POLAR Unite Waterproof Fitness Watch
Polar Unite is a waterproof fitness watch with advanced wrist-based heart rate and connected GPS. This well-rounded ultra light fitness tracker/workout tracker helps you sleep better, train smarter and find the balance – it’s your assistant on your way to better fitness for life.
- FOR INDOOR AND OUTDOOR SPORTS: The Polar Unite comes fully equipped with 50 hours of battery life in training mode, color touchscreen display, 1-button interface with advanced wrist HR monitor, GPS, & Smart Calories. Perfect for all sports and exercises.
- DAILY TAILORED WORKOUTS WITH FITSPARK TRAINING GUIDE: Enjoy your personal on-demand ready-made trainings matching your recovery and readiness every single day. FitSpark workouts are guided in real time with visual instructions.
- KNOW HOW YOU SLEEP: Follow your sleep stages and get detailed sleep insights with the Sleep Plus Stages sleep tracking.
- RECOVERY MEASUREMENT: Nightly Recharge gives you daily feedback on how well you recover from stress and training during the night. This helps you make optimal choices the next day.
- CONNECTIVITY: Connect easily with online sports communities (MyFitnessPal, Endomondo, Nike+ Run Club, Strava, TrainingPeaks, Adidas Running by Runtastic and more).
- WHAT YOU GET: Polar Unite; Charging cable; Getting started guide
Bryan F. –
1 week in and I love it. Sent my Fitbit Charge 4 back after the 1st day! Everything about the Unite is superior to the Fitbit. The lack of built in GPS is a non factor for me as I always have my phone with me. The continuous HR seems to be flawless and I have no issues with it registering the sleep tracking. I always had issues with the Fitbit not showing my heart rate and had a couple nights it did not register sleep. Polar Flow is an awesome app and has easily replaced Run Keeper. the only thing keeping this form 5 star is the band. Although the band is very comfortable, it is a huge pain in the butt to put on and adjust. A traditional silicone metal buckle strap like on the ignite would be much better. With $35 price tag, that is a tough pill to swallow. 4 out of 5 isn’t bad and the 1 star has nothing to do with function, as the function is flawless.
HealthyEm –
I bought this as a gift for one of my children (who’s been doing home workouts during lockdown!) and have posted their comments here:It’s very light on my wrist and easy to set up. It looks really nice too. I haven’t been able to go back to the gym yet, so this watch has been perfect for me to do workouts at home with the Fit spark feature, which is very clever. It is definitely going to help me to stay motivated with my exercise and I can see that I’m going to enjoy all the sleep information too (my mum says it’ll make me realise I need to go to bed earlier!). There are so many helpful features that I need to get to grips with, but I would definitely recommend it.
Skidders –
Had been looking to upgrade my activity tracker for some time & have considered a number of options over recent weeks. The Unite looked to offer the balance of features that as I was looking for at a reasonable price-point. As a predominantly indoor trainer, the lack of onboard GPS didn’t worry me although have to say that the hook-up to my I-phone’s GPS, which I normally use for walks, isn’t always smooth.First charge took only an hour or so to get to c75% to enable me to complete initial set up. Had the watch for a couple of weeks now & experience so far is that claims over battery life are a little optimistic – I’m probably charging every couple of days, although I do anticipate periods where I’m inactive & charge then rather than leaving to completely discharge at a time when I may need monitoring. This without heavy use of the fast draining functions.The data collected/provided offers a rich seam of information to manage & assess your performance & guide further training. Syncing can be a bit patchy at times.Overall, very pleased with the acquisition.
Psymn –
Seems reasonably accurate, software is decent. Screen is bright. Sent back a fitbit inspire due to dull screen and bad HR accuracy. So far, this seems much more accurate and can be seen outside. Though it is much larger, but still pretty compact compared to many current smartwatches.EDIT: had to send off for a replacement because the screen just stopped turning on. Neither a flick of the wrist or a press of the button would work. Just received a replacement very quickly and am hoping this one lasts better because its otherwise a perfect watch/fitness tracker.
