![]() ![]() The Unite’s battery drained by around 20 percentage points an hour when I was running with an always-on screen (I don’t want to press a button or wait for the autowake to get its act together every time I want to glance at my stats). ![]() Not having built-in GPS also doesn’t seem to result in better battery life. Both the Watch GT 2e and Fitbit Charge 4 do. And even though the Unite is cheaper than other Polars at £134.50, there are many devices for that price or less that have built-in GPS. Even if you always run with your phone, as I do, connected GPS is not as accurate as built-in GPS. For outdoor activities like running and cycling, the Unite will link to your phone’s GPS to add accuracy, or you can rely on the accelerometer in the watch to track your run distance. Of course you can ignore these workouts and do your own – the watch tracks pretty much every type of exercise bar triathlon. An alternative 30-minute bodyweight workout was the only suggestion that seemed to fit with the poor night’s sleep the Unite had detected. After a night of sleep it rated as “compromised”, my cardio recommendations were a tough 54-minute tempo run or an easy run of over an hour, while the primary strength recommendation was a 51-minute workout. We got into the habit of removing the watch in the evening to avoid this, but a simple way to confirm when you actually went to bed would be handy.In practice, I did find the Unite was sometimes a little ambitious with its workout recommendations, especially for a watch aimed at beginners. There also doesn't appear to be any way to edit this data, because knocking off the time you were actually awake on the sofa would lead to a better overall sleep score. Then, when you go and get ready for bed, put out the bins, set the coffee machine, and so on, it will log all that activity as disturbances to your sleep - and say you've had a terrible sleep, even if you then go and have a good solid 8 hours of kip. However, the approach that Polar uses to categorise sleep isn't always sound: if you're static in the evening, like watching TV, the Unite will decide you're asleep and start logging sleep data. If you've have a bad sleep, it'll be recommended that you might want to rest instead. The data that the watch gathers will guide you towards the sort of exercise you should consider doing, with the FitSpark training guide suggesting workouts based on your profile and recovery status. It's a useful system - something rivals Garmin, Fitbit and soon Apple will offer - and this really plays into the recovery side of a healthy lifestyle. Essentially, if you