Polar M200 Review – Designed for runners?

The Polar M200 joins many other Polar fitness watches by providing extensive activity tracking functionality. The M200 tracks your daily steps, distance and calories.

This activity data is sent to the Polar Flow app (iOs and Android) which provides an hourly breakdown of activity intensity throughout the day and sleep quality and duration during the night.

Your progress towards completing your daily activity goal is indicated around the OUTSIDE of the M200’s bezel. Dots around the outside of the bezel illuminate as you progress towards your daily activity target.

In the photograph below the M200 shows 31% of my daily step target completed.

Daily Activity Target

When setting up the M200 the user selects from one of three activity levels eg.

• Level 1) inactive, sedentary / office worker,
• Level 2) moderately active with periods of standing/walking
• Level 3) very active, manual worker, gardener etc. From this selection the Polar M200 sets a daily activity target.

At anytime it is possible to view the tasks required to complete the daily target, eg. 1 hour walking, 2 hours standing or 20 minutes running.

Throughout the day the activity indicator around the face of the watch fills in to indicate your progression towards the daily activity target.

Inactivity Alerts

As with other popular fitness trackers the M200 will provide an inactivity alert following periods of inactivity over 1 hour. Being inactive has a negative impact on your blood circulation, metabolism and energy expenditure. These subtle reminders are designed to get you up and moving.

Note > they are TURNED OFF during the night.

Using your Polar M200 Polar make training for a running event easy with their unique personal and adaptive training plan accessed from Polar Flow web-service.

Currently the running program supports 4 different popular event distances > 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon. Choose your event and Polar will provide a training plan with a personalised daily schedule specifically tailored for you and your fitness goals.

Many people that run simply do the same thing day in day out. Every session is a 5K jog at the same pace or similar. This type of training will not lead to progression.In fact it’s not really training at all, it’s just keeping fit.

The Polar Running Program will add different aspects of running to your training from speed endurance, intervals and strength training and much more.

The schedule below clearly illustrates the different training styles prescribed by the running program.

The M200 can be personalised to suit you and your favourites sports. Polar have their own Sport Profiles (over 80 at last count).

The M200 can support up to 15 sports in the watch at any one time. When training select the sport profile for that session  – anything from RUN, to bike, walk, gym, cardio, sail etc. Different sports have different significant metrics.

See what you want with Training Views

Different people want to see different parameters when training. What I want to see when running may be different to what Mo Farah wants to see. That’s why Polar have customisable sport profiles.

Using the Polar Flow web service select the sports that are relevant to YOU. Then, if required, edit each profile to provide the metrics / parameters that interest you most for each sport.

Excluding the “World Record Comparison” and the “Cooper Test” training views the M200 can support 7 customised training views. The example above is using just 3.

Training View Options

Each Training View can be either 1 or 2 lines per page. The options for each metric come from the following main headings, Time, Environment, Body Measurement, Distance and Speed.

The screen grabs below show the specific parameters available under each heading. NOTE > you can MIX and MATCH any combination per training page. eg. Speed/Pace & Time of Day or Distance & Altitude in the same training view.

When in training mode and long press provides access to the SPORT PROFILES. It is now possible to scroll through all your chosen sport profiles eg. Running, Cycling, Windsurf, Gym, Indoor Bike etc.

Once the required sports profile has been selected you are presented with your TRAINING PAGES. As discussed earlier, the training pages are all TWO lines of data.

The examples below show a training page with Heart Rate & Distance and Time of Day & Duration of exercise.

The Polar Flow web service provides an extra dimension to training analysis and daily activity review. The service is 100% free and everything is offered to all users – no premium subscriptions required.

Daily Activity Summary – showing total steps, active time, time at various activity levels, calories burnt and INACTIVITY stamps (yes, I do sit a lot)

Graphical Summaries – the Heart Rate, Speed and Elevation graphs can be ZOOMED if required. Detailed time/distance versus Heart Rate, Speed (or Pace) and Altitude. Also shows a breakdown of time spent in the 5 x Polar Sports zones (HR zones)

Exercise Data on Smartphone

The Polar Flow app is available for iOs and Android devices. It’s easy to use, comprehensive and fully featured. Of all the supporting fitness apps, Polar Flow is my personal favourite. All the data from the Polar M200 is seamlessly uploaded to the Polar Flow app using the smartphone Bluetooth connection.

Polar Flow gives daily, weekly and monthly activity summary,  Training Benefit feedback, exercise summaries, maps, heart rate graphs and time in zones feedback.

The Polar Running Program will hopefully make you a better, stronger and faster runner. But how do you know if you are progressing.

The answer is Polar’s Running Index. Monitored regularly over time you will see how your running efficiency is improving. The Polar Running Index score is calculated automatically every time you run.

It’s a calculation based on your heart rate and speed / distance data collected from the M200’s GPS sensor. A higher reading indicates that you can run faster with less effort.

At the end of the training session, the M200 provides feedback on everything from Average Heart Rate, Calories, Time, Distance, Average Speed etc. With the Polar Flow app you also get TRAINING BENEFIT.

Training Benefit gives a summary of what was achieved from the latest training session. For people looking to achieve a specific objective from their training sessions, Training Benefit will hopefully reinforce that objective whether it was a FAT BURNING session, an AEROBIC ENDURANCE session of a SPEED ENDURANCE interval session.

Polar weren’t the first to produce watches with strapless heart rate monitors, far from it. However, unlike other companies they wanted to develop their own technology and not use a third party’s tech.

The result is a very accurate wrist acquired heart rate system taking your pulse from the LED’s on the back of the watch. The Polar M600 and A360 use similar technology and we found these to be 95% accurate for about 95% of the time, if not better.

Having an integrated GPS is nothing new. Garmin have been doing it for over a decade and Polar have since the Polar RC3 running watch.

What the Polar M200 has is a VERY SMALL and discrete GPS and aerial system. The M200 is suitable for all wrist sizes, large and small. The M200’s built-in GPS keeps track of your pace, distance and altitude. After your run, you can see your route on Polar Flow