Polar’s rugged Grit X fitness smartwatch offers 40 hours of GPS battery life
Today Polar has announced its new Grit X fitness smartwatch with incredibly advanced training features in a rugged body.
Polar built one of the most powerful Android Wear watches that we had the pleasure to use in the Polar M600 and has continued to make some of the best fitness-focused smartwatches of the last few years with the recent Polar Ignite as a perfect example.
The Grit X looks to continue this tradition with an impressive array of smart coaching features to help you maximize and track your fitness activity in a smartwatch that you won’t mind wearing all day.
Let’s take a closer look at the full feature set for the Polar Grit X.
Polar Grit X: Battery Life
Battery life is a big concern for a lot of users with smartwatches as most of us would rather not add another device that we need to charge every single day to our lives and the Grit X achieves in this regard.
The Polar Grit X can deliver up to 100 hours (a little over 4 days) of battery life if you use its power-saving options and even going all out with GPS and every other feature cranked up it will still last up to 40 hours on a single charge.
So whether you are tracking a full day ride or run or you are just getting away for a long weekend and don’t want to (or remember to) bring your charger the Polar Grit X will get by without a problem.
Polar Grit X: Smart Coaching Features
Buckle up, because it’s an extensive list. While I work on our best fitness trackers page and have an appreciation for those budget devices and what they can do, the Grit X is on another level entirely not only tracking your activity but really serving as your fitness trainer.
Polar Precision Prime is the heart rate monitoring tech found in the Grit X as well as the Polar Vantage and Polar Ignite. While it uses the same light-emitting optical heart rate tracking as many other smartwatches and fitness trackers, Polar adds a unique feature that is also measuring skin contact to allow it to deliver a better idea of your true heart rate by eliminating results that can be caused by the sort of vigorous movent that can happen while exercising.
Before you even go to sleep the Polar Grit X is looking to help you get ready for the next day with its Nightly Recharge feature that lets you know based on the previous day’s activity what you should be doing to help you be back in top form for tomorrow.
Take a look at your Sleep Plus Stages results in the morning to assess how you rested and what your body will be ready for today.
When you need to just relax, Serene can walk you through a guided breathing exercise.
FitSpark is the training guide built into your Grit X and it will create workouts based on your fitness level, training history, and your current state of recovery to help you achieve your fitness goals while keeping yourself healthy.
Training Load Pro ensures that you are staying in the right zone with your training to neither lose ground or overtrain yourself by looking at your Cardio, Muscle, and Perceived Load to make sure you have a clear picture of whether your training sessions are taking you in the right direction.
While Polar Precision Prime is tracking your heart rate, Running Power looks to track your muscles’ work rate. Often this would be achieved with a foot pod, but the Grit X can do it from your wrist calculating in factors like hills to ensure that you maintain a steady effort throughout your run.
Speaking of hills, Hill Splitter is one of the newest features, automatically detecting whether you are on an ascent or a decline and it will give you a detailed breakdown of how you performed in these areas to help you calibrate your effort for future runs or rides.
And finally, FuelWise is Polar’s way of trying to keep your body topped up and ready to go for all of this activity by giving you recommendations regarding hydration and nutrition.
To take full advantage of the data from your Polar Grit X you will need to use the Polar Flow web service or app in the Play Store.
Polar Grit X: Extra Features
While they certainly can be useful for your training, Polar has introduced a couple of new features that are also just helpful outside of fitness.
A new weather guidance feature gives you a glance at the weather for the day and coming days so you can plan accordingly.
Finally, integration with Komoot will give you maps of your routes along with turn by turn directions on your wrist.
Polar Grit X: Pricing and Availability
The Polar Grit X is available starting today directly from Polar for $429.95, which is a bit pricey for those strictly in the smartwatch market, but affordable by serious fitness watch standards and this definitely falls into the latter category.
You can get the Grit X in either black or green in a medium/large band or in white for a small/medium band. Additional silicon bands are available in all three colors for $29.95. Textile options include a red or blue paracord and a Green Tundra for $39.95. And a very traditional leather band can be picked up for $49.95.