Polar Beat: Running & Fitness Reviews

by Natcoukoulis

I’ve used this heart rate monitor and app for years. I’ve replaced the battery, always wet the electrodes, have my phone 3 feet away from me, and it constantly disconnects. PolarBeat UX feels 10 years old, and I find myself having to Google things to find what I need in PolarBeat . Using both these things is so frustrating that I went to repurchase a chest strap and monitor, and discovered it was somewhere around $80, when it performs like something that is $15. I’m honestly better off just guessing my calorie count burned, because of how inaccurate this thing is. I’m a woman, so when I try to wear the strap in the correct spot, it pushes against my sports bra. Rolling up the bottom of my sports bra didn’t seem to help either. I’m writing this review so that you can find another way to track your heart rate during workouts instead of using this product and app that are extremely frustrating to use.

by Jenyblaze

I’ve used PolarBeat for years and it only gets worse and worse. It never warns you of the battery is going low so when you go to your workout and it won’t work, it’s because the battery is dead! So now you can’t monitor your heart or see calories burned.
When it does work, it may lose connected when your standing right next to it and then when you finish your workout, you see no line or a long flat line at the bottom. Again, this is after you start it and make sure it’s connected. It just disconnects. I shouldn’t have to stop my workout to check on it and make sure it’s working. It should just work!
I’m just entirely too sick of PolarBeat. I keep buying the upgraded Bluetooth monitors they put out, for a hundred dollars, so I guess the joke is on me.
I wish you worked better Polar! I’ve been a loyal user for 8 years and now I’m just over you
GET IT TOGETHER!

by StarvingNYCDilettante

A stable and well-debugged app that syncs well with Strava, which is appreciated, but the display shows too much information at the expense of knowing your current heart rate at a quick glance. The heart rate is not even the most prominent number! Polar is all about HEART RATE, correct? I suggest a home screen that shows nothing but current heart rate, in BIG numbers, color-coded by training zone, and then let the user swipe left to see the other stuff. I do not want to hunt through all this information when I am suffering on a climb and need to immediately back off when I’m overworking. Ditto for the voice guide: make it more useful for the serious athlete: the user must be able to set his own minimum/maximum heart rates for a workout, and have the voice guide alert him when he is above or below them. Again, it is critical to be alerted quickly, so as not to overwork. That is the principal reason athletes use heart rate. We don’t want to hear “you are improving fitness,” for crying out loud! We want to hear “ping! You are over 160!” I get the feeling PolarBeat wasn’t even designed by/for serious athletes. Give the data geeks what they seem to want, but keep the home display and voice alerts SIMPLE. If it had the features I ask for above, I would give it five stars.

by Neretinus

Pairing can be an issue when Polar H10’s battery is replaced, and the pairing process is confusing. PolarBeat requests BT connection, and then the iPhone does, too. So, the device appears to be connected to both. It’s confusing because you don’t know to which device you are connected first, which is vital if you want to connect H10 to PolarBeat and an external equipment, such as Bowflex trainer. So, if you are already connected to the trainer, and then you want to connect to the second (the maximum) device, it gets infuriating to determine to which system (that is, iOS or Polar app) you are going to be connected. So you’ll just have to fiddle a lot with all those switches — turning on/off Bluetooth, unpairing H10, restarting the devices.
Also, there’s still no native iPad polar app.
Lastly, PolarBeat is vertical only. Which is ok, but then, the provided colored chart at the bottom is too small to be useful. So, viewing it in a landscape mode would be great.

by Joeleandrews

So I’ve had the Polar H10 for around a year. I mainly run with some biking thrown in. The occasional Spartan Race is also in the mix for some save to sensor runs.

One of my biggest complaints is that the H10 will not write to the exercise ring on my Apple Watch. This means I have to start an exercise on my watch via Apple workout or my Nike run app AND also start it on the Polar app if I hope to close my rings. I figure this is an Apple restriction but it would be nice if there were some certification program to allow additional hardware to write to Apple’s exercise ring.

