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— the fact is that I am in awe
of the Polar S710 heart rate monitor.
I have been dealing with heart rate
monitors for over a dozen years now. The first one I owned
was the size of a deck of cards strapped to the middle of
my chest. I have tried nearly every heart monitor ever made.
And I can tell you that I have never met a monitor with
as much class as the Polar S710. It is the king.
Why is the Polar S710 the best heart
monitor on the market:
1. Quality
I have tried heart monitors by every company large and small,
and I can honestly say that for the quality of the product,
manufacturing and engineering, ease of use and usefulness
in normal conditions, longevity, comfort, and everything
else, nobody beats the Polar S-series. In heart rate monitors,
everyone else is years behind Polar. The human factors design
is very good: once you understand their scheme, everything
becomes nicely predictable. Best of all, I can read it without
my glasses, even with sweat in my eyes.
2. Communications
With the two-way Infra-Red communication link, I finally
have what I have wanted all along. Polar put together a
really nice InfraRed communications layer that allowed me,
as a developer, to create the software that I, as a user,
have always wanted. It caused us here at PC Coach to completely
re-think the communications operations, but the result is
worth it. Now I can drop my S710 in front of the IR interface,
go to PC Coach, click one button, and all of the things
I want done are handled automatically:
- First it looks for any new workouts on the monitor that
have not been downloaded already; it downloads the heart
rate (and speed/cadence) right to my PC Coach calendar.
- Once that is successfully completed it (optionally) erases
them from the monitor, so my memory never gets full during
a workout.
- Next, if I'm following a training plan, it scans ahead
the next couple of weeks on my calendar, and loads definitions
for the upcoming workouts into the monitor.
- Finally, it gives me a one-click way to set the things
I may want to change for the next workout I'll do, like
turning the cycling features on or off, selecting which
bike I'll be riding, choosing a sampling rate, and other
useful features.
True, other models communicate both directions, but the
S710 ( and the S610 ) has the right set of com commands
that makes 'Really Smooth Integration' possible.
Life is good.
3. Storage of many
workouts.
For me, the biggest reason to look at the S710 instead of
the S410 or S510 is because it has enough memory, and well-managed
memory, that I can take off for a two-week trip and not
bring the laptop. When I get back, all my workouts and adventures
are faithfully stored and quickly dropped into PC Coach.
This is true even with all the cycling and altimeter features
turned on, which uses more memory. This is useful not just
for vacations, but for every weekend when I get a couple
of workouts in before getting back to the computer. The
S410 and S510 are really nice monitors, but they only store
one workout. This one feature makes the S710 ( or S610 if
you don't care about cycling or altimeter) worth the extra
money.
4. Altitude
I love looking at a graph of a really tough, hilly trail
that I have done, either running or on a mountain bike,
and seeing how my heart rate responded to the elevation
changes. I have also worn it skiing and climbing the Colorado
mountains, and that makes for some fun graphs. I skip the
chest strap sometimes; it's worth having along just for
the altitude graphs. It is accurate, and easy to calibrate.
On vacation to California this summer I calibrated the altimeter
to sea level ( standing right at the water's edge ) and
ran a hilly course, coming back to the shore an hour later,
and it was again pegged at 0 altitude. I have seen small
amounts of drift over the course of a whole afternoon of
skiing at 11,000 feet, but not enough to misdirect me if
I were orienteering or route finding with a map and compass.
Polar markets the S710 as a heart monitor that also records
altitude. The S710 is also a great altimeter that happens
to record heart rate.
5. Cycling Data
It was surprisingly easy to set up my bike to get some good
speed, distance, and cadence data within 1% accuracy. I
just threw on those little sensors, entered a wheel dimension,
and it all began to play together. Back at the computer,
there was all of that data, shown along with the heart rate
and altitude. I also calibrated it to 0.01% accuracy, but
that was harder. The process involved riding around a track,
and requires constant tire pressure and rider weight from
one ride to the next. I'll describe this in a different
article.
It hasn't received much press yet, due
to a slow start, but the new power feature that can be purchased
as an add-on to the S710 might forever change the way cyclists
and triathletes train. I plan to start experimenting with
the Power option next, so watch for those results in a later
newsletter. But if accurate power information from a road
or trail ride is now to be affordable, things could get
very interesting.
Long live the new king:
The S710 is not the least expensive monitor, but it continues
the trend of increasing bang for the buck. At a little below
$300, it is packed with so much of what I want in a monitor
that it is definitely a price breakthrough. Before this,
just getting an altimeter that would store and download
the altitude data could cost three times that amount.
A Great little brother: If the
$269.95 price tag of the S710 is still too high, check out
its younger brother, the S510. It has all the cycling features
(speed, distance, cadence) and many other features of the
S710 (it lacks the altimiter and the multiple workout storage),
but is a great value at $219.95.
I know that somewhere in my future,
there will be a wrist mounted device that adds a GPS, mobile
phone, MP3 player, and PDA to the current S710 features.
But if that takes a few years, I'll happily use my S710
/ PC Coach system in the meantime.
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