Fitness watches have evolved beyond logging your miles and calculating your pace. The hot new trend in fitness watches is training. Watches are now training companions that guide you in your workout and help you with your overall health by tracking your sleep and your heart rate 24/7. Polar’s newest fitness smartwatch, the Ignite, packages all these features and more into an affordable fitness tracker.
The Polar Ignite is a multi-sport fitness watch with over 100 different available activities. Adding your favorite activities to the watch is simple. Just fire up the companion Polar Flow mobile app and check off the sports that you do the most. Not only does it support land-based workouts, the Ignite is also water resistant to 30 meters allowing you to wear it in the shower and while swimming. It supports both pool and open water swimming with metrics like distance, strokes, and more.
It targets athletes and fitness enthusiasts who are goal-oriented. The watch is equipped with FitSpark, a personalized training program that is tailored to your current fitness level. The watch uses your training history, sleep status, and other information to recommend exercises to improve your cardio health, and performance. Say goodbye to guessing whether you need to bike 5 miles or 10. You can choose one of the recommended workouts and hit the target goals that are best suited to your current level of fitness. For runners, the Ignite offers a VO2 max calculation and running-specific training plans for 5K up to a marathon.
Polar also upped its sleep measurements in the Ignite with new sleep stage analysis and a sleep score that quickly tells you how well you’ve slept. This sleep information is combined with stress and recovery information in another new metric called Nightly Recharge. Nightly Recharge allows you to gauge your recovery to help optimize your sleep and manage stress, so you are ready and raring to go when it is time to workout. If you are feeling overly stressed, the Ignite has the new Serene breathing exercises that can help you relax.
On the hardware side, the Ignite is equipped with a color touchscreen display (240×204) and a single button for navigating the watch’s many features. It measures 43mm and weighs 43g with the wristband. The stainless steel bezel is paired with a silicone or TPU wristband available in white, yellow, or black options. It supports any 20mm watch band allowing you to change the look from sporty to dress-casual in less than a minute. The watch includes a wrist heart rate sensor, integrated GPS/Glonass, and Bluetooth LE.
The Polar Ignite is available now for $230 from Polar’s website. You can choose between small and medium/large sizes and color options of a black bezel with a yellow wristband and a silver bezel with either a black wristband or a white wristband. New color options added in Fall 2019 include a rose gold bezel with a pink wristband and a copper bezel with a black wristband. Polar is also selling accessory bands in black, white, and yellow for $25 each.