My next biggest complaint stems from the latest update and voice prompts. I can no longer hear the voice prompts The volume is very low and the computerized voice is very difficult to hear. While in exercise I have to bump up the volume and always miss the first part of the voice prompt and then I have to lower it way down because at that point my music is very loud. Please bring back the other voice prompt or give us a choice. It would be nice if I could control the volume of the voice prompts independent of the phone/music volume.

Please give me splits. I love that the voice prompt gives me splits, but now especially since I cant hear them I want to see mile splits for my biking and my runs in the final overview.

This has the potential to be a great product but so far keeps falling short.

by Mcogs666

I think PolarBeat has some serious potential, but it needs work. I think the info it provides is great, and tops what the Apple Watch workout app provides. The thing is, there are some major downfalls when being used with the Apple Watch. The first problem is when the screen isn’t active for more than a few seconds, PolarBeat closes and most be reopened to view data during a workout. This is pretty frustrating and would be much nicer if all I had to do was glance at my watch to see the data. The second problem I’m running into is PolarBeat doesn’t fully transmit data to the Apple Watch activity app. For example, it shows that my active calories were counted, but it does not add to the daily total. This is frustrating because even with an hour workout logged with polar beat, I’m not achieving my activity goal for the day. These two problems have lead me to stop using PolarBeat altogether. If those issues were resolved, this would be my go/to 5 star app.

by No Longer Emma's Robot !

1. Any simple BT headphones will link to my iPhone—minimal effort, just does. NOT w the initial connect w the H7. Required hard reboot of phone AFTER downloading Pilar app, and registering. THEN remove battery and reinsert on polar chest piece. THEN it will connect

2. This IS not detailed in the support on the website. I just played around w it until I figured it out. I DID blow about ten minutes on the website trying to troubleshoot however. Thanks for that... polar IT.

3. Call for support—“sorry, wait times are longer than you have set aside to waste in the phone service queue”. I hung up after about 8 minutes or so.

4. Polar bear—while running w PolarBeat track my you cannot pause it to quick change the voice prompt menu. It requires you end the workout to do so. Really there are other apps that I prefer to run in parallel to polar beat for my run/training data tracking and prompts BECAUSE the polar app is just not competitive w the other apps out there. Needs more data crunching ability and more flexibility—just more whistles and bells.

5. BUT...the H7 does what it supposed to do—track HR very well. That’s why I bought it and so I am not upset. MAYBE though—since apparently polar doesn’t want to put a live person I the phone for feedback—they will read this and consider polishing the product. It could be a very robust product—it just needs a little work on the rough edges.

by Ronofpa

I have Polar Beat on my iphone which is mounted to my bicycles handlebars and paired with an H10 chest-strap. I have over 30 hours of use wth this combo.
This does a great job of acquiring accurate heartrate date as well as GPS tracking and speed data . I’ve not had a single dropout. The data summary is great too. My concerns however have to do with the display.
In the real world, biking in bright sunshine any text other than white on a dark background is not visible. It is hugely annoying when my heartrate goes very high, ,and that’s when I really want to know what it is , the text transitions to red and i can no longer see it. Yes I have my iphone on max brightness.
Additionally the hearate graph vs time shows plotted data in red . Not visible outdoors! Please update PolarBeat to fix this basic flaw.
Lastly a feature that i think is essential for training is an alarm to signal when heartrate goes outside a selected range. Many watches have this , why not PolarBeat ? Oh, and make the alarm volume controllable so it can be made loud enough to be heard in a real world outdoor biking environment. Many watch alarms are not nearly loud enough.
Thanks for your attention. Regards.

