Polar FT80 Heart Rate Monitor Watch (Black)
If there’s one word to describe people who train seriously for athletics, it’s dedication. And if there’s one heart rate monitor that’s dedicated to helping you achieve maximum workout efficiency, it’s the Polar FT80. The FT80 starts by checking your daily condition, and then guiding you to the ideal training intensity for your age and fitness level. Knowing your heart rate not only helps you reach your personal fitness goal, but also improves your physical condition in general, as it’s vitally important to train at the appropriate intensity level. If you exercise too hard, you may quit before you reach the real benefit, but if you work out too leisurely, you’ll struggle to lose weight at all. The FT80 helps overcome these problems by encouraging you to map out a complete fitness routine.
The FT80’s intelligent training computer also helps you work toward achieving your exercise goals in other ways. For example, the watch offers a Polar Star personalized training program that adapts to your workout habits. By giving you weekly training targets and providing constant feedback, the watch guides you without being too strict, helping you reach your goals more efficiently. The watch also displays heart rate info in several ways, including as a percentage of your maximum heart rate, as beats per minute, and within a graphical target zone indicator. And should your heart rate exceed or dip below your target zone, the FT80 will sound an alarm that helps you return to form.
Users will also love the variety of proprietary Polar functions, including ZonePointer, Polar Strength Training, and Polar OwnCal modes. The ZonePointer is an audible and visual feature on the display of your FT80 that shows you where your current heart rate sits within your target heart rate zone. The Polar Strength Training mode, meanwhile, helps you optimize your strength training by reading your heart rate and informing you when your body is ready for the next set–an ideal way to optimize your weight training. Finally, the Polar OwnCal mode shows your energy expenditure during one exercise session, as well as your accumulated kilocalories during several exercise sessions. You can also set daily and weekly exercise goals in terms of calorie expenditure, helping you achieve both short-term and long-term goals.
Other watch features include a built-in fitness test that measures your aerobic fitness at rest in just five minutes; a ZoneLock mode that lets you activate a target zone in the midst of training with the press of a button; a Polar OwnZone mode that provides a customized target zone for individual exercise sessions; an OwnCode mode that prevents crosstalk from other heart rate monitors nearby; a recording mode that tracks your average and maximum heart rate, calorie expenditure, distance, and total exercise time, and then puts it in an exercise file (with 100 total files); water resistance to 50 meters; a 12/24-hour clock with a day/week indicator; a built-in backlight; an alarm with a snooze; a low battery indicator; and a Polar FlowLink connection for transferring data between the FT80 and a computer. Sporting an attractive black housing, the watch carries a two-year warranty.
Polar FT80 Heart Rate Monitor Watch (Black) Review
Based on the reviews you’re reading and the one’s I read before purchasing, the big concern is the display. With that reservation, I ordered it anyway, and must say I love the watch AND the display. It really is an attractive, full featured watch, that I much prefer over my RS200. True, the display is not as “bright” as black against gray, but it’s clearly readable in and outdoors provided that you view it more or less straight on–at an angle, there is glare. That works fine for me, doesn’t interfere with my workouts, and since I’m the only one who needs to read it, it’s never a problem. The fit is great, really wraps around your wrist, and it’s very low profile. And the black face is quite striking.
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