Activity Trackers: Polar FT60 Fitness Watch with Heart Rate Monitor

Bottom line

The Polar FT60 is accurate, feature packed and reasonably priced. It keeps tabs on your progress and gives you the motivation to stay on track., however, it lacks a chronograph function — a must for interval training and a feature available on some competing heart rate monitors, such as the Timex Ironman Race Trainer

Performance

Highly accurate; many features. Reviewers have a lot of love for the Polar FT60’s tracking features, which include calories burned and percentage of fat as well as heart rate. They also say they feel as if the heart rate tracking is much more accurate than other devices they have owned or used, such as activity trackers. This accuracy is much appreciated both by fitness buffs and by those who have other reasons to stay within a specified range. In addition to those monitoring capabilities, the Polar FT60 includes Star Training, which gives you the ability to choose your goals and have the monitor create a weekly workout routine based upon your user profile. Several reviewers say keeping their stats current motivates them to work out. One big hit with users is that you can wear this monitor while swimming, but that comes with a caveat. The manufacturer notes that pushing any button while underwater will undermine the display’s water integrity. More about swimming with any heart-rate monitor can be found on the What to Look Forpage in our heart-rate monitors report.

Ease of use

Easy interface. Most users praise the Polar FT60’s ability to track results on the watch itself in addition to the website; however, uploading your stats to a computer requires an optional uplink accessory, the Polar FlowLink (Est. $35). The FT60 saves your weekly history and up to 100 files, which reviewers say makes it convenient to track their progress. Setup is reported as easy-to-do using the buttons to input your weight, age and other personal stats; you then update your weight weekly. We saw no complaints of interference issues with the Polar FT60, and many users are thrilled that it can communicate with telemetry-enabled exercise gear — such as the Schwinn 270 Recumbent Exercise Bike (Est. $500), profiled in our report on exercise bikes. The FT60 does not have an interval timer or stopwatch function.

Durability

Finally, user-changeable batteries. One of the most popular features of the Polar FT60 is that it uses replaceable batteries, unlike many other monitors — including some Polar models —  that require the unit to be sent to a service center when the batteries die. However, some owners say the instructions are complicated and the battery compartment is difficult to open. We also saw some recent complaints about the FT60 failing to sense the user’s heart rate after just a few weeks or months. . Several unhappy reviewers say they followed the troubleshooting instructions and replaced the batteries and it still did not work. The FT60 comes with a two-year warranty, but customer service gets mixed reviews for helpfulness. Other available accessories include a GPS module (Est. $105) and S1 Foot Pod (Est. $85) for tracking your speed and distance.

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