by Chackbay

PolarBeat is easy to use. The display is well laid out. I especially like that PolarBeat keeps the iPhone awake which is great for treadmills and other indoor workouts, and you can lock the iPhone manually which is good when in a pocket while lifting weights or jogging outside. There are a lot of sport profiles to help organize your workouts. Inexplicably though while there are profiles for obscure activities like squash, floorball, and Finnish baseball (kudos on that), there are no specific profiles for very common gym activities like elliptical and stair climber. It would be nice to be able to name custom profiles. My old Polar/hr watch allowed you to set an upper/lower limit and you’d get alarms for going out of range. I’d like to see something similar in PolarBeat . Say I want to exercise in the 145 to 155 bpm range I’d like to be able to set that range and then PolarBeat voice coach would tell me to speed up or slow down (that could kick in after a warm up period getting up to range). That functionality would be especially useful when doing certain activities like boxing (heavy bag punching) where you are wearing gloves and the phone is not immediately nearby. Overall PolarBeat is good and provides use info and feedback to effectively train.

by AguasCalientes

I use a Polar heart rate monitor (“HRM”) to track my workouts’ intensity and calorie burn. I transitioned to Polar after my 5-year old Suunto HRM wouldn’t consistently connect to the MovesCount app and frequently dropped the signal mid-workout.

The Polar HRM consistently connects to PolarBeat and, after 1 month, only lost signal once (I’m not sure why—signal interference, maybe).

PolarBeat display is easy to start a workout, read, and add on optional “upgrades, ” which I have not explored.

PolarBeat shows lots of information, and everything I want: heart rate (including a graph of heart rate over time of the work out), duration of the workout, calorie burn and % fat burn.

PolarBeat could be improved by taking some cues from the Suunto Movescount app: The HRM is pretty small, and there’s no estimated EPOC. A big improvement would be to:

- Arrange the info so the upper part has one large middle number display, and smaller numbers in each corner. Each display should then allow you to touch & hold to customize what the display is showing in that area. This would allow each user to pick what to display most prominently, and where to arrange the other info. Suunto’s Movescount is a good model for an excellent user interface (Movescount is not compatible with Polar’s HRM).

- HRM large and in the middle

- Add EPOC and training effect

by Dale XP

App is great, one feature I wish they would add is if you accidentally closed your session on PolarBeat while in use and in the middle of a work out, that you would have the option to open/rejoin that same session instead of it automatically closing and having to start a brand new session. I have time and time again cleared PolarBeat from my phone, accidentally swiped up, and then can’t get back into that session and have to start a new on. It would be nice if after the accidental swipe up, if the user goes right back into PolarBeat , a box popped up asking if you wanted to go back into that session or start a new one; or you could click on the session you accidentally closed out and had an option to rejoin that session. Just a thought

by Amunnn

I love this polar bear sensor. It gives me accurate data (I’ve tested against other sensors) and it’s pretty easy to use. I am a competitive swimmer and I’ve started to use the goggle attachment. It’s somewhat irritating with a cap on, but I can deal with it. The issue I have is with recording workout data. I turn the device on, press the button twice (initiating the recording function) and I’m all set. When I finish my workout, I press and hold the button down until I know the device is turned off. At this point the data should be recorded on the device. Sometimes however, I will follow the above steps and when I turn the device on and open PolarBeat , there is no data from the workout - as in, PolarBeat and the device did not sync. I notice that the device syncs with PolarBeat fine most of the time, but I think the water exposure must mess with the button and cause it not to register when I do my final press of it. It is VERY frustrating because I look forward to analyzing my swim data afterwards, and when it’s not there, you can imagine that I feel like it was somewhat of a waste. Besides this problem which to me is major and to some may seem minor, I love the device very much!

by CeciTigre

about the capabilities, functions, features, abilities and awesomeness of the POLAR H10 heart monitor. I wear it for every training session, workout, to track what, who, where I become stressed and how severely stressed I become so I can immediately start bringing my heart rate and breathing down. My doctors are thrilled I wear the chest Polar Heart Monitor to workout and to monitor those stress triggers so I can identify stressors and manage them. I’ve had chest strap Polar Heart Monitors since I started working out about 30 years ago and I’ve always trusted them and used them religiously as I use the H10. I love it!

