Polar FT7 Review: Simple and Reliable Heart Rate Monitor

Product Overview

If you are looking for a relatively simple gadget to track your heart rate and body performance statistics during a workout, you will probably end up quite impressed with this Polar FT7 review. While it does not track your bike/run route, speed or elevation, this heart rate monitor does a great job with heart-rate and calorie-burn related statistics, and is an ideal companion during gym or outdoor workouts.

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This training watch comes with a comfortable cloth chest strap, which monitors your heart rate. The range of statistics covered include your current heart rate, calories burnt, whether you are in a ‘fitness’ or ‘fat burn’ heart rate zone, and your overall workout statistics. At the end you can have a look at your average and maximum HR, the total calories you burned and the amount of time you spent in your target heart rate zone. The watch even gives you a weekly summary of your training accomplishments, including your number of workout sessions, total number of training hours and total calories burned.

The Polar FT7 heart rate monitor is up to 50 meters water resistant and is able to read swim session statistics as well. It comes with a backlight, a chronograph, regular time and date features, 2 time zone programs and several language options. The batteries of both the watch and the chest strap are user changeable. There is a 2-year warranty on the product.

Polar FT7 Review

The FT7 is certainly not one of the more advanced Polar models, but if your statistical objectives are simple, this watch-cum-heart rate monitor will make an ideal workout companion. It gives you complete body performance statistics, and it is reliable in all workout conditions. Whether you are hiking in the summers, sweating it out on your bike on a biting cold winter day, or working out in the gym, it will work just fine. Its underwater performance is less impressive, though.

The company mentions that the watch is 50m water resistant, but bear in mind that it also warns that the watch may not read signals from the heart rate monitor very accurately in heavily chlorinated pools and salty ocean water. This is quite true. There are generally minute-long phases in the pool when the monitor stops operating altogether, but then it comes back on. Naturally, you will not get very accurate workout statistics. In the sea, it does not operate at all.

There are a couple of very convenient features in this monitor. First of all, the cloth chest strap is actually comfortable. Wet it a little bit and you will not be irritated by it at all. At any rate, it is nothing like the hard plastic straps of before that had you feeling like you were about to step into a medical examination.

The other convenience is that it has user changeable batteries on the chest strap as well as the watch. So, you don’t need to go through the hassle of sending the product back to the manufacturer in case of battery trouble. All in all, most Polar FT7 reviews concur that this monitor is extremely reliable and offers great value for money.

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