Polar CS600X Cycling Heart Rate Monitor W.I.N.D.
 | US $180.00 (2 Bids) End Date: Monday May-21-2012 17:08:27 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list |
Polar RS800CX Heart Rate Monitor Watch
Get It: $309.99
- Sophisticated training watch designed for dedicated, multi-sport endurance athletes
- Integrated Polar ProTrainer 5 software lets you create custom GPS routes and maps
- Displays heart rate as percentage of maximum, bpm, and within target zone indicator
- Compatible with complete range of W.I.N.D. sensors for tracking speed and distance
- Built-in altimeter for altitude analysis; 12/24-hour clock; 2-year warranty
Polar RS800CX Heart Rate Monitor Watch
Polar CS600X Cycling Heart Rate Monitor W.I.N.D.
| US $180.00 (2 Bids) End Date: Monday May-21-2012 17:08:27 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list |
Polar RS800CX Heart Rate Monitor Watch
Other articles you might like;
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Purchased this new and it functioned well for about 60 days. Used the PPT software as well as the Weblink. Watch stopped transfering data on a Friday, the following day it stopped communicating with the heart sensor. I took it to the jeweler to have the battery replaced and they were unable to open the watch. Polar told me to send it back, so I did. 3 weeks later the watch was returned supposedly repaired under warranty and STILL HAS THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM. No fix.. no communication with either the sensor or the computer. Make sure you read the Polar forums before buying ANY Polar product.
Rated: 1 / 5 Stars
I also have had three other Polar products. For people who are considering one of their $200 units, I would recommend they make the jump up to this one. It really is great having your speed, cadence, heart rate, altitude, pace and average stride graphed at 1 second intervals. The speed/pace etc. comes if you have the s3 foot pod, which I also recommend. You’ll also want the associated GPS pod as well!
The one complaint that I have relates to the heart rate strap. Some polar products that I have used in the past have their sensors and transmitters as a single unit. One product had a button strap that would click into the transmitter. These worked fine. The s3 W.I.N.D. transmitter however has a button-on transmitter that attaches to the strap–while its attached to you. This design allows that strap to stay affixed to you, while the transmitter is removed.
The comment below didn’t happen! I still rubberband the sensor, but it didn’t come off that day.
[Unfortunately, on a recent run, the transmitter popped off without me knowing it. After I pay the $65 (!) for a new unit, I will fix this problem by attaching the unit with a rubber band. This problem should not dissuade you from buying the unit--but you should use the rubberband trick.]
Rated: 5 / 5 Stars
Story of three Polars:
This is my third Polar. The first one I had was a s510. It was great until it lost two buttons somehow during the swim portion of a triathlon. No idea how that happened, but the end result was that salt water got into the unit and ruined it.
I replaced the s510 with an s725x special edition (the one with the chrome finish). Loved it too – until it started to flake out. It wouldn’t let me update the user settings and no longer shows the date. I decided to make that my permanent bike computer and took the opportunity to upgrade to the RS800cx.
I love the RS800cx’s contoured, sleek design. Much better than its predecessors’ big, chunky and buly block style. Again, I love Polar devices when they work. I love uploading my data to the training software via the infrared sensor. I like visually tracking my zones, HR, altitude, pace, etc. I also liked seeing my routes on Google Earth – very cool! However, after 3 months, I noted significant condensation under the lens. That was followed by the battery going dead. It’s under warranty, so I sent it in. After 3 weeks, it came back with no water and a fresh battery. No more than two weeks later, two buttons fell off. I sent it back, waited for another 3 weeks and am using it again. However this time, the main button doesn’t like to work. This was evident immediately upon getting back from Polar and before I started using it again. It’s usable, but more frequently than not I have to press the red button #enter or start# several times to get it to work. I’m anxious about sending it back yet again because I don’t want to spend the money on shipping for the 3rd time and I’m worried about what will fall off or not work when it returns from the factory.
I should note that I’m not rough with these devices. I swim, bike, run and lift. I don’t wrestle, work construction or do anything that would cause unusual wear and tear on the product.
A friend of mine bought the Garmin Forerunner 305 this past summer for his Ironman training. He loves it and has had no issues with it. One of the cool things about the Garmin is that you can detach it from the wristband and attach it to your bike mount in a “quick release” fashion and vice versa. The other cool thing is that it’s currently $167.99 on Amazon vs. the RS800cx which is currently $469.90. If I’m reading it all correctly, that’s equally equipped with GPS, HR, software and online mapping. If I wasn’t already invested in the Polar with the GPS, I’d switch to the Garmin. The biggest drawback that I can see with the Garmin is that it’s big and chunky. Not something I’d wear to work, like I can with my Polar.
Rated: 3 / 5 Stars
The Polar RS800CX is my fifth or sixth Polar HRM. I have slowly worked my way up to what I consider to be Polar’s best offering. The features available on this unit are absolutely splendid. Every exercise creates a new digital object that one can study to chart one’s progress but you can also just gather them as digital remembrances. I can pin point the moment in time when I injured my IT band, the time of the run when my heart rate raced to 194 (against my “theoretical” limit of 170) and the Iyengar yoga class when it sank to 26.
