Polar Pacer Pro - Advanced GPS Sports Watch - Wrist Heart Rate Monitor, Smart for Men and Women, Workout Running Watch, Training Program & Health Recovery Tools, Sleep Monitor & Activity Tracker

I was planning to upgrade my old Amazfit GTS which has served me well for almost 4 years. I wanted something that was a bit more focused on running rather than an all rounder fitness tracker. I’m a recreational runner, running 5-6k 3 or 4 times a week so didn’t want to pay a fortune for something with lots of features I wouldn’t get the benefit from but at the same time wanted some accurate and meaningful stats from sessions. I did tons of research and the two which kept coming up in reviews was this and the Coros Pace 3. I know Polar have been making running wearables for years and Coros are relatively new to the market but I was leaning towards the Coros mainly because that was the cheaper option for similar features. However, the Polar was at an excellent Prime Day offer price (£70 cheaper than the Corps) so I decided to give it a try.I’ve been using it for about 6 weeks now and I’m absolutely delighted with it. It’s probably a little heavier than my previous watch but from other reviews much more lightweight than similar devices, it looks stylish, and feels solid. I chose it in the black/grey colour which has a kind of gunmetal look to the bezel and the buckle and a very dark grey, almost black, strap. I would have preferred a woven strap but Polar don’t seem to do one for this model and although they provide a connector to attach a different strap I had trouble doing this with an old woven one. That said, the silicon strap is comfortable to wear and I don’t feel the same level of slipping when I’m running as I did with my Amazfit.I found the set up on the app wasn’t as straightforward as it could have been but that’s the case for pretty much every wearable. It also took me a while to work out how to sync the watch and to get used to the lack of touch screen, which I actually prefer now because there’s no accidental turning off or on which used to happen with my old one.While some reviews have mentioned that the display looks basic, I’m happy with the look. In some lights I need to turn on the backlight to see the dial clearly but not really a big deal. The battery life is great. I get roughly a week out of a single charge with 3 or 4 runs.GPS connects very quickly, the watch is easy to navigate, and being able to clearly seen heart rate, speed, distance, etc on a run is great and something my previous watch didn’t have. GPS is also very accurate, and the detailed breakdown of stats and an option to record reflections of an activity through the app is great. Sleep tracking in far less accurate and sometimes doesn’t record at all so if this is a deal breaker for you this might not be the right watch. I have also noticed that the watch has occasionally turned itself off.I’ve tried some of the other sports settings, yoga, Pilates, and climbing but with all of these activities I’m not sure that there’s a meaningful way to record them aside from heart rate tracking so I think it comes into it’s own with cardio based movement activity - running, walking, hiking, bike riding, etc although I haven’t tried the others yet.Previous reviewers have talked about how great the Polar Flow app is. I haven’t had too many issues aside from initially trying to navigate it but I think there are some really basic things missing, mileage per month, for example. You can find this on the web version of Polar Flow but I don’t understand why little things like this aren’t on the app.All things considered, I’m giving in 4 stars, it’s really a 4.5 but I don’t have that option. It’s only the minor points that prevents it being a 5 and I’m prepared to overlook those for the benefits. It’s an excellent watch for the price I paid for it.

Brilliant piece of training kit

Have tried numerous Polar watches in the past and none impressed at all, but the Pacer Pro is very different. Light and easily comfortable for 24hr wear, glitch free bluetooth sync with the app which now (finally!) works with Google Fit. This one is for keeps.

I got a Pacer Pro to replace my Grit X, because the Grit X is quite a lump and frankly not comfortable at all on my small wrists. The Pacer Pro is soooo light and comfortable in comparison, and the only real difference is the lack of a touchscreen, which is no loss at all TBH. This is my 5th Polar in my lifetime and this is easily the best. Some reviewers have complained about the screen clarity but think it just fine (certainly better than the Grit X screen). The battery life excellent. After receiving it I fully charged it, and then after 10 days, 6.5 hours GPS, nightly sleep monitoring (not 24 heart rate), it had only used 80%. Not bad :) My only small gripe is that it doesn't have an audiable 'beep': It only vibrates for notifications.Obviously as always with Polar, remember that is doesn't do classic smart watch features like contactless payments and onboard music file storage, but if you want those then get a Garmin and have fun paying for multitude of features that to don't need, won't use, or are downright pointless. If you simply want an excellent running/multisport watch then you can't go wrong with a Pacer Pro

I only wanted a running watch. The Polar Pacer Pro is certainly a running watch and also has many other features as well. For me it has a very good GPS and a good heart rate monitor - combined with a timer it makes an excellent running watch.

Excellent running watch, so much easier to charge than the M430 and the performance feedback is really informative

Shockingly lightweight and packed with features. Looks good and the great size. Not overly big. Has all the essentials plus some.

I was really looking forward to trying this Polar Pacer Pro smart watch. It looks very smart and comes with a magnetic charging cable and setup instructions. These are quite clear and I followed them to set the watch up using my phone. Everything went well up to the point where a message appeared on the watch asking me if I wanted to update it. I said yes but got a message saying that the update failed. Now all the watch does is display the Polar logo. I installed the Polarflow software on my laptop too but as it fails to recognise that the watch is connected I can't reset it. The manual method for resetting it doesn't work either. There's nothing I can do to get the watch working, all I can do is turn the logo off and turn it on again, which I've been doing in the hope that it will eventually reset. But it just won't do anything except display the logo, so that's why I have to rate this watch with one star. I'd give it zero stars if I could.I find it ridiculous that there's no way I can reset this watch after it has crashed. All I was doing was trying to set it up, I didn't even get as far as exploring any of the features. For such an expensive watch to fail so quickly and so comprehensively has to be more than just bad luck, so after such an awful and frustrating experience with it there's no way that I can recommend this watch.