The Polar Vantage V2 is a premium multisport smartwatch that is designed to help athletes and fitness enthusiasts optimize their training and achieve their fitness goals. This sleek and lightweight smartwatch is perfect for any workout and comes equipped with advanced features that make it stand out from the competition.
One of the most impressive features of the Polar Vantage V2 is its advanced wrist-based HR tracking. This feature provides users with accurate and real-time heart rate data, which is essential for optimizing training and avoiding overtraining. The watch also comes equipped with GPS, which allows users to track their routes and distances accurately.
In addition to its HR tracking and GPS features, the Polar Vantage V2 also comes with a host of other advanced features. These include running and cycling performance tests, FuelWise, route guidance, and sleep tracking. These features help users personalize their training and achieve their fitness goals more efficiently. The Polar Vantage V2 is compatible with Polar Flow, a free online tool for planning and analyzing workouts and sleep. This tool is available on desktop and mobile, making it easy for users to access their data from anywhere. The watch also connects easily with online sports communities such as MyFitnessPal, Endomondo, Nike+ Run Club, Strava, TrainingPeaks, and Adidas Running by Runtastic.
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RR Jr –
The Polar brand has always intrigued me. I always associated the Polar brand with providing incredible data points about exercise and fitness. The Vantage V2 and Polar brand do not disappoint! Admittedly, I am a person that gets easily frustrated with technology, but working out and wearing this watch for the past 5 days has been simple and a joy. The moment I am done with my workouts there is a spate of data available instantaneously on the watch face. (I don’t even have to wait to synch my watch to an app to do a deeper dive into what happened during my training session) Additionally, launching any of the screens “on the fly” is as easy as swiping up/down or left/right. Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about the Vantage V2 is that looking at my data or even updating screens to suit my preference/update metrics is never a challenge to accomplish — something that I have always been intimidated doing with my old watch! I find the software/user interface to be extremely intuitive. Additionally, the Polar Flow app that is used is just incredible. I am used to using a very popular competitor’s watch and app, and I find this to be far superior. Multiple segments of the app available for easy data consumption. I am finding everything is presented in a format that is approachable and understandable! The more I poke around, the more intrigued I get — and less confused!! For me….that is a huge compliment!! Congratulations Polar – I’m hooked!
tom i. –
I’m writing this product first review here after 2w of use. It will be review again from time to time because 5y with Polar – I learned that your watch has its own personality.First, myself: I am an owner of some Polar products and as written, the past 5y I owned two Polar v800 which was their flagship product by the time I purchased. Why two? scorll down and you’ll learn.I run 20-30 miles per week all year long. Living outside the big city, my run paths are never the same. I can run 3M road path and the day later run 15M on trails. From time to time, I do tempo running, Fartlek training, running events, hills etc.I also ride my road bike once or twice a month, I ski for a week every year, I swim twice a week during summertime and I hit the gym at least twice a week, well, when the gym is opened and not closed due to a lockdown.In my day to day life I’d rather walk or ride the bike than taking the car whenever possible and when I’m around home.Key features and main improvements (again, compared to V800) I was happy to find during my first 2w with V2:- First, design: this watch is beautiful (compared to V800 everything is beautiful), with a surprising low weight. State of the art. It also has a touch screen which I generally loved. But see my wonders just below.- Heart rate – The embedded HR is great to use. I check it multiple times a day, when training and in rest.- The HR is also linked to the sleeping activity report which I check on a daily basis. They tell you how was your night with many KPIs and measurements involved and I think it’s a very useful feature.- Hill splitter: Great feature! Living on a hilly village, sometimes more than half of my running will be either uphill or downhill. The hill splitter helps you to analyze the road and to split it into segments and every segment can stand for its own.- Watt measurement when running: Although little predictable, the watch can tell your continous energy transfer. It is affected mostly from the surface (up/down/flat) and your pace. I guess one of my upcoming training will be to try to stick to specific power vaule.- The Polar Flow App has some signifiacnt improvements too and being able to analyze every segment of your run with terms of distance, pace, HR, power, cadence, incline etc. is a significant improvement that can really benefit and affect your performance.- Komoot link will be tested soon. As a trail runner who got lost in the past, the map on your watch can be very userful.- Controlling Apple music directly from my watch is the best thing ever, unless you are my 3y old kid who does not understand how I lower the volume everytime he turns up the volume on our amp.