One that we could use to track workouts, notifications, and maybe a few apps. But I’ve never used a fitness-focused wearable before, which is one reason why I wanted to write a Polar Pacer review. Polar is a well-known brand for making accurate health monitors, especially ones that can track your heart rate. But Polar has also been making fitness watches for a while, and I like to run, even though I’m not a marathoner or someone who runs 50 miles a week.
Polar Pacer: Description
So, I used what I knew about running and smartwatches to try out the Polar Pacer and see what I was missing out on by not using a fitness-focused wearable. No matter what, I wear a smartwatch. I feel like these gadgets help me stay on task, make sure I don’t miss any important messages, and give me useful information about my workouts. For someone like me, it’s not easy to use a watch like the Polar Pacer, which is a fitness watch first and a smartwatch second.
The Polar Pacer is easy to set up, just like a lot of the best Android smartwatches and fitness trackers. I started downloading the Polar Pacer companion app to my phone, and while that was happening, I started charging the watch with the magnetic POGO pin cable. After I downloaded the app and charged the watch, I set up my Polar account and connected the watch to my phone.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Very comfortable
- Excellent battery life
- Accurate tracking
Cons
- Notification experience irks
- Manual syncing to app
- No on-board music
Polar Pacer: Specifications
| RAM | 5MB |
| ROM | 32MB |
| Display | 1.2-inch Memory-in-Pixel (MIP) non-touch (240×240) |
| Bluetooth | 5.1 |
| CPU | 200MHz |
| Dimensions | 45 x 45 x 11.5mm |
| Weight | 40 grams with the band, 23 grams without |
Design and Build
All of Polar’s watches look pretty much the same. The Pacer is lighter than older models, which is a good thing. It also has most of the technology from older, more expensive watches, but at a lower price. It’s a simple design that I like in the teal colour we have been using. It’s also available in black, white, and a pastel purple. The case and strap are these colors, but the black bezel around the round watch face and screen stays the same no matter which color you choose.
The watch is made of very light plastic and is much smaller and less bulky than older Polar products. It means it’s comfortable to wear all day and doesn’t stick out too much from the wrist, but it still has GPS and a heart rate sensor.
With IP68 dust and water resistance, you don’t have to worry about taking off the Pacer when it’s pouring outside or when you jump in the shower. The Polar Pacer doesn’t feel like a top-of-the-line premium product, but I don’t think Polar cares about that with a price tag of £169.50 (maybe the £259 Pacer Pro, which I haven’t tried, fills that role).
Polar Pacer: Sports tracking
Polar wants you to think of the Pacer as a running watch, but it can track more than just running, making it a nice, affordable multisports watch. There are 130 sports modes, but only a few are available on the watch. The rest can be added through Polar’s Flow app. There is support for GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and QZSS satellite systems. There is also support for assisted GPS, which helps get a signal fix faster. Polar uses the same Precision Prime HR sensor technology in its most expensive watches, and you can also connect external heart rate sensors to this watch.
Barometer and compass sensors don’t make the cut, so you miss out on features like Polar’s Hill Splitter analysis and that extra bit of outdoor data. For running power measurements, you’ll need an external running foot pod sensor. Unlike the Pacer Pro, you can’t upload routes or turn-by-turn navigation, but you can turn on a “back to the start” mode. Polar wants you to think of the Pacer as a running watch, but it can track more than just running, making it a nice, affordable multisports watch.
There are 130 sports modes, but only a few are available on the watch. The rest can be added through Polar’s Flow app. There is support for GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and QZSS satellite systems. There is also support for assisted GPS, which helps get a signal fix faster. Polar uses the same Precision Prime HR sensor technology in its most expensive watches, and you can also connect external heart rate sensors to this watch.
Barometer and compass sensors don’t make the cut, so you miss out on features like Polar’s Hill Splitter analysis and that extra bit of outdoor data. For running power measurements, you’ll need an external running foot pod sensor. Unlike the Pacer Pro, you can’t upload routes or turn-by-turn navigation, but you can turn on a “back to the start” mode.
Software and features
The software on the Polar Pacer is pretty simple, which is mostly a good thing but can sometimes be a bad thing. I like that the time is always on the home screen and that the up and down buttons on the right side cycle through different sets of information: date, daily activity goal percentage, how active you’ve been lately, heart rate, how long it’s been since your last training session, ‘nightly recharge’ sleep tracking information, workout recommendations, weather, how long you worked out last week, and music controls.
All of this information is useful, but cycling through it isn’t always the best way to see it all, and I often forgot it was there. All of this is much easier to see on the Polar Flow app for iOS or Android, which syncs completely with the watch when the app is open and you press and hold the lower left button. A lot of smartwatches can automatically update their apps, and Polar should be able to do the same.
When paired with an Android phone, I found that to be the most annoying thing. If you have notifications turned on but haven’t turned on music controls separately, the watch vibrates and sends you a notification every time you play or pause audio, like a Spotify or Tidal music track. It’s annoying and pointless because you can’t even interact with the notification to change the sound.
Polar Pacer: Battery life
The battery life numbers for the Pacer and the Pacer Pro are the same, which is surprising since the Pro costs a lot more. It lasts 7 days as a watch, 35 hours as a GPS, and 100 hours in a training mode that saves power by turning off heart rate monitoring and taking GPS readings less often.
Compare that to the Garmin Forerunner 55 and the Coros Pace 2. The Forerunner 55 has a longer battery life of 2 weeks for the smartwatch, but only 20 hours for the GPS. The Pace 2 can be used as a GPS for 30 hours and as a smartwatch for 20 days.
We found that, like the Pacer Pro, the Pacer needs to be tracked every day for about 5 days before it starts telling you to charge it. You can’t even try to track a workout if you have less than 10% battery left. From our experience, it’s clear that Polar’s power-saving sleep tracking still has a noticeable effect on battery life. We saw a daily drop in battery life of about 15–20%, and the drop was even more noticeable overnight.
Price and availability
In April 2022, Polar showed off both the Pacer Pro and the Pacer. The Pro went on sale the same day. The regular Pacer didn’t come out until May of 2022. The watch was first sold for $220, but you can now get it from the Polar’s official website, Amazon, Walmart, and other stores for $200. There are four colors for the watch: Night Black, Cloud White, Deep Teal, and Purple Dusk.
Final words
It takes about a week to get used to the mobile app and buttons, but the Polar Pacer is worth it because it keeps track of your fitness in a focused and accurate way.
If you want to start running or are already a runner, the Pacer will be a great addition to your gear. It has a long battery life, an easy-to-read display, is made of lightweight materials, and has the smarts to show you how you are doing and help you improve, and it all costs less than £200/€200/$200.
FAQs
Is Polar Pacer accurate?
And we can confirm that it does the basics well: the heart rate is accurate and the distance is generally accurate (well, as accurate as any watch’s GPS can be; on the first test run, a glitch caused the GPS to lose connection for about 400m, which slightly changed the run data).
Does Polar Pacer have GPS
Features. Polar Pacer gives modern runners everything they need to do one thing: RUN, plus a few extras. Time, pace, distance, laps, stopwatch, GPS that is very accurate, accurate heart rate tracking, and tools for training, sleeping, and recovering.
