Read Before You Buy The Polar F11 Heart Rate Monitor Watch
I picked the Polar F11 for several reasons. Number one, the F11 watch fit into the price range I was looking at. Number two, the Polar f11 is designed for someone who wants to increase their fitness. Polar makes watches that are aimed at athletes looking to increase their performance, or runners training for marathons, or such things. I was not looking for this kind of watch. Polar also has watches designed for people who will be using them on bicycles (although the F11 certainly would work for someone on a bike, the bike watches have an extra device you can use to track various other things like speed and cadence.) Third, the watch has a lot of the nicer features, like programmable zones, and some of the more advanced fitness options like the Polar Fitness Test, The Polar OwnZone, OwnIndex, and Polar Keeps You Fit - Own Workout Program. The F11 also comes with a “coded” heart monitor. The advantage of a coded heart monitor is that you can exercise near someone else with a heart monitor without crossing signals. So if you’re planning on wearing your heart monitor at the fitness club, you’ll probably want a Polar watch model with a coded heart monitor.
What comes in the box:
* Polar F11 watch
* Polar Coded Heart Monitor with Chest Strap
* Customer Service Card
* Polar F11 User Manual
* Polar Guide to Fitness
The Polar F11 Watch
I’m not a big fan of the fashion sense of the Polar watches. I think that these are some of the ugliest watches being made and wouldn’t buy one if it didn’t have a heart monitor. They should look at the watches that Nike or even Swatch is putting out. The Polar watches are some ugly watches. Ironically, when I went to purchase a Polar watch, they had a watch there that I didn’t think was so bad looking, but it turned out to be ridiculously expensive.
On the plus side, the watch seems pretty rugged. The buttons are easy to push (almost too easy.) On the minus side, the ugly wrist band on all the models I tried on are very stiff. This makes it a problem getting the thing off, because you can’t get the wrist band to bend enough to get it out of the buckle. I complained about this to my friend who also has a Polar watch, and she agreed that she had the same problem (She has a Polar RS200.)
The Watch Functions
There are enough functions on the watch that to really cover them all would take several reviews of this size, so I’m going to cover the basics that I find useful. Obviously, the first of these is as a heart monitor. The watch can also record your fitness information and you can use it to upload your exercise information to Polar’s website for tracking. The Polar F11 can also do “zones”.
To use the Polar F11 watch as a heart monitor, you wet the strap on the silvery parts, attach the coded heart monitor, and then put it around your chest. The coded heart monitor has to be in the center of your chest, and the text on the monitor should be right-side up. On your watch, you press the OK button once. This will take you to the main menu. In the main menu, the first selection is Exercise. In this menu you can see your heart rate, which is a little bit of a pain because it’s easy to forget that you are not yet recording your exercise data. From here, once the Polar watch has your heart rate, you can choose Exercise and the watch will begin collecting exercise data for the session.
Once you have exercised for a while, it’s nice to be able to track it. If you have a microphone for your computer, you can upload the data on your watch to Polar’s website. To do so you have to download their software and install it on your computer. Once you have installed the software, you use a microphone to transfer your exercise data. Following the instructions in the manual, you hold the watch up to the microphone and the Polar watch makes chirping noises like an old fashioned modem to transfer the data. The software tells you when the data has been uploaded. While this is fun and useful, I have to wonder why, with the Bluetooth standard so widespread, Polar doesn’t make their watches truly wireless, instead of requiring a microphone to communicate with computers.
The last feature I use on the watch is the exercise “zones”. Zones are designated ranges of heart rates. For example, you may choose a middle zone of 120 BPM (beats per minute) to 140 BPM. You can designate three zones or use ones which are pre-programmed into the Polar watch. The watch will keep track of how long you stay in each zone, and will also alert you if you are not in the zone you want to be. This is great for people who, on the advice of a doctor, need to do aerobic exercise, and their doctor has told them to keep a certain heart rate for a particular amount of time. For example, my doctor told me to exercise at around 130 BPM for at least 40 minutes, five times a week. The Polar F11 makes this very easy.
The Polar User Manual
The Polar F11 user manual is clear and seems well-written to me, even if it is a little dry. Some of the features are a little confusing, but I think that’s more because of the subject matter and my understanding than it is because of a shortcoming of the manual.
The Polar Personal Guide to Fitness Booklet
This 32 page booklet is kind of a throw-away except that it does serve to introduce the user to the ways that a Polar watch can be useful in a fitness program. It introduces basic fitness topics and provides an introduction to some of the more advanced Polar watch functions, like the Polar Fitness Test, The Polar OwnZone, OwnIndex, and Polar Keeps You Fit - Own Workout Program.
Summary for the Polar F11
If you care about health and fitness and want to be more fit, I think it’s pretty hard to go wrong investing in a Polar watch. The Polar F11 has a great feature set for the non-athelete and is right in the price vs features sweet spot.
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