- Some other features I can mention are Serene (breath practice, which I highly recommend), fueling (basically, eating and drinking reminder) and notifications (such: “get limber”). I think I can let my brain tell me when to drink, but the fact that someone in Polar thought about those features needs to be appreciated (although more work need to be done, for instance, how to limber?).Some questions and wonders:- Has the way that activity is measured changed? The #1 feature of any sports watch is measuring your daily activity. That can really make a cough potato into athlete. I easily get the 100% daily goal in (rare) days that I don’t practice. That was quite challenging in V800. In addition, I in V800 every 1M of running turned normally into 20% of daily activity, in V2 I think that’s more like 22-23%. If you run 10M (which I do at least once a week) that’s 25% (in absolute numbers) above my previous watch.- Where is the GoPro pairing? Very important when Skiing or biking and I could not find this great feature from V800.- H10 HR sensor pairing – a disappointment. Out of 20 times I tried to pair I succedded only once (and even then I don’t really know what was the source of my watch display, the watch itself or the sensor). The “couldn’t find any sensor” display is really annoying and reminds me on other Polar behaviours which I write down here. Moreover, if the HR from the watch is accurate (and 5-10% deviation is fine from my side), I don’t find any reason why Polar recommend to use the H10 sensor and I think they should be more transparent with this one.- The touch screen is great as written above, but you can’t shower with this!!! everytime I shower with my watch virtual buttons are selected. I am happy to change a song, but not when I shower.- The battary can last for ~3 days and no one can tell me other stories. Yes, I do believe that if you disconnect the continous HR tracking, your phone notifications or your mobile pairing it can last longer, but this is 2021 and I don’t have any reason to do so. The bad thing? This is a new watch and I believe that approx in 1y from now it will have to be charged daily. The charging itself is quick, but it must be done frequently.- Polarflow still lack some important features such trends, w/w or m/m comparison and year summary. It is also constantly changing. That’s good, but liitle chaotic. Most of all, I think that this gear should ask YOU what are YOUR goals and to help you achieve them. For instance: lose weight, train 5 times a week, ride 50M or run 10M in less than 80m. I couldn’t find any advisory from Polar products with this goals and think they should be the basic of every sports watch.Last and least, why my Polar V800 was only 3* rate and how V2 can be a true 5* watch:All in all, a great product. I like to spend my money on products that I feel that they are best of breed, and this is a significant improvement against V800. However:- When I had Polar V800 – I had to change the wrist every year. I think I spent about 50% of the price of a new watch on changing wrists. It is never about the money, it is about your feeling that again and again the wrist is broken, driving your car to the service center, wait, explain, etc. I really expect this wrist to stay for a much longer period of time.- Moreover, my both V800 died the same way: “Foggy” on the inside of the glass, that turned out the power forever in 48h. And why? because I love hot baths. I will remove my watch while bathing, but I expect this product to last at least 4 years.- Updating the app turned to be impossible. Neither directly from my watch to my Iphone, nor via wires to my PC. I had to do soooooo many weird things to send data to my polarflow such turn on and off the flight mode and many other unacceptable methods which I’d rather to forget and I hope V2 won’t remind me of them.As a recap, again, highly recommended. Good value for your money. I promise to update this review from time to time to see if I am satisfied the next…4 years.
WillieWildcat –
There is a major flaw with this watch that all need to know. First, please look at some other online reviews as they are exactly the same as my experience (DC Rainmaker). I bought this watch because I have a polar h10 HR strap that I use for cycling and it is awesome. It made sense to try and keep the same make right?Another reason I bought this was for the training plans. Plans worked well and I like the fact that you can have that guided running plan on the watch. However, the HR monitor on this watch is a complete deal breaker. Actually its a watch breaker because it is highly INACCURATE. Its like the HR stats go MIA for at least five minutes randomly. One minute my HR is reading 120 and while keeping same pace it will drop to 69. Another example is my HR was over 160 and it was reading 112.My hope is that Polar will fix the watch but from reading other reviews, this has been a problem for a long time. For the price of this watch all of the features should always work. Look at other options and do not purchase this watch.
Daniel –
First, the elephant in the room. Wrist-based HR monitors are crap, and Polar even alludes to this in their documentation. If you want accurate HR numbers, buy something like the Polar H10 (a must-have in my opinion). I purchased this watch for the GPS and battery life. A 3-hour run destroys my phone battery with all the sensors going. I don’t use the phone alerts; I don’t listen to music. Heck, sometimes I don’t even take my phone running! The GPS is pretty spot-on with my phone’s accuracy, and the battery life is good. The Polar app integrates nicely with Strava. The rest of the app features are meh, but I bought a watch, not a flashy companion app. The watch recharges very quickly. It is expensive, but I think it’s a great performer compared to the price points of the top-of-the-line Garmin stuff. The V2 is a great bargain on that scale! It works seamlessly with my H10 HR monitor. I run 5-6 days a week, and this has been an integral piece of maintaining training metrics. If you’re more interested in texting from your wrist, go buy an Apple product.
