First Look: Polar A360 Activity Monitor
What is it?
A wrist-worn activity tracker with color touchscreen and optical heart rate sensor.
Related: 5 Great Fitness Trackers for Cyclists
Polar's Spin
• 'Takes fitness trackers to the next level.'
• Heart rate accuracy provided by custom algorithm and optimized hardware.
• Smart Coaching automatically provides daily activity targets and explains benefits of targets.
• Syncs with Polar Flow, which provides analysis of activities. Also syncs with Polar’s Flow for Coach, allowing personal coach/trainer to remotely view users' activities.
• “Designed to encompass a 360-degree lifestyle and encourage activity,” with notifications for incoming calls and messages, calendar and social media alerts, stand reminders and sleep tracking.
• A full charge lasts 14 days of 24 hour monitoring with one hour of daily training.
Related: How To Cross Train For Cyclocross
My Take
• Polar has a good mix going on when you consider price ($200), features, and battery life. Note that the two-week battery life claim is without notifications enabled.
• Polar's Flow service is free, and provides greater fitness information and detail than, for example, Strava, but less than Training Peaks.
• Polar is jumping into a very crowded field. There are roughly a gazillion activity trackers already on the market—this is the sixth tracker from Polar—and in the time it took you to read this, 25 more trackers were launched. But if anyone should make an activity tracker with integrated heart rate, it is Polar, the company that claims to have invented the heart rate monitor.
• Still, Polar is competing with some heavyweights here. Other wrist activity monitors that offer heart rate sensing and notifications: Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Gear, Android Wear, Microsoft Band. These competitors offer more features and tighter integration with your smart phone, but they cost more and battery life is shorter. There are other heart rate sensing activity monitors too—Garmin, Fitbit—but they don’t appear to offer as many features.
• No ANT+, cannot be paired with any ANT+ devices.
• Cannot be paired to another device as a heart rate monitor. However, it is possible to pair Polar’s H7 heart rate strap to the A360, which should provide better accuracy during activities with a lot of wrist bending/movement.
Other stuff
• Compatible with Polar’s H7 heart-rate sensor, Apple Health Kit, Google Fit, MyFitnessPal for iOS, MapMyFitness, Polar Flow mobile app for iOS and Android, Polar Flow Sync for Mac OS and Windows.
• Strava integration is in the works, according to Polar representatives.
Related: Polar M450 Cycling Computer
Specs and details
• Available November, $200
• 13 x 27mm color touch screen; resolution 80 x 160 pixels
• Three band sizes: small, medium, large
• Five band colors: White, black, green, pink, and blue.
• Interchangeable bands. Price for band only not available.
• Claimed weight: 31.7g (S), 33.7g (M), 37.3g (L)
• Water-resistant, WR30 rating
• Micro USB charge/data port
• Bluetooth Smart
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