Polar S625X Heart Rate Monitor Watch

Running Watch Reviews — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:55:21 +0000

The Polar S625X Heart Rate Monitor Watch ensures that you would be able training with the proper difficulty and intensity that is perfect for your body. With precise tools to measure performance and workout intensity; all kinds of athletes, from runners, tri-athletes and their coaches are ensured of accurate data.

The Polar S625X combined with the S1 foot pod has a whole host of features for you to gauge your training. You would be able to measure your total speed and distance, heart rate, your calorie count and of course the time of your runs during training. It can also recognize altitude and ascent of the geography for route profiling.

Other than these features, the Polar S625X also provide a variety of additional functions that can help people train better.The Polar S625X has training tools such as the OwnCal and Ownindex.

The Owncal feature shows your energy expenditure during one exercise session as well as your accumulated kilocalories during several exercise sessions. The OwnIndex feature will determine your fitness level, track your improvements, and provide motivation.

The Polar S625X also has the bundled Polar Precision Performance (PPP) 4.0 software to allow you to better assess your training data. Through this you can connect the Polar S625X to a computer and study just how good your runs are.

Other features include:

Displays your heart rate as beats per minute and percentage of maximum heart rate, average heart rate, and exercise duration
S1 foot pod shoe-mounted sensor that continually relays computed velocity and distance information to monitor
Runners’ data including total speed and distance, speed displayed in pace or kmph/mph
Wirelessly sends exercise data to PC via infrared connection
Allows you to set 5 exercise sets for interval training with HR target zones and recovery calculation
Records a complete file and five summary files of the exercises
Predicts your maximal oxygen uptake
Reduces possible interference from other heart rate monitors
Target heart rate zones with audible and visual alarm
UpLink feature enables download of exercise set from Polar web site
Large easy-to-read display with backlighting and split screen
24-hour clock with day/week indicator and stopwatch
1.5-year average battery life
Water resistant to 30 meters

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars SX625 some great aspects, some not so great aspects
I have been using this watch for about 2 years, mostly for training and for during trail ultramarathons. I have mixed feeling about this product. I had the opportunity to trade it in for another unit and decided to keep it. Part of the reason I kept it was that it took me some effort to figure out how to download the data using the IR device. I did not want to restart the process with the microphone/speaker system. The manual is poor. Let me comment separately on each component/feature.

Wrist unit: It is big and ugly, but you can see that from the photos. However, it sits comfortably on my wrist. For a while, I used a cheap Sigma HRM that slid down my wrist and chafed my skin. I have used my Polar in several 100 mile runs with good comfort. The display is great. It provides heart rate plus two configurable fields. These two fields can read time of day, total stopwatch time, lap time, elevation, total elevation gain, etc and are easily changed. The elevation features work quite well. The controls are easy to use but difficult to learn how to configure.

Chest strap: This is the most comfortable chest strap I have used. It does not slide or rub. If I wet it before putting it on, it always works right away. My old Sigma had problems with slipping and starting. The battery is easy to replace

Foot pod: The foot pod distance readings vary by about +/- 10% on the same route on different days. It seems to vary most with running speed. It goes through batteries rather quickly and has problems when the battery voltage drops just a little bit. It would not work with my rechargable batteries. I don’t use it. If accurate distance is important, I suggest looking at GPS units.

IR download device: I bought a cheap IR interface on ebay for about $7 including shipping. It works well.

Software: The software is clunky and difficult to use. The documentation is not helpful. It took me a rather long time to figure out how to download the data from the wrist unit. (Note that I am a highly trained engineer and natural nerd.) The software tries to upgrade everytime I run it. If the computer is not connected to the internet, the software throws errors. If I am connected to the internet, the upgrades always fail. Thus, I make sure to disconnect before starting the software. The graphs on the software are usable, but poor. If I really want to look at the data closely, I export it to another program.

I have not used the limits features or testing options

2 Stars Overpriced & User Hostile
This watch is very complicated to program and the user manual provides the absolute minimum of guidance. In other words, you are on your own as far as programming this watch for your individual exercise needs. You will have to waste a lot of time on every aspect of this watch from setup to regular usage. Even downloading data to the computer is a hit or miss challenge which works as often as it doesn’t. Also, this watch is very inconvenient for everyday usage b/c it has too many parts. It’s much more convenient to have a gps watch which eliminates the foot pod and leaves only the heart rate device as the one xtra thing u have to remember to put on. Additionally, it’s insanely overpriced for such an old and obsolete model. In fact, it costs more now than when I bought it years ago. Yes, years ago, that’s how long this model has been out. Lastly, I wish I could have my $ back!!!!