Bronson E. –
Really enjoy this product. The watch and HR monitor really helped me in my cardiovascular training by giving me hard data to track my performance. Also the sleep tracking feature has been very interesting. Access to the polar flow also helps tie in all the information.
CHRISTA STUDZINSKI –
The main problem for me was that Syncing with the computer was very erratic, and the cell phone app did not work for me at all. But it seemed accurate , except perhaps for swimming, and had many nice features.
MosCD –
Recovery pro is buggy, it shows false information some times. I used to own V800 and although the Recovery status was very basic compared to this watch but it was straight forward, if you train less it goes down so you kind if dial yourself in the mid-range. This watch is complicated to a buggy level. I started training and Recovery pro started to pickup after 3 weeks which is fine, then I stopped training for a while and came back to train on non steady pace only to find the Recovery pro going nuts on reports, so it shows “Over training” although last training was 1 week away, and it stays there for 2 weeks until it dials back to normal state once you train again it goes through the roof to “overtraining”. This is a buggy flow and it shouldn’t be for a watch that costs like 800$
stan-p –
The display is biggest disappointment here. I had $80 Amazifit 5 years ago. It had the same quality but was brighter than maximum brightness of the Polar Vantage V2. The overall product looks cheap. I am returning it. I will go for Garmin 7x Solar Sapphire (of course it is another price level).
keenonarts –
This is my 4th sports watch and is the best so far, the others were a Polar, a Garmin and a Coros. I mainly use it for running, cycling and walking. I don’t have the need for offline maps and music on a watch.This is easily my favourite watch and ecosystem for what I do compared to the other devices/brands I’ve used.The battery life for activities is very good, and ok for normal wear.I find the Polar button layout better easier to use during activities than the others.For training the Web flow app makes it easy to drill into sections of an activity to examine your performance in detail in way you can’t on Garmin or Coros. I find the three separate sets of manual, automatic, and hill-splitter laps useful too. Generally the app is well thought out to present data to you in a way that is easy to find and understand.The GPS is ok, not better or worse than the other recent watches I’ve had. The wrist heart rate monitor seems pretty consistent so long as you make sure the strap isn’t too loose. My came with a chest H10 HRM but I only used that once to check it worked ok, so can’t comment other than it linked to the watch easily and worked.I don’t like wearing even a simple wristband at night, but I did try the sleep tracking for a while and I felt it was accurate.The navigation works well for me, but I also made the one off purchase of komoot maps, which was about $30 at the time.
tom i. –
I’m writing this product first review here after 2w of use. It will be review again from time to time because 5y with Polar – I learned that your watch has its own personality.First, myself: I am an owner of some Polar products and as written, the past 5y I owned two Polar v800 which was their flagship product by the time I purchased. Why two? scorll down and you’ll learn.I run 20-30 miles per week all year long. Living outside the big city, my run paths are never the same. I can run 3M road path and the day later run 15M on trails. From time to time, I do tempo running, Fartlek training, running events, hills etc.I also ride my road bike once or twice a month, I ski for a week every year, I swim twice a week during summertime and I hit the gym at least twice a week, well, when the gym is opened and not closed due to a lockdown.In my day to day life I’d rather walk or ride the bike than taking the car whenever possible and when I’m around home.Key features and main improvements (again, compared to V800) I was happy to find during my first 2w with V2:- First, design: this watch is beautiful (compared to V800 everything is beautiful), with a surprising low weight. State of the art. It also has a touch screen which I generally loved. But see my wonders just below.- Heart rate – The embedded HR is great to use. I check it multiple times a day, when training and in rest.- The HR is also linked to the sleeping activity report which I check on a daily basis. They tell you how was your night with many KPIs and measurements involved and I think it’s a very useful feature.- Hill splitter: Great feature! Living on a hilly village, sometimes more than half of my running will be either uphill or downhill. The hill splitter helps you to analyze the road and to split it into segments and every segment can stand for its own.- Watt measurement when running: Although little predictable, the watch can tell your continous energy transfer. It is affected mostly from the surface (up/down/flat) and your pace. I guess one of my upcoming training will be to try to stick to specific power vaule.- The Polar Flow App has some signifiacnt improvements too and being able to analyze every segment of your run with terms of distance, pace, HR, power, cadence, incline etc. is a significant improvement that can really benefit and affect your performance.- Komoot link will be tested soon. As a trail runner who got lost in the past, the map on your watch can be very userful.- Controlling Apple music directly from my watch is the best thing ever, unless you are my 3y old kid who does not understand how I lower the volume everytime he turns up the volume on our amp.