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completely fu*ked off with my polar

BritspinBritspin Posts: 1,655
This is of no help to you, but to share your pain I feel the same about my Garmin forerunner...18 months of use & the mode button fails, out of guarantee & I have to pay for repair/replace with reconditioned unit. This has not had heavy use I don't race with it on or use it every training session (my Polar I do both with & have had for years), the mode button has to be used & a 18month fail suggests a faulty button, but Garmin are adamant that I should just pay up & shut up.

Comments

  • I have one of the lower end Polar HRM watches and to be completelely honest it has been great.

    However... I also have one of their wireless hrm/cadence/cycle computers etc. No matter what I do the speed sensor only picks up around 50% of the time meaning I often have no idea how fast I am going and never have any idea how far I have been or what my average is. Having speed cadence hrm and average speed all on one screen is ideal, but it never works properly!

    Sorely tempted to take it off and re attach my trustly old Cat Eye
  • Jack HughesJack Hughes Posts: 1,262
    This isn't going to help much either, but:

    I switched from Polar to Garmin, largely because of the maintenance issue, but also price.

    I attempted to change my own battery in the Polar - it was more fiddly than I expected. It wasn't until some time later that I realised I had lost sound... not a great loss.

    While I'm generally pleased with the Garmin, the HRM is a bit erratic. It will often "oversample" and start showing double/triple readings. I assume it is software bugs rather than a transmitter issue. This does undermine it somewhat as a useful training tool (for example, my HRMax is about 185 - but on a descent on the bike, the Garmin had me at over 220 - It could have been that I am petrified of descending.. ).

    I'm very seriously considering a 310XT - but don't want to be an early adopter. The other brand that I am starting to seriously consider is Suunto (why do the Fins make the best HRMs), but this is also a lot more expensive than the Garmins.

    What I like about the polar is the ubiquity of third party support - i.e. the gym equipment, my Tacx Flow, all work the polar strap.
  • JulesJules Posts: 987
    Your potential for obtaining free stuff doesn't extend to a new one then?
  • okennyokenny Posts: 231
    I love my RS800CX....it works great on the bike and the foot pod is really fantastic....I'm glad I stayed away from the GPS thingy.

    But, the IRDA data transfer really is crap, in fairness, it should use bluetooth or something similar...for that price...
    I haven't bothered with it in the water, I have just left it on my bike and started the timer when I come out of T1. Usually it's easy to add your swim time and guess the T1 time....who looks at the watch during the swim anyway? And, I am usually at the swim start I am more worried about my position and not getting kicked in the face than starting my watch...

    I had however a LOt of problems with my old S625x - it just didn't pick up me heart rate reliably, I'd be running/cycling along and it would be showing zero....
    New chest sensors and sending it back to Polar twice didn't solve the issue either, it did my head in. I'm not sure why I bought a new Polar actually, probably 'cos the new 800 looked so cool.

    My RS800 does sometimes say that the wearlink battery is low, but when I look at the "product details" in the software it shows up as being full....I would however neither expect it to be full nor empty..suspicious.

    I want to buy a power meter next year, was thinking about the CS600 with Power, any opinions on that?
  • jonEjonE Posts: 1,113
    Again not going to help,but when I started running it was trainers,rugby kit,house key and out the door for a 15 mile run across the West Penine moors.Now its,route specific trainers,technical clothing,mobile,hrm,energy gels,money,gps,mp3 etc etc....where did it all go wrong?
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 335
    Garmin 301 - like training with a brick on your arm but it's never let me down - keep lookng at all the new, fancy ones and then bottle as either need loads of other gizmos or can't convince myself that I'd ever remember to switch it on in the water, breathing is a big enough challenge, and I will guarentee that I'd land up doing the bike and the run with a wetsuit attached to one arm :roll:
  • md6md6 Posts: 969
    wow that shows a company with real ambition to grow their market share. I was tempted to look at a polar, but i thought they were too expensive for what they are. Given that my garmin is gps which i think is great, saves having to use a foot pod etc to get speed distance pace etc. i think i'll stick to it, despite the 310 being quite large, i'd still rather have something which is all in one like that than the gps being on one bit, footpod and a watch all seperate - i know i'd loose something
  • chapperschappers Posts: 97
    made the mistake of upgrading my rs800 to rs800cx rather than spending the money on a different make. Polar changed the internals and I paid for bike speed and cadence sensors at the same time. My problem isn't with the use of the polar as a running or biking training aid (imo the running sensor is better than my Garmin 305 and don't have to worry that you'll lose satellite reception or wait around in the cold before a run while it aquires reception). I'm new to tri, but I'm finding that the polar is useless for races. For something that's billed as good for tri, it just isn't!

    HRM doesn't work in water and the sensor select order is run then bike then "none" (which I use for swim). Surely the sensible thing would be none-bike-run?!... This means you have to fiddle mid-transition/bike/run to get the correct sensor. Oh for a nice button combo that does "enter/exit T1 - auto select bike sensors" and "enter/exit T2 - auto select run sensors"... I'm no expert, but surely someone at polar/suunto/whoever has considered that maybe this would be a killer feature and have triathletes handing over their credit cards?

    When I find such a watch I'll consider getting one (I'm assuming it'll be mega expensive because it has this simple feature), but until then I'll battle with the polar.
  • Jack HughesJack Hughes Posts: 1,262
    chappers wrote:
    Oh for a nice button combo that does "enter/exit T1 - auto select bike sensors" and "enter/exit T2 - auto select run sensors"...
    That is one of the key features of the soon to be released Garmin 310 XT. Which is why so many of us are getting our collective knickers in a twist waiting for it.
  • [toPh][toPh] Posts: 244
    Conehead wrote:
    Hmmmmm - time to start using the jedi mind trick on someone at Garmin.......
    Group purchase discount maybe?

    Or they could be a club sponsor, free 310's for all members?
  • chapperschappers Posts: 97
    My problem with gps is the waiting around before it aquires reception. I have a 305 forerunner for fellrunning as I don't fancy losing the polar footpod in a bog. It's great when it gets going, though before a fellrunning i'm usually outside standing around enjoying the view anyway and reception is never a problem in the lakes

    The polar seems much more responsive at picking up run pace and unless I'm on a new route, I really don't need to see a map of my usual training run. The archaic infrared pc link is also a joke, which is a shame as the polar records a lot of interesting data.

    If the polar hrm worked under water, did footpod/bike speed sensor as well as gps (it's mostly there with this as gps is availble but with a separate sensor so not great for run and bike), had the magical transition button and had a USB interface I'd be a happy man. All the better if it counted pool laps for me. I don't ask for much

    Conehead, hopefully they'll listen and some of the features we all crave will start to creep into the watches.
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