Discussion: Polar Vantage M/V

Has anyone tried the new Polar watches while orienteering? There has been some talk about bad gps accuracy, is it a problem when analysing your routes?

Not yet but I’m interested because if its longer battery life.

I just bought the Polar Vantage M in Riga since I lost my Forerunner 15 at the WMOC sprint qualification. No great loss, the Forerunner was old and very beat up and I had been contemplating an upgrade. Had to make a choice under time pressure, which is not my style, I like to analyze and analyze, but the time pressure was probably a good thing actually, I probably would have continued analyzing and not making a decision for the next several years.

Anyway, I was very pleased with the very knowledgable service I got from Sabine at the Pulsometrs.lv store. I came in with a list of criteria: Must Haves: e.g. GPS of course and wrist HRM; Wants: e.g. fast GPS sync and long GPS/HRM battery life; Don't Wants: e.g. music, bike, swim). But that didn't narrow it down much, there were still a bunch of watches (Pulsometrs.lv has a great selection of Garmins, Polars, Suuntos, and others) that met all of my Musts and just about all of my Wants. The main exception is I would have had to spend double or triple what I wanted to get barometric altimeter.

The one criterion that sorted down the pile of watches a bit was long recording time, and that's what pushed me over to get the Vantage M even though it was a bit more than what I had set as my budget going in. Supposedly 30 hours of 1-second GPS + HRM. She threw in a spare watchband to persuade me, after hearing my tales of how many Forerunner watchbands I have destroyed, but the Vantage watchband looks tougher than the Forerunner to start with.

I've only used it a couple of days, and only in forest with a not-very-dense canopy, but the tracks look reasonable so far. I'll try to remember to post again when I've used it more and had more chance to examine the tracks (e.g. RouteGadget on a georeferenced orienteering map).

Irony: I had a business dealing with Polar a while back in which they created and sold a product based on something I held a patent on. The product didn't do very well, and was ultimately discontinued. One of the things that customers were disappointed in was that the recording time was too short. Maybe Polar learned something.

I upgraded from the M400 to the Vantage M and I like it much better. First off, I find it more comfortable. And I like the strap better. Needless to the long battery life is great. It also automatically syncs/ uploads to my iPhone. The GPS works well.
I’m not yet sure about the wrist heart rate monitor. Definitely convenient but I need to confirm its accuracy.