouts are productive or exaggerated, in Polar watches previous.
To me, the newest aspect of the Pacer Pro was how puzzling its recommendations were, even compared to the previous Polar watches I’ve tried. For weeks, the clock told me every day that I risked a fatal injury while continuing to exercise. All the other fitness trackers, even Whoop, value me as a pretty fit person. Polar explained that Training Load Pro only takes into account the last 28 days of training sessions, so discrepancies can make it out; but I exercise pretty consistently. I guess these benchmarks were just for fun.
It was doubly puzzling because the metrics were comparable to my measurements of Apple Watch and Garmin. The Pacer Pro uses three separate satellite positioning systems and I didn’t notice any discrepancies in my previously mapped routes. With two follow-up activities a day for a month, I still have less than 7 days of battery life announced.
Photography: Polar
