I'm sitting at the coffee shop, and a friend walks up and says he wants a new heart monitor, but he has searched the web and gotten totally confused about what to buy. I know he cycles and runs. "Are you kidding?" I ask. "The Polar S625X is a slam-dunk for you! How could there be any doubt?" He claims that it's hard to read a list of features and know the real truth about this model or that. He wants to hear from me, since I've owned several models, and I know what it is like to use them.

He came to the right person. I have owned every significant model of Polar HRM in the past ten years, as well as competing models from other manufacturers. I'm a junkie, I admit, but it puts me in a good position to have the kind of information my friend needed.

It's also my job. As the 'training technology expert' here at PC Coach, I have written several articles that describe the features of the S625X and compare it to other models.

Read a description of Polar S625X features here

Read a comparison of the Polar S625X, S725, and S720i here

For the S625X, Polar gathered up all of the best of their technology into one package, plus something truly exciting and new.

The S625X sits at the top of the line, along with the S720 and S725, in terms of memory, features, and PC communications.

Some of the high-end features found in the S625X relate to convenience:
- enough memory to store a lot of workouts
- quick, trouble-free IR upload and download to the PC

Other features relate to accurate monitoring of your training:
- recording on 5, 15, or 60 second intervals
- a lot of data possibilities including:
- heart rate
- altitude and temperature
- running speed and distance
- cycling speed and distance, cadence, power

Yes, that's right, in case you haven't heard - you get running speed and distance from the S625X. That's the new and exciting part, and I'll explore that more in the story below.

So what is it like to own the S625X in real life, and why is it the best choice for my friend? Here is day one in the life:

My new Polar S625X arrived. It looks and feels ruggedly built. It is based on the large format case like the S720i and S725X. This gives Polar enough space for a large display (I can read all three lines on the display with sweat dripping in my eyes, and without my glasses). The watch is big enough that I might not wear it around as my everyday watch, but I could. It is lighter than it looks, and the flat black case exudes a quiet strength - nice!

Also in the box are the chest strap and footpod. The Wearlink chest strap is a soft flexible fabric instead of the plastic strip - a definite comfort improvement. It unsnaps the opposite way than I expected - I thought I was trapped, until I read how to undo it.

The footpod is black and smaller than I expected. Getting the AAA battery into it was a puzzle - I had to open the manual where they describe using the shoe-mount as a tool to pop it open. Now that I know the trick, I see that it's ingenious, water-tight and doesn't require getting out the tools to change the battery. It snaps firmly into the shoe-mount, doesn't jiggle, and it is light enough that I don't feel it on my shoe. When I take it off, the shoe mount stays and isn't likely to accidentally fall off, but I could slip it off to wear it on a different pair of shoes without re-lacing.

Now it's time to set up the watch. I have used Polar products enough that this setup is second nature to me. Some claim it is difficult, but I think that's because it is different from the 50-lap watch they are used to. The menu structure and button function is very consistent and not difficult to master - but it does require a few minutes of looking at the cheat sheet to get the layout and learn which buttons do what. If you have owned any Polar S-series watch, the menu items will be familiar to you.

I set the date and time. Also, because I want some of the cool features, my height, weight, age, sex, activity level from 1 to 4, and max heart rate.

The cool features include:

- an accurate measure of calories expended during the workout. Unlike cheaper products, Polar actually devised a method of doing this that is very accurate, and they have published studies to prove it.
- a 'fitness test' which gives you a number that is, essentially, your V02max, although they don't call it that. This is a subject for a different article, but it is very cool, and one important way that Polar stands out from the crowd: they do good science.

The bike mount, bike speed and bike cadence pickups are already on my bike because I had a Polar S520 before. These are low-cost wireless add-ons that the S625X accepts. They go on quickly and easily with plastic tie strips. I enter my wheel size into the watch and I'm done. (If I had two bikes, I would enter them both.)

[Editor's note: The S625X will accept inputs from the Polar bike sensors, including speed, cadence, and power. The S725X, which comes with a bike speed sensor, can also accept the cadence and power options, but it cannot accept input from the footpod. So for anyone wants to collect speed and distance data on the run and bike, it is important to choose the S625X.]

Out the door for a run to test it all out. I keep things simple this time: no zones, thresholds or timers. My chest strap is on. I press the single button on the footpod and hold it down until the light goes out ( two seconds ) and it begins to blip the light every few seconds, so I know it is on. (If I forget to turn it off later, it will time out and shut itself down so I don't wear out the battery by accident - nice attention to detail again)

I press the red button on the watch and it goes into exercise mode, meaning the stopwatch hasn't started yet, and it is looking for data inputs and waiting for me to make choices. It finds the heart rate signal and shows me that. It doesn't find the footpod - Oh, I have it set for bike input. I press and hold the bottom right button and it switches to footpod, and it immediately 'sees' the footpod data.

Now I'm ready to run. I press the red button again and the stopwatch starts, and I hit the road. The S625X display has 3 lines for data. I read my heart rate on the bottom line (always). I see the stopwatch running in the middle of the display but I want to see running pace there, so I press the bottom right button several times until pace is shown. Now I choose what to see on the top line, by pressing the top right button until my choice, lap time, is shown. I do all this while running, but I could have done it before I started the stopwatch. There are about a dozen things you can see on the middle and top lines, depending on whether the input is from the footpod or the bike. The bottom line is always reserved for heart rate. (Polar is a heart rate company after all)

As I run, I am surprised at how quickly the running pace changes. I'm used to watching my heart rate during a run, which doesn't change as rapidly as my pace. I can see the pace changes almost immediately, while it usually takes a second or two for the heart rate to reflect my increased effort.

Well, it was a great run, and when I finish I press the bottom left button once to pause the stopwatch, and again to end the workout. I can't wait to download it and see the graph. On the other hand, since I could store over two weeks worth of workouts like this, there is really no hurry.

Back when I used an S520, I would rush to the computer because my next workout would erase this one, or just accidentally pressing the red button would wipe it away. Gone are those days, thankfully. This workout is very safely stored in the S625X monitor until I choose to remove it.

A Great little brother: If the price tag of the S625X is a little too high, check out Polar's earlier model for cycling, the S720i. It has all the cycling features (speed, distance, cadence) and many other features of the S625X. It lacks the footpod for running speed and distance, and has the standard chest strap (instead of the Wearlink) , but the S720i is still a great value.

If you are primarily a runner, the S610i is also a great model. It has the data storage and IR download features of the S625X, but no footpod or cycling features. The S610i is a bargain !