Polar Beat: Running & Fitness 4+

It’s a great way to not miss out on recording your training. Also gives you one less excuse to “not exercise today because I can’t record it, it would be a wasted session” which has gone through my mind before.

Drawbacks is the phone needs to have a decent charge to complete the session.

The app doesn’t seem to draw much power. After 1 hr session I’d used around 20% of my battery but it’s best to leave your display off during sessions and only check a few times. The voice instructions/notifications play over the top of any music you might be listening to, automatically fading the music until the info is complete. A nice touch.

This app has many failings, principally

1) requires you to run with your phone. Most other apps (eg native apple, Strava) don’t

2) it goes into the background on Apple Watch, even using always on. You have to use the dock every time you want to check your run data.

3) it does not record altitude

It’s only good feature is that is shows your HR from your Polor HRM in real time during a run.

As an alternative to Beat, try the Apple workout app or strava etc and they log the polar HR without having to use the Polar apps - you just connect the Polar HRM via Bluetooth. But bear in mind Beat will stop working if you connect the HRM using Bluetooth.

However - a big “but” here - One thing Beat can do but the Mapmyrun etc don’t do is to show the polar HR on screen in real time during a run. If you experiment with power saving in the watch you’ll see that most other apps show the Apple HR during the run - even though they record the polar HR in the log.

So this leaves you with a choice

Bluetooth off - stuck with Beat

Bluetooth on - Beat stops working, you can only see the Apple HR as you run (polar HR still recorded in your log)

If this sounds odd, test it and see. I’m still searching for a running app that displays the Polar HR when you run and logs it and meets basic functional standards.

Apple and Polar blame each other. Based on. User experience I think the main issue here is Polar. They are really not in touch with the customer

Context: I don’t like wearing watches for sport or at any other time. Also I’m an enthusiastic endurance runner and I train using heart rate zones.

Polar beat is good for the following reasons:
- it will give you audio feedback on total distance, total time, split time and split heart rate.
- feedback is delivered in splits of 100 meters to 5km
- Audio feedback on the above metrics means you focus more on how you feel and less on the data (because the temptation to look at your wrist is absent) so you learn to feel what X pace at Y heart rate over Z km feels like. Helpful for sustained endurance running.
- data is sent to the polar flow app (for analysis) and to Strava. Also synchs with apple health.
- delivers a running index metric in lieu of VO2 max.
- not over burdened with “peacock” metrics.
- option to add notes to an activity.
- multiple activities

The not so good:
- Doesn’t track elevation gain. This is baffling given that all phones have a barometer and apps like Strava do track elevation gains
- notes in Polar Beat are saved over to Flow along with the rest of the data.