by Stevedw52

Just received the H-10 chest strap HRM today! Put it on this afternoon and wore it fir hours afterwards. I was at my office and not working out but, even still, I did not find the strap around my chest obtrusive in the slightest. My Apple Watch has the heart rate app but it is just an instantaneous measurement snd difficult to get when in the midst of vigorous exercise. PolarBeat built into the iPhone 8+ for heart rate is worthless when working out and getting my pulse up in to the lower to mid 100’s—simply displays noisy signal. It is great to finally be able to see my pile rate at all times! I was concerned when I was looking for an HRM whether to buy one of the upper arm units or this H-10. The reviewers had stated that the arm unit was more comfortable over time BUT not quite as accurate. That was THE selling pint for me. I am 68 y/o and I want to know what my pulse is, not just a variable number around it. As an anesthesiologist I have used light-based pulse oximetry for almost 30 years. The technology is good but not foolproof. An HRM with electrical activity as the measurement tool is definitely the most accurate. Again, I am very pleased. Will see what happens as time goes by.

by Pr071x

I like PolarBeat . It pairs instantly, and It tells me what I want to know.

I do wish the past workouts could be customized to show what data you want to see on the list without having to go into the workout- for example I’d rather see my calories burned than my heart rate for that session.

I also wish that it could be a bit more intelligent about what workouts I do. I’ve just been using PolarBeat for two different workouts, it’s the same two workouts, but I always have to search for them by typing out the word “rowing” and then select INDOOR, and then afterwards I always have to type out the word “walking” and be careful not no accidentally select “Nordic Walking.”

I’m boring. Sure. I do the same two workouts time after time. But couldn’t we have a “favorites” or something to that effect, so I don’t have to actually type out the whole word of the exercise I’m trying to do each and every time I do it? It seems to remember my last exercise, but I always alternate, so remembering the last thing I did isn’t any help to me.

by Atg78

This is great paired with the heart rate monitor. Personally, I use it to keep heart at max levels during workouts. It’ll let you know when you are slacking when you hear “ you are burning fat” ! Time to kick it back up. I would recommend for the people who don’t use your workout to walk around and talk more than they do lift a weight! Hold yourself accountable and this tool is great for it! Beginner to pro athletes ..
Also, if you want to make sure your progress and tracking is never lost. Get the polar flow app as well and you’ll always have your “ backup” for past exercises. Just my opinion of course and this obviously depends on how serious you are of goals and progress.

by Easyrider51

I have been using the Polar chest and watch heart rate monitors for the past 12 years for cycling and exercising. There was a period of 3 years when work and travel interrupted my daily/weekly routine and I could feel myself falling into poor health. I bought the H10 chest strap and kick started my regimen again. Polar has provided me with the information I need to stay healthy and evaluate my progress. I have reviewed my spreadsheet data and compared it to my previous data and can see where the lack of exercise has affected my health. It doesn’t have to be high tech in the training room, just high tech enough for me to see where I’ve been and get me to where I want to be. Thanks Polar for keeping it simple !!

by Sammy California

I took a few minutes before working out to explore PolarBeat . I discovered in PolarBeat Settings go to pairing then make sure you have “2 receiving BLE devices”selected. Once I adjusted this setting I have had no issues pairing with PolarBeat and my watch. 5 star app for sure.

I recently purchased the newest Bluetooth heart rate sensor from Polar the H10. The sensor easily pairs to my iPhone 11 iOS 13.3.1. The sensor also pairs nicely with the +10 year old treadmill and elliptical trainers at my local gym (Vince’s). Remarkably my +15 year old heart rate monitor watch even receives the signal from the new sensor. Pairing the sensor to the Beat App is an issue. I’ve updated PolarBeat to the newest version. I usually have to close PolarBeat and unpair the sensor multiple times before the sensor pairs with PolarBeat . I would love to give this 5 stars if the bug can be fixed.