4 Stars Functional With A Few Significant Flaws
The Polar S625x Heart Rate Monitor Watch is a sophisticated piece of equipment that the manufacturer refers to as a “running/cycling computer”, and rightly so. It is a heart rate monitor, distance pedometer, altimeter, thermometer (max/min temp for a session), and chronograph. It calculates and displays running speed (min/mile or mile/hour) on-the-fly. It can be programmed to alert you with audible beeps if you fall below the target zone for heart rate or speed at selected intervals. I won’t get into the capabilities of this watch since the user manual is available for download at the Polar site. But I will mention a couple of drawbacks:

Complicated Programming

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Like many reviewers have pointed out, programming this watch is complicated. Although the user manual has a Road Map that shows how the hierarchical menus are laid out, it is hard to decipher what each cryptic menu title stands for, much less understand the functions it encompasses. Be prepared to spend hours studying the manual, which provides minimal information and instructions. Some features take a little figuring out by playing around with the watch.

Bad Software (Polar Pro Trainer)

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This is a big one. The software is slow and clunky. The calendar display refreshes and flickers with just about every mouse click – a real annoyance!

The usefulness of the software is limited to giving you a graphical plot of speed, altitude, and distance vs. time. The interpretation of the data is left entirely to you. Fair enough.

But the software doesn’t let you superimpose the graphs from multiple sessions, so you won’t be able to analyze how well you’ve performed in one session with respect to another and see how you’ve progressed or regressed.

It would be nice if they had included some analysis tools that help you gauge your performance and offer suggestions for improvement. The software is therefore little more than an exercise journal.

The software does have one redeeming feature: it lets you export your exercise data to a tab delimited data text file that you can simply drag and drop it into excel to see the tabulated data, which contains a column for time (increments of 5 or more seconds depending how frequent you’ve set the watch to take data points), distance, and altitude. From the data you can calculate the derived quantities such as speed and cumulative distance traveled at each instance in time. I export my data for some of my sessions so I can plot and superimpose several sessions on a graph to see how I’ve progressed.

Looks

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The watch looks absolutely hideous! This is a minor point if all you’re concerned about is functionality.

Overpriced

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It’s way overpriced for such an antiquated albeit still-very-functional model. Again, a minor point if you’re looking for functionality and price is not a concern.

Alternative Technologies

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I considered getting an exercise watch with GPS but decided against it because 1) The GPS receiver takes time to lock on to satellites. 2) I use my exercise watch on my treadmill, so the GPS feature won’t work in monitoring distance. On the other hand, GPS-based watches give you a VERY accurate measurement of distance.

Now, I’m having second thoughts, having read some very positive reviews on a Garmin model, which is much easier on your pocketbook. It’s something you might want to look into too.

Conclusion

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In my judgment, the Polar S625X Heart Rate Monitor Watch is the best value of all the high-end models that Polar makes. It even has a couple of features that models that cost more than twice as much do not have. For example, it has an altimeter, which I find very handy on hikes, and which Polar has decided to omit from some of the high end models. Visit the Polar site to see a side by side comparison of all its models.

Bottom line: unless you can get past the non-intuitive user interface and bad aesthetics of the Polar S625X Heart Rate Monitor Watch, AND you have more sophisticated software that can help you better analyze your performance (isn’t that the whole point of getting an exercise watch?), you will do well to look at other alternatives.

4 Stars great device but overwhelming at times
Polar S625X Heart Rate Monitor Watch

This is a short but simple review . The device is amazing I have had it for almost two years and still have not figured it out fully and even so I know it has helped me .

I am not a super athlete but some that is coming back from having a stent put in and I had a real fear about going back to workout . the Polar hash helped me track my fitness level and in doing so I have been able to create my own workouts based on HR so that I can live a full and healthy life.

FOr those elite athletes that need all the bells ad whistles this is great but I can speak for the mature population that needs to stay healthy fit and also get to work this is a lifesaver .

I wish there were some better youtube videos to watch for this product but I finally got to know what I need to know and how to get it from the Polar .

This is an impartial motivator and guide for your training and that is what you want from something like this .

A definite buy . Just do not try to get all of the features down at one sitting .

1 Star Do not try to use with Vista
This is an incredible piece of equipment, when you have Xp or an earlier version of windows. Polar states it is compatible with Vista, but I assure you you will have serious compatiblility issues if you try, up to and including lock ups and data loss. I have used this device with XP and the transfer of data is super easy. The only drawback to the user interface is the initial frustration of learning how to select between cycling and running modes and then learning how to toggle between options while exercising. I have owned much stronger HRM’s, but this one, although sluggish, works pretty well.

In the end. If you have Vista, you will pay a high price for a device and add ons for your device, spend hours trying to figure out why it just does not really work and then you will be stuck with a $500+ system that you can only use as data storage, without the benefit of data transfer or the nice software to track your progress.

Until Polar decides to step up and deal with the Vista issue, I would warn anyone against a Polar product.

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Running Watch Reviews » Infrared Connection

Polar S625X Heart Rate Monitor Watch

User Ratings and Reviews