Polar Ignite 2 – GPS Fitness watch for women – Sports Smart

I took the video just after I got this watch a few months ago. It just shows the watch up close and everything you get in the box.

I’ve had this for a few months now and it has become my go-to watch for fitness tracking and activity. I was initially supremely impressed with it, then I fell out of love with it for a very short time due to one or two annoying little niggles, but after really getting to grips with it and customising it, I’ve got it to the point where it really feels like my watch now and I’ve either dealt with the niggles or just learned to live with them — and to be honest, I haven’t had many issues at all.

The UI is similar to older Polar watches, which is no bad thing. At first, I noticed a bit of slowness in the responsivity of the UI, but either I’ve got used to it or it has got better over the last couple of months. Either way, it simply doesn’t bother me now. The app is great on Android and does a good job of consolidating fitness, sleep and health tracking over time. There are a few clever calibration (as in calibrating with you!) features, such as different levels of fitness test to gauge your starting point fitness-wise and suggested workouts.

There is only one physical button; most of your interactions with the UI take place through the touchscreen. This bothered me hugely at first — I wear it when out on runs and walks and in winter, I wear gloves. If all interactions take place on the touchscreen, that’s a problem as even touch-enabled gloves are nowhere near as accurate as your fingers are. However, I’ve learned to adapt to it so that I’m now only needing to touch the watch before starting and after finishing an activity, but still, there is a period of adaptation there.

It has a really nice big AMOLED (416×416) display (the entire watch is only 43mm wide, so it looks really sharp) but despite the large display, it still looks sleek. It feels very durable and although it is made of plastic, it still feels great. It’s really thin compared to my other (cheaper) smartwatch/fitness tracker but still feels like it can stand up to a good workout. However, the watch strap isn’t great and I replaced that very early on — it has a funny hole that makes you force the excess strap under the rest of the strap, and that kind of makes it a bit of a pain to take off and put on. But with my new strap, that’s not a problem any more.

Battery life is pretty good. It needs a charge every five days or so, but if you turn on the “always-on” display, that will drop to about a day of use before it needs charging again. You don’t really need the always-on display though — it detects when you’re looking at it pretty consistently. If you’re using the GPS and body monitoring features while training, you’ll still get a good few sessions in before it needs a recharge — I reckon you can do about 2 hours of training a day under normal use and still only have to charge once every 4 days or so. I’ve heard that it can do as much as 30 hours of GPS/body monitoring enabled training sessions in one go, but I’m nowhere near the level of needing to test that out so I can’t confirm for sure. However, I will say that doing multiple training sessions day after day does take a toll on the battery life as you would expect. You can also enable a battery-saver mode for training sessions which triples the battery life at the expense of GPS accuracy.

I really, really like this watch. Just under 300 seems really quite reasonable for what you’re getting. It looks great and, as a non-elite athlete but just someone who exercises, this ticks all the boxes. It does a great job of all the smartphone duties — notification alerts, music controls etc. — and a very decent job of the fitness tracking activities. I’m very happy to recommend it.

Was looking for months for a new watch. Wanted one which wasn’t too big and not plastic looking. Have bought a metal strap and screen protector, both through Amazon, to go with this.

Tracks all my runs across various apps from strava, nike and adidas

An impressive watch, with an instant premium look and feel about it. More than just a simple smart watch. It comes with 2 different size wrist bands, which is perfect so you dont need to worry whether you’ve ordered the right size or not. Perfect for both men and women. Its comfortable to wear with its adjustable strap. You can download the polar flow app which is a free fitness and training app, available on android and ios. It’s also compatible with other fitness apps including strava and nike plus. It has a really good long lasting battery life. Its large colourful display is clear to view and easy to navigate. It has multiple sports profiles, an integrated gps and advanced heart rate monitoring. Wearing the watch over night it records and shows you how well you’ve recovered from your day. Use to set your workouts and keep on top of your fitness, whether your a beginner or been keeping fit for awhile. It alerts you when you are getting phone calls, texts and notifications. View the weather forecast and listen to your music. The possibilities of getting the full use of the watch are endless with a vast amount of functions. Easy enough to set up with no issues what so ever. Looks and feels great on. Really is an impressive watch.

This is an attractive, comfortable, well-sized smartwatch with a clear screen / display. The packaging is confidence-inspiring for the price -while straightforward, it offers good protection (which is what counts), is conveniently sized for shipping and suggests care has been taken over the product.

The positive impressions continue with the watch (aka ‘wrist computer’) itself. Extracting from the package confirms quality materials and assembly, and the attractive styling in the pictures is confirmed by the product itself. While stated to be ‘unisex’, I personally think the combination of off-white strap colour and gold finish lean more in the direction of the feminine part of the market, but like most aesthetic matters, this is largely a matter of individual opinion and taste, so your mileage, as ever, may vary. The watch and strap however are quite substantial -larger than my iWatch, so it has a reasonable aesthetic and practical presence on the wrist.

Charging time is impressively brisk, although personally I prefer the disc type chargers of, say, an iWatch to the smaller rectangular type here -again, a question of taste, and possibly also a simple case of ‘use makes master’. It works very well however, and being a USB type is very compact. Battery life also seems good. The screen is, as noted, quite large, certainly clear -it could perhaps do with a slightly greater brightness option for use at a glance in high-glare conditions, but this can improve with different faces. The power-saving provided by automatically dimming the screen is effective, though it does seem a little brisk -a very minor quibble however.

Connecting to a smart-phone is as straightforward as you would hope, when the main features come into play. I haven’t tried accessing the full range of services etc. yet, but it is impressively comprehensive for the modest price. The heart-rate monitor seems effective, and correlates well to a calibrated example, and the training programmes, sport profiles etc. appear to have potential. Sleep-tracking may be more problematic if you don’t happen to like sleeping with a moderately substantial smartwatch strapped to your wrist, but this will vary from person to person as always. The weather, notifications options typical for a quality smartwatch are present and correct, and work well, as does the GPS feature, summaries and reminders to move if you have been sitting too long There is, therefore, a lot here to explore.

All told, a quality smartwatch, nicely styled and well-made, with a decently sized screen and lots of fitness options to work with, offered at a reasonable price. If you are in the market for a smartwatch around this price point, this is recommended.