J. White –
I’ve done Garmin, I’ve done FITBIT. I want FITBIT’s sleep tracking in a Garmin Watch, to be frank, mainly for the ability to use a heart rate chest strap. I’ve now tried POLAR.I may be wrong on the following, but after digging I’ve found;There is only one alarm on this watch. You cannot program it for specific days, only Everyday, Mon-Friday, Weekend.The battery drains very fast. Even charging it during the daily shower isn’t enough to keep it going.You can export workouts to Strava, but you cannot import Workouts from Strava like you can with Fitbit. This is important to me because I have a Wahoo bike computer that I would like to pull to my Polar account, after exporting it to Strava. With Fitbit, I can pull that data from Strava to show that workout in Fitbits App. It doesn’t input heart rate scored from my chest strap, however. Yet, my Fitbit Charge 3, for whatever reason compared to weight lifting or running, is almost spot on with the chest strap for heart rate on the bicycle.You cannot track your weight via the Polar App. You cannot input your weight from within the Polar App. On Apple, you hold your finger on the Polar App button and you can enter your weight. On the Polar website under Reports and Daily Activity, you can track your weight. Polar does not have a wifi scale in production that will log your weight for you. I have a Fitbit scale that uploads my weight, and I have to do nothing but step on the scale. There is apparently a third party program you can subscribe to for 2 dollars a month that will move your weight data from Fitbit into Polar’s website. Again, this weight data can only be viewed from Polar’s website.Sleep tracking is OK. This model is not capable of what is, I think called, Advanced Sleep Tracking. I miss my FitBit’s ability to tell me of Apnea Attacks. This Polar will also think you are still asleep after you get out of bed to get a coffee and look at the inter net news before getting ready for work. It will add several minutes to “interruptions” for your sleep during this time and throw off the entire data package. You cannot edit your sleep time, at least from the app, maybe you can from the website but that is hardly worth the effort. Garmin never gets my sleep right. The Polar App has so much sleep data that it is perhaps too much data.I like how the numbers are large on the watch face, the Charge 3 is hard to read. Sometimes the Polar does not forward notifications from my phone. If that happens on the Charge 3, I just reboot the Charge 3. I haven’t come up with a for sure way to make the Polar smart again. The face of the Polar has little in the way of customization.The Polar does not track steps, so much as “activity.”You cannot tap the screen to turn the display on. You must either push the button or raise the watch. Raising the watch is almost flawless from the standing position, but while sitting, or if your arms are in front of you, typing this review for example, and you “raise the watch” it will not come on.I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
Topher’s Mom –
I have used Polar HRM (chest strap) for many years and finally got tired of the straps not working so I decided to try this watch and I am glad that I did! There’s a lot to learn about this watch and all of its functionalities and my advise to new users is the play around with it and read the manual to figure out what it can do. It’s pretty easy to use but you have to set it up on polar flow first. I originally just set up the watch and then downloaded the app and the watch and app were not syncing then I figured out that polar flow has to be used regardless. Even though the manual says you can set up the watch on the watch- you can’t. So now I have the watch, the app ,and polar flow and when you sync all 3, at times you will get different readings on all three. That is annoying. Not sure why you need the app and flow, yes flow is more detailed than the app and perhaps even better to read but its just one more thing I have to figure out. I do like how you can customize your training preferences and change the views for your workouts on your watch; exp WALKING I changed the view so that I see calories, HR, time and distance. You can only make those changes on flow – this is actually an awesome feature now that I think about it. You can also delete and add workouts. The watch seems pretty spot on in terms of accuracy. The only major thing I despise is that there is a significant delay to turn on the watch from its resting point. I find I have to raise my arm multiple times to get it to wake up. Another thing I don’t like is that there is a delay when it calculates your calories during your workout. Again I have to move my arm up and down several times to get it to update and that is a pain. The face size is a little big since my wrist is so small but then I guess if it were any smaller one might have a hard time reading the text. Not a big deal. Not sure I will use this watch as a fashion watch because of that but now that it calculates step I have to say I have gotten addicted to surpassing prior days numbers so I will have to wear the watch in order to do that. All in all the watch is a great buy! The pros definiently surpass the cons.
Sam Holden –
I bought this watch with the h10 hrm device in order to being tracking my training (specifically base aerobic exercise) to ensure i was hitting targets and training effectively.Having used a fitbit surge & garmin forerunner, I was enticed by polars “advanced” heart rate sensors.Usually I tend to look for the cheapest option that has suitable features for my requirements.Issues with product:- I always connect the GPS, however in my activity history the route displayed is always incomplete and typically only shows about 10% of the full run.- The device provides no feedback that the H10 hrm is in use as opposed to the watch based heart rate sensor, although the documentation explains that the H10 will be used so long as it is paired the user experience is poor with no feedback to suggest where the heart is being sourced.- The device has failed to upload several training activities, meaning they are lost forever.- quite often (twice per week) I will need to reset the device to produce a successful uploadSummary:- unreliable upload & synchronisation (be prepared to lose your recorded workouts)- unreliable GPS (potentially a mobile phone issue)- poor feedback when using peripheral devicesWould not recommend this product to anyone, please consider your options carefully and choose a device that suits your purposes. My 5 year old fitbit surge does a better job than this.