Polar CS200 Cycling Computer Heart Rate Monitor

I bought this thing so I could not only see the normal stuff you’d see in an average cycle computer but I also wanted to see my heart rate and track my progress over time (average heart rate, calories burned, average speed, etc). It performs all of the basic functions well, including measuring heart rate, but Polar says that you can download your ride information to the polarpersonaltrainer.com to track your progress. This is where they’re being dishonest because the polarpersonaltrainer.com website is useless tool for keeping track of your progress or ride data over time.

The first problem is that you can’t export data to Excel which would be a nice feature for anyone who wants to see their ride details in different ways. For example, my commute to work is mostly uphill while the ride home is mostly downhill. I’d like to group my data to see my progress on the same route but there’s no way to do that.

The biggest problem, however, is the polarpersonaltrainer.com website. It’s extremely limited in how it lets you access and display your ride data. You can only graph the four variables listed here in separate bar charts by week: 1) number of training sessions per week, 2) riding duration (time) per week, 3) distance per week and 4) calories burned per week. You can also overlay your average heart rate for each ride on top of the bar charts. Unfortunately, the website won’t let you chart average speed, max speed, calories burned for each ride, time spent in heart rate zone, time for each ride and distance for each ride. In other words, you can’t view anything other than the four variables listed above, summed up for the week. You can’t graph anything, other than avg. heart rate by individual ride. However, you can click on an individual ride to see all of these variables but there’s no easy way to chart them or view them in a table to see trends over time.

I also don’t like how the sensor batteries are sealed but I knew this before I purchased the product so I can’t really complain about it.

The bottom line is this is nothing more than a normal cycling computer plus heart rate monitor for $150. If you’re looking for a cycling computer to track your rides and progress over time then you should look for something else because this thing is just going to frustrate you. Don’t get me wrong, the basic computer is ok but I just don’t think it’s worth the money unless there are some serious improvements allowing you to access your data in a better way.

Rated: 2 / 5 Stars