11/21/2023 0 Comments Unite fitness for starters![]() ![]() ![]() Holding the Unite’s back button will sync your recent activity with Polar Flow. The Polar Flow app is a much more accessible affair, with a focus on tracking your movements throughout the day, and is the app used by the Polar Unite and – you guessed it – the Ignite. The Polar Beat app is designed specifically for running and workouts rather than everyday activity tracking, and is the companion app used by the company’s serious fitness trackers and heart rate monitor. Polar has two companion apps for its various fitness trackers. There’s no SPO2 sensor for detecting changes in blood oxygen saturation, though the in-depth analysis provided by the Polar Flow app could provide some useful insight if you’re struggling to get a good night’s sleep and often feel groggy in the morning. More on that shortly.Īt night, the Polar Unite uses your heart rate and restlessness to monitor your sleep. Bear in mind that you’ll need to hold the button again with the app open to sync your data with the app – it won’t happen automatically. We got into the habit of removing the watch in the evening to avoid this, but a simple way to confirm when you actually went to bed would be handy.When you’ve finished your activity, hold the back button for three seconds (a countdown clock will appear) to save it. There also doesn't appear to be any way to edit this data, because knocking off the time you were actually awake on the sofa would lead to a better overall sleep score. Then, when you go and get ready for bed, put out the bins, set the coffee machine, and so on, it will log all that activity as disturbances to your sleep - and say you've had a terrible sleep, even if you then go and have a good solid 8 hours of kip. However, the approach that Polar uses to categorise sleep isn't always sound: if you're static in the evening, like watching TV, the Unite will decide you're asleep and start logging sleep data. If you've have a bad sleep, it'll be recommended that you might want to rest instead. The data that the watch gathers will guide you towards the sort of exercise you should consider doing, with the FitSpark training guide suggesting workouts based on your profile and recovery status. ![]() It's a useful system - something rivals Garmin, Fitbit and soon Apple will offer - and this really plays into the recovery side of a healthy lifestyle. Essentially, if you're looking at this watch with running in mind, we'd urge you to consider something with integrated GPS, like the Polar Ignite or the Garmin Forerunner 45. For cyclists or walkers that's fine, but for runners - unless you absolutely always take your phone - it's a bit of a limitation. There's no GPS, as mentioned, so things like speed and distance are dependent on getting a GPS reading from your phone via the Polar Flow app. Ultimately, if heart rate accuracy is what you're after, the Polar Unite doesn't seem to be quite on the pulse. In many cases the average is close - within 5bpm over a 90 minute workout - but it's not as precise as you might want it to be.Īt other times we've found the Unite to struggle to return an accurate reading, dragging down averages and leaving some strange HR traces that don't reflect the experience of that activity. Comparing data from the Polar Unite and the Garmin Fenix 6 Pro and, on a number of occasions, Polar often starts lower than Garmin and fails to reach the same peaks. That often results in a resting heart rate that's reassuringly low, and slower heart rate rises than you'd expect once you start an activity. It corrects itself soon after, but again, when exercising, these glances are brief - you don't want to be taking your eyes off the road on a fast downhill descent for any longer than absolutely necessary. This might sound like a minor point, but we've been caught out by it many times, glancing when riding, seeing old data and wondering why the heart rate displayed didn't match that which we perceived. Glance at your watch and you'll see old data, which will be shown for a brief moment before it updates. There's another downside which is a little more technical: when the display wakes, it wakes the screen showing what was on it when it turned off. That's a slight downside when you're in the zone and wondering if you're on target for a personal best but end up struggling to get the screen to illuminate. That's just fine when you're strolling down the high street, so it doesn't randomly switch on and off, but means that you can't glance when exercising without a much more deliberate lift of the arm. That awakening action has to be rather a deliberate too. ![]()
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