For full disclosure purposes, I bought the Polar FT7 watch with my own money. I was not paid to write this review and all opinions of the product are my own.
Today I'm gonna be writing a review on the Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor that I bought a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully this review will prove useful to anyone that considering getting a Polar FT7 Heart Rate monitor or just a heart rate monitor in general.
This watch comes with a textile transmitter. The strap is really comfortable and when its worn, I can hardly feel that its there. It also has a coded heart rate transmission which means that it will avoid cross talk with other transmitters which is really useful if you're in the gym and someone has the same watch (like my boyfriend who bought the same Polar FT7 as me). This also means that the transmitter will also sync with the machines at the gym(not all, but most) this means that you wont have to constantly keep looking at the watch and will be able to read your heart rate from the machine.
The watch itself has some pretty nifty features which were the key selling point to me other than the price. The price of the Polar FT7 when I purchased the watch a couple of weeks ago was £65.99 which I thought was pretty good. If after reading the features you dont think it is worth it, there is the next model down (Polar FT4) for a smaller price.
The first feature is EnergyPointer. The EnergyPointer is a feature which tells you what the main effect of your training session is, whether this is fat burning or fitness improvement. It shows you when you are improving your fat burning or if you are improving your aerobic fitness. This feature has been great for me, seeing as I am still interested in fat burning, it has been a great help to see exactly when I am in the zone for fat burn and when I'm above or below this zone.
The next feature is the OwnCal. This is a calorie counter for your workouts. It calculates the number of calories that you have expended during your workout based on the settings that you provide when you setup the meter, your individual maximum heart rate and how hard you are training. I've found that the calorie counter seems to be pretty accurate for my workouts.
The watch has alot of measurement features including Heart Rate BPM / %. This is your heart rate and the watch will display your heart rate with BPM or as a percentage of your maximum heart rate.
The watch has an Automatic Age-based Target Zone which determines you heart rate target zone lmits automatically. At the moment, I have my watch set this automatically, however, this may not be too accurate, there is however the option to manually add your target zones instead of using the watch calculations.
The watch also has a Visual and Audio Alarm that can be enabled for HR-based target zones. When working out, you can define your target zones for a training session and the watch will give both a visual and audible alarm for when you are not in this zone. This feature can be pretty annoying when it is constantly bleeping whilst you are working out in the gym. I decided that it would be in the best interests of everyone in the gym if I just turned this feature off.
The watch is able to store up to 99 training files with summaries on the watch which can be helpful if you want to go back and see what you burnt at a particular point. It also has a totals and weekly history feature which are similar to each other. Totals includes your training data saved in the watch since the last time you reset the watch which will allow you to look at your training over a longer period of time. The weekly history is a similar feature and gives you a breakdown and summary of your workouts over that week.
Other features:
- The watch has a backlight so you are able to see your watch interface when you are in the dark.
- There is a low battery indicator on the watch and more importantly, the watch has user replaceable batteries (this was one of the big selling points, other Polar watches do not have user replaceable batteries and have to be sent back to polar to have the battery replaced. This would just be annoying so I'm glad that this watch has replaceable batteries.)
- The watch is water resistant up to 30m which means that the watch can be used when you are swimming as well which is a good feature to have (although i haven't tried this yet! but I've heard good things about it).
Summary:
- The watch was incredibly easy to setup, it had some basic settings such as sex, age, height, weight that were input into the watch. After this information has been entered, the watch is ready to use. Its as simple as that!
- The watch is quite affordable for the features that are on the watch (£65.99).
- The screen on the watch is large which means that the information is really easy to see and read.
- The strap that comes with the watch is very comfortable.
- Syncs with the machines at the gym which makes it easier for you to see your HR and what zone you are in.
Like I said, I've had this watch for a couple of weeks now and tbh, its the best fitness purchase I have made since I started getting fitter and healthier. I'm able to see what I'm burning in calories (which is helpful for when I'm tracking my calories and need to eat back exercise calories, look out for another post on this). I cant go to the gym without this, if i forget it, I HAVE to go back and get it. its become a staple gym piece for me.