by JBO MD

I began using one last century, and they have improved. I like the Polar system best but have used multiple other systems over the years. Early on I would get a different system each time I would but one, and I have generally had a system up at three different locations I live or work at. Currently I use a Polar 7, and a 10. I just gave my 9 to a good friend when visiting the UK for her to replace a wahoo I gave her several years ago. The ten slows remote(phone at home) recording when out on an activity, although I tend to keep my phone with me so I can be reached at any time.
The Polar’s are the most reliable and trouble free. I had used a different application because it was better at mapping the route, but the current Polar Application now has been upgraded to equal the best
The only thing on my wish list now would be for it to measure a heart rate recovery automatically when I end my activity. That is a pretty small point, and when I talk with my friends I tell them to go Polar, as I now do after trying multiple systems.

by SergieGmail

Great app. I’ve used a number with changing device popularity. I like this because it’s not too complicated to use especially when your workout is focus and not figuring out an app. It has all the functions and design that is simple and easy to find and use. This is the seller. Typically company feel the need to change the look and feel for whatever reason of progress but little to they understand the effects on the user. All we care about is the data and ease of use. Don’t change it too much. Add some AI aids perhaps but leave the fundamentals intake. Let your users dictate look and feel from demand metrics. Great app love using it.

by JohnErtekin

I love polar. But it goes through seasons where it works and those where it does not. Customer care has been spotty with them at best and they seem to push updates without testing accurately. Polar, this pairing issue has to be fixed. Please let us know in release that you have taken note of bugs and are working on a fix. Getting to the gym or slopes or wherever, Hoping to use your equipment only to find out that there is some sort of error is way worse than y’all beings transparent and letting us know issues have been reported and fixes are in the works. Please fix this and I will take my review down!!!

This is another update:

PolarBeat still drops the signal of the heart rate puck (Polar H10) batter is full. It show connected then I start my run and it has timed out mid run. I carry my phone on me during my run for tracking and now this. Also same happens when doing gymnastic workouts and it is always giving a dialogue to connect to Bluetooth even though it is currently syncing... well and then stopping until it is reset.

Polar how can we best learn of known bugs and fixes you push live? No one has replied to me in months. Please help.

by *ScottieB.*

A few months ago it worked great, now it constantly won’t start on my iPhone 8+ or my Apple Watch so I have to restart both devices when I’m trying to start my workout, so I have to stop, reboot everything and hope it works. Then when I finish my workout it is not transmitting the data correctly. It records everything from my heart rate monitor (H7) just fine, just not to the health app, this is extremely frustrating as a I’m in competitions for exercise goals, and I have to post and share my results and I can’t do that when it doesn’t transmit correctly. This may sound dramatic, but it is ruining my workouts, causing a ton of frustration and the worst part is I’ve paid a lot of money for all this equipment and premium plans for it not to work correctly, either refund my money or get your act together because this is unacceptable from a company like Polar.

by ASophusC

UPDATE: they updated the logo but still haven’t addressed the active calorie issue. Removing another star. Now having a new issue as well - it keeps asking me to pair my h10 when it has already been paired with PolarBeat . If I pair it again, it creates a new version of the h10 in my Bluetooth settings. If I hit cancel, everything works fine, but it’s annoying to have to hit cancel every time I open PolarBeat .

UPDATE: just noticed that the active calories (calories burned) does not show up in HealthKit. They show up in the individual exercise session data in HealthKit, but not in the aggregate for healthkit. Forums seem to indicate this started happening after an iOS update, so sounds like polar needs to update PolarBeat to account for this change. Taking another star off for this.

How can you have exercises like badminton, Nordic walking, and biathlon as options but NOT have jump rope? Minus one star for this.

