Discussion: Altimeter watch without GPS

My Polar S625X is on its last days. I'm losing patience with how it resets the date and time every few weeks, even with a new battery. The display also has some artifacts.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a watch to replace it. Here are my requirements:
- Must not have GPS. I want to be able to wear it for WRE events.
- Must have altimeter.
- Must be compatible with AP batch import.
- Be able to store splits for intervals.

Side note: My Microsoft band already GPS. It has a display, but not one that can be used to show a map/route. Is this ok for WRE? Also, does anyone know whether altimeters are explicitly allowed/disallowed?

IOF Rule 21.3 states only navigational devices allowed are control descriptions and map given by organizer plus a compass. I'd say altimeters are not allowed.

Is an altimeter a navigational device? I wouldn't have thought so.

Hm... Well I would say that an altimeter is more useful than a stopwatch. A stopwatch can tell you approximately how far you ran from a control. However, an altimeter can tell you if you are exactly at the same altitude as one or more points on the map. However, in practice you would never bother using it that way, much as you would never bother trying to use GPS as a navigation aid.

Before this discussion becomes mostly about rules, any tips for a watch that matches my requirements?

Not aware of such devices.

Ambit 3 peak's HR strap has a memory. One could run WRE races with just the strap (without the watch) and record HR. Strap syncs with watch and AP imports Ambit data just fine. But you can not record GPS track or altimeter data or take splits with just the strap, so there would be just HR graph. At non-WREs you could log GPS-track, baro-altitude, cadence, take splits and such.

Thanks for the tip. It looks like only the Sapphire version has a barometric altimeter. The other versions just use GPS.

Send your POLAR for service, in US, will cost some bucks ($30-100), but you will have essentially a new watch. Main service center is in Long Island, NY.

I also took a look but couldn't find anything that fits all your criteria. The main problem seems to be that anything with a barometer these days has GPS or is an adventure-type watch that maybe isn't downloadable, and the non-gps devices are budget versions that omit everything except maybe ant/pod support.

Ambit Sapphire versions are more expensive because of the harder crystal glass, but that isn't tied to any other extra features. it is the "Sport", "S", or "R" Ambit versions that lack the barometer.

Maybe worth trying to service your old one even if you also get something new.

Hm... I've sent in the old one multiple times for battery replacement and they never found anything wrong with it. Not that I told them about the random time/date resets, but it seems like a sort of flaky thing that might be difficult to fix.

But yes, if that issue could be fixed, I wouldn't mind getting more out of the Polar. I guess maybe that's why I haven't replaced it yet...

(And nobody has disqualified me for wearing it at a WRE yet either...)

Ambit 3 - even if you can run with just HR strap you still need to start and stop workout with the watch, so the strap is a standalone toy really. Like starting recording at quarantine and leave it there and stop when you get back to the watch. So there will be plenty of warmup and down recorded. Also, ambit 2 or 3 does not have every second gps track recording, there is only a kind of "smart" recording. Not that good especially for sprints. There is workaround, one can use apps to do the record every second, it records pretty well but one needs to post process log file to create gps track out of those app recordings. For me it's just a double click, but still quite annoying. One can only they come to their senses and put soon every second recording back. How smart it is to build a watch with Sirf V and large antenna but make it record tack points only every now and then !?

http://www.suunto.com/vectorblack/ has everything but the export function.

Vector is iconic watch, but may not have export either? t6d has it all, but it is discontinued.

Ambit may lack every second track recrding, but it has quite good altimeter. Or at least the device I have is very accurate, far more accurate than the altimeter I had in my old polar 710i. I just recently compared ambit's elevation profile against LiDAR point cloud data of the forest I was running. Scale is a bit odd, but you can figure it out - green is trees, that should give some perspective. I used 1.5 m offset here on purpose, that's about how high device is on ground, so it is supposed to stay that much above ground (brown).

You could try looking for a watch just like the one you had on ebay, if you're happy with it. (At one point I would have encouraged you to also get the bicycle power meter accessory beacuse I used to get royalties on those, but those days are gone.)

Ha. I have a foot pod that I have never used. I lost the first one* in Big Basin and decided they were unfit for orienteering. (Yes, I did know exactly where I lost it based on reviewing the data, and I did go back to look for it without any luck.)

*I'm on my second S625X. I lost the first one during a business trip to Pasadena.

The Microsoft Band 2 will have an altimeter!