- Some other features I can mention are Serene (breath practice, which I highly recommend), fueling (basically, eating and drinking reminder) and notifications (such: “get limber”). I think I can let my brain tell me when to drink, but the fact that someone in Polar thought about those features needs to be appreciated (although more work need to be done, for instance, how to limber?).Some questions and wonders:- Has the way that activity is measured changed? The #1 feature of any sports watch is measuring your daily activity. That can really make a cough potato into athlete. I easily get the 100% daily goal in (rare) days that I don’t practice. That was quite challenging in V800. In addition, I in V800 every 1M of running turned normally into 20% of daily activity, in V2 I think that’s more like 22-23%. If you run 10M (which I do at least once a week) that’s 25% (in absolute numbers) above my previous watch.- Where is the GoPro pairing? Very important when Skiing or biking and I could not find this great feature from V800.- H10 HR sensor pairing – a disappointment. Out of 20 times I tried to pair I succedded only once (and even then I don’t really know what was the source of my watch display, the watch itself or the sensor). The “couldn’t find any sensor” display is really annoying and reminds me on other Polar behaviours which I write down here. Moreover, if the HR from the watch is accurate (and 5-10% deviation is fine from my side), I don’t find any reason why Polar recommend to use the H10 sensor and I think they should be more transparent with this one.- The touch screen is great as written above, but you can’t shower with this!!! everytime I shower with my watch virtual buttons are selected. I am happy to change a song, but not when I shower.- The battary can last for ~3 days and no one can tell me other stories. Yes, I do believe that if you disconnect the continous HR tracking, your phone notifications or your mobile pairing it can last longer, but this is 2021 and I don’t have any reason to do so. The bad thing? This is a new watch and I believe that approx in 1y from now it will have to be charged daily. The charging itself is quick, but it must be done frequently.- Polarflow still lack some important features such trends, w/w or m/m comparison and year summary. It is also constantly changing. That’s good, but liitle chaotic. Most of all, I think that this gear should ask YOU what are YOUR goals and to help you achieve them. For instance: lose weight, train 5 times a week, ride 50M or run 10M in less than 80m. I couldn’t find any advisory from Polar products with this goals and think they should be the basic of every sports watch.Last and least, why my Polar V800 was only 3* rate and how V2 can be a true 5* watch:All in all, a great product. I like to spend my money on products that I feel that they are best of breed, and this is a significant improvement against V800. However:- When I had Polar V800 – I had to change the wrist every year. I think I spent about 50% of the price of a new watch on changing wrists. It is never about the money, it is about your feeling that again and again the wrist is broken, driving your car to the service center, wait, explain, etc. I really expect this wrist to stay for a much longer period of time.- Moreover, my both V800 died the same way: “Foggy” on the inside of the glass, that turned out the power forever in 48h. And why? because I love hot baths. I will remove my watch while bathing, but I expect this product to last at least 4 years.- Updating the app turned to be impossible. Neither directly from my watch to my Iphone, nor via wires to my PC. I had to do soooooo many weird things to send data to my polarflow such turn on and off the flight mode and many other unacceptable methods which I’d rather to forget and I hope V2 won’t remind me of them.As a recap, again, highly recommended. Good value for your money. I promise to update this review from time to time to see if I am satisfied the next…4 years.
Gary Buckle –
A quality product that excels with tracking the vital information needed for serous runners and athletes. I’ve owned a number of these devices over tha last 10 years including apple devices and Garmin and whilst these devices are also premium products, Polar suits my needs more than anything else. Simple to use but offering feedback that is vital for any serious user at an affordable price. Honestly one of the best investments I’ve ever made along with quality shoes etc. Don’t hesitate if you’re looking for a device to track anything from a 10km up to a 100km, a squash game or a 12 rounder on a punchbag. I’ve done them all! The vantage is up to the task. Thanks polar!
WillieWildcat –
There is a major flaw with this watch that all need to know. First, please look at some other online reviews as they are exactly the same as my experience (DC Rainmaker). I bought this watch because I have a polar h10 HR strap that I use for cycling and it is awesome. It made sense to try and keep the same make right?Another reason I bought this was for the training plans. Plans worked well and I like the fact that you can have that guided running plan on the watch. However, the HR monitor on this watch is a complete deal breaker. Actually its a watch breaker because it is highly INACCURATE. Its like the HR stats go MIA for at least five minutes randomly. One minute my HR is reading 120 and while keeping same pace it will drop to 69. Another example is my HR was over 160 and it was reading 112.My hope is that Polar will fix the watch but from reading other reviews, this has been a problem for a long time. For the price of this watch all of the features should always work. Look at other options and do not purchase this watch.