Other than that, PolarBeat is solid and pairs automatically with my polar h10. The HealthKit integration is also a nice touch. In combination with elite HRV and sleep cycle I get a pretty good picture of how I am doing with regard to recovery after intense workouts.

by Qgozm

Since he last update a couple weeks ago PolarBeat ’s GPS sync never works when I start using. I also use it to sync with my heart rate monitor and I generally know how long it takes to run a mile, so I kinda just wing it when I run. And that’s only because I keep forgetting to find a new app until I get out to run. So I’m getting by, but it’s so glitchy I’m gonna drop it. And even more annoying is that it finally catches halfway thru the run so I have half-correct distance data. And now that I’ve deleted and readdded (attempting to fix) I lost all my old saved data (not a huge deal, but still nice to have). Anyway, this was a perfect app for my needs but I’m done now without some fix - and preferably one that will stick, not some multi step workaround I have to do every time I open it.

by Codywclark

I love my Polar H10 and think PolarBeat is an awesome idea for someone looking to track their training at a higher level. I use my HRM and PolarBeat literally every single day.

If you are within range of your Bluetooth advice that pairs with your HRM, PolarBeat performs flawlessly. However, when you choose to “save heart rate with sensor” and download to your device when the workout is complete, PolarBeat is buggy.

There are times where I save the training on my HRM and download it to my phone later, and it is fine — however, there are other times where I am unable to download the training to my phone when the HRM reconnects. This is especially true when you enable the option to connect your HRM to two different Bluetooth devices at the same time. Additionally, there are times where I am able to download the training onto my phone but it shows that the training was 0:00 long, 0 calories burned, 0 average heart rate, etc.

If Polar can fix the flaws that occur when you save a training to the sensor and download later, this would be a 5.0 star app — and I also wouldn’t mind being able to select “triathlon” as a sport option.

by Emma's Robot

1. Any simple BT headphones will link to my iPhone—minimal effort, just does. NOT w the initial connect w the H7. Required hard reboot of phone AFTER downloading Pilar app, and registering. THEN remove battery and reinsert on polar chest piece. THEN it will connect

2. This IS not detailed in the support on the website. I just played around w it until I figured it out. I DID blow about ten minutes on the website trying to troubleshoot however. Thanks for that... polar IT.

3. Call for support—“sorry, wait times are longer than you have set aside to waste in the phone service queue”. I hung up after about 8 minutes or so.

4. Polar bear—while running w PolarBeat track my you cannot pause it to quick change the voice prompt menu. It requires you end the workout to do so. Really there are other apps that I prefer to run in parallel to polar beat for my run/training data tracking and prompts BECAUSE the polar app is just not competitive w the other apps out there. Needs more data crunching ability and more flexibility—just more whistles and bells.

5. BUT...the H7 does what it supposed to do—track HR very well. That’s why I bought it and so I am not upset. MAYBE though—since apparently polar doesn’t want to put a live person I the phone for feedback—they will read this and consider polishing the product. It could be a very robust product—it just needs a little work on the rough edges.

by Nignug

I think PolarBeat has some serious potential, but it needs work. I think the info it provides is great, and tops what the Apple Watch workout app provides. The thing is, there are some major downfalls when being used with the Apple Watch. The first problem is when the screen isn’t active for more than a few seconds, PolarBeat closes and most be reopened to view data during a workout. This is pretty frustrating and would be much nicer if all I had to do was glance at my watch to see the data. The second problem I’m running into is PolarBeat doesn’t fully transmit data to the Apple Watch activity app. For example, it shows that my active calories were counted, but it does not add to the daily total. This is frustrating because even with an hour workout logged with polar beat, I’m not achieving my activity goal for the day. These two problems have lead me to stop using PolarBeat altogether. If those issues were resolved, this would be my go/to 5 star app.

by AttyKen

Went for a couple runs so far with PolarBeat and the Bluetooth stride device and I'm not blown away. I had been using the Adidas app with their Bluetooth stride device but had to drop it because they are discontinuing it after December 2017. Tried to use the polar device with MapMyRun (the Adidas stride device worked) and it would not work so then used the this app app.

The this app app does not have a feature to play music in PolarBeat like MapMyRun and it does not allow you to get voice guidance down to the quarter mile (.25). The intervals are only to the tenth of a mile (.1; .2; .3; etc.) I wish I could go back to the Adidas app but for now will give Polar a few more tries.

Ken in Miami