Hello, hello!  Today, we have a guest blogger (kind of… technically, I wrote it, but I did so from someone else’s point of view at their request).  Normally, I wouldn’t post something so far outside of the realm of writing or crippleness, but it’s for my dad, Gary.  Say hi to Dad!  Anyway, he enlisted me to write a review of the heart monitor and exercise app he recently started using.  So, here are his issues, written out by me.

The Polar H10 and Polar Beat App

The Polar H10 heart rate monitor paired with the Polar Beat training app is a fabulous combination if you’re a technophile and exercising/training is a major part of your life, but what about everyone else?  What about the people who just want to track their exercise because their doctor said to lose a few pounds and to work some cardio into their schedules?  What about the people who aren’t techno-savvy and just want to jump on the treadmill without having to mess with an app on their phone both before AND after a workout, but still want to track their progress?  Honestly, the Polar H10 and Beat App aren’t designed with everyday people in mind, so if you’re not interested in becoming a hardcore workout enthusiast, save your money.  They aren’t worth the $100.

One of the features of the H10 that Polar touts on its website is the ability to connect to gym equipment (treadmills, ellipticals, etc.) via bluetooth.  As someone who admittedly doesn’t know much about computers and data transfer, I mistakenly believed that this meant the heart monitor and my treadmill would share information in order to provide me with the best exercise summation possible.  Unfortunately, after my first workout, I noticed that the Beat App didn’t track my distance or my pace (both things that my treadmill tracks).  I learned from Polar’s customer service that the H10 doesn’t sync data from the treadmill to the Beat App and the app can’t track distance and pace without the phone’s GPS (which is useless for indoor exercise).  In other words, the H10 gave me the same information my H1 gave me.  It was an extremely disappointing revelation.

At first, I thought maybe I had just pulled my own ideas of what the H10 should do out of thin air.  But then I reviewed Polar’s advertisements for the H10 and Beat App.  While they don’t technically say they can track distance and speed, the advertisements do imply that they can.  On the website, there’s a picture of the open app nestled behind the H10 strap.  The app is set to “running” and the one visible completed exercise routine lists duration and, underneath that, kilometers traveled.  Granted, the completed exercise is “mountain biking,” but a quick glance (which is what ads rely on) implies distance tracking.  Then, there’s the video of the “crossfit” training that gives you a glimpse of the Beat App in action.  There’s a spot for distance on the screen, which I picked up as I watched the video, but the screen disappears before the brain can register that the distance is 0, unless you pause it and really study the screen.  It’s not technically false advertising, but it is highly misleading.

Because of the lack of distance and pace information, my daughter (she’s the techno-savvy one in the family) has to manually input my information.  This would be fine, but once she inputs a new training result, she has to delete the entry from the heart monitor so that I don’t have multiple workouts listed and skewing my data.  That means I lose the actual tracking of my heartbeat anyway.  If it were possible to edit/add data to a completed session, it would make life much easier.

Along with all of these issues, there’s also the fact that the connection between the Beat App and the H10 is iffy at best.  I’ve used the strap and app six times now and twice the app informed me that I had no training sessions stored on the monitor after I finished my cardio workout.  The first time, I chalked it up to me making a mistake during the startup, but then it worked fine for a few days before saying that I had no sessions once again.  I know I did everything properly that second time.  Needless to say, I was more than a little peeved that day.

Speaking of the H10’s session storing capabilities, I find it really odd that the strap supposedly holds up to 30 hours of information, but will only store one training session.  I don’t know anyone who trains for 30 hours.  Maybe in future incarnations of the heart monitor Polar could replace some of that useless storage power by figuring out how to transfer data from gym equipment to the Beat App instead.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not someone who buys something without doing as much research as possible, then complains when things don’t meet my unrealistic expectations.  I tried to find out everything I could about the H10 before I bought it, but there is very little information available.  I’m a larger man, so I didn’t want to buy it only to find out the strap didn’t fit me.  It took me three different Google searches to find something as simple as measurements for the strap.  Finding reliable information about the actual abilities and limitations of the H10 and Beat App was virtually impossible.

Despite the lack of information, I went ahead and purchased the H10 and downloaded the Beat App.  Why?  Because I’ve owned three Polar watches as well as the H1 and have never had issues with the brand in the past.  I trusted that the H10 was an improvement over the H1 and that it would do what the advertisements implied.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t meet my needs or my expectations.

Like I said, if you’re super into working out and you want to keep track of your heartbeat and burned calories (but nothing else), the H10 and Beat App are perfect for you.  If you’re just looking for an easy way to track your exercise while you lose a few pounds, I suggest just sticking with a fitness watch or something like that.