My biggest gripe about all Polar products is the awkwardness of the documentation they provide. All the statements are grammatically correct and all the information is there somewhere but it is organized in an odd manner and I find myself wrestling with “them” to find answers to obvious questions. To unlock all the features, you need to have the units themselves, a computer to get on the web, the paper documentation the unit shipped with, the on line documentation for the Polar ProTrainer software and then you need Google to find the needle in the haystack.
The RS800CX reigns supreme within the Polar family. It is the only unit that can sample, record and export your heart rate, as a time series, at a user selectable sampling frequency, down to once every second. It is currently the only unit that can measure Heart Rate Variation (HRV). HRV provides a measure of your state of relaxation. More precisely, HRV measures how well your parasympathetic nervous system is asserting itself over the sympathetic nervous system. The larger the HRV the greater the degree of relaxation.
The practices of Yoga (asanas, pranayama and meditation) activate parasympathetic influences while activities like running activate the sympathetic nervous system. The beauty of the RS800CX unit is that it actually allows you to track the HRV of different practices. It can measure not only how hard you are exerting but also how deeply you are relaxing. The calories you burn in most styles of Yoga barely rises above the base metabolic rate. But the outlook changes when you look at HRV. When I am running at say 8.1 MPH my HRV is down to 2.1 ms and when I let myself into and hold a posture, like trikonasana, for an extended period of time, in an Iyengar Yoga session, I have seen numbers as high as 90 ms. The RS800CX manual is mostly silent on the value of this feature. I actually track the effect of different styles of Yoga by looking at the HRV they induce in me. I can even tell which teacher, studio and style is right for me! For example, last week during a 90 minute Iyengar Yoga session I expended 167 cal, and ran up a HRV standard deviation of 147, the next day during a 90 minute Ashtanga Yoga session I expended 275 cal and logged HRV standard deviation of 107. Most of us need to burn plenty of calories and also learn to let up and relax. Nearly everyone knows how to burn calories but how does one actively relax. Now you can plan and track relaxation quantitatively. I hear many Ashtanga practitioners say that Iyengar doesn’t work for them because they “don’t break a sweat” or “nothing is moving”. If only they had a RS800CX on they could see the difference in real time!
If you take the trouble to traverse through a somewhat non-intuitive sequence you can get the RS800CX to display any of two dozen measures it tracks in real time right on your watch dial. The hoops to jump through to do this require that you first fire up the Polar ProTrainer application and link your watch to your computer. On most laptops with built in IR ports, this requires that you use one hand to position the watch correctly, so that it can link up with the IR port. With the other hand you must bring up the “Edit Polar Product Setting” menu, and let it sync up. Once it has synced up you can drop the watch and click on the “Product” tab of a menu screen that pops up after the syncing. On the screen that comes up you see a button labeled “Customize Display Sets” which you click on and then a panel pops up drop with this smorgasbord menu of 23 different real time readouts organized around four or five display panels that get activated depending on what accessories you have associated with the RS800CX. So there is more confusion here. If you don’t have the cadence or speed sensors accessories, the settings under those tabs will not register on the the wrist unit. Once you make your choices, hold up the watch again to the IR port and click on the sync icon to download to the watch and you are all set.
My last RS800SD died recently- the screen went blank afte about six months. The retailer gave me a full refund and so I bought myself a new RS800CX. Others have said this before, but the RS800CX is significantly better than the RS800sd even though they share accessories. I am surprised they continue to sell the RS800sd. You have to wade through some additional confusion when you try to figure out which RS800CX to get. The main point to remember is that the wrist unit is RS800CX and common to all the bundles that currently exist. You can attach stride sensors, bike sensors or GPS sensors at any point in time to obtain the additional capabilities. If you run on a treadmill a GPS sensor will do you no good, you need the S3, if you bike you need the cadence and speed sensors for bikes. These are little devices that physically attach to your bicycle frame and crank. They will do you no good if you are trying to log data from elliptical machines and stationary bikes in gyms. If you do your panting outdoors or practice multiple activities you likely want the GPS unit to track the route and speed. If you want all three, make sure you are not duplicating accessories by buying packages.
My transition from the RS800sd to the RS800CX took a few hours of persistence. But for the markings the two look identical but work quire differently! I finally managed to figure out how to get an old S3 stride sensor to transmit stride length and cadence data to my RS800CX unit. I was trying to get the old S3 to work with the new RS800CX and although I could easily get the RS800CX to learn the S3 sensor, the cadence and stride length data were not getting transmitted to the RS800CX.
The trick was to (1) Hit the red START button to go into the exercise mode the unit starts to search for the heart rate data then (2) hold down the the upper left “LIGHT” button to bring up a new SETTINGS menu that lists the shoe sensor that had previously been learned by the RS800CX. You can now activate it. When this has been correctly done r1 (or r2 or r3) displays next to where the heart rate normally shows (bottom right of display). r for run even though these features are sometimes grouped under shoes. Once done, the RS800CX seems to remember the association. It was quite frustrating to not find a way to complete this association through the settings menu that one steps through by hitting the up/down buttons. The manual does explain it but this critical feature is awkwardly placed behind a button labeled “LIGHT”.
Even though the Polar manuals aggravate me, this unit has changed my attitude towards exercise and wellness by bringing a level of rigor and accuracy that is very addictive. I have spent over a thousand dollars so far buying their stuff and I think it is one of the best investments I have ever made in my health.
Rated: 5 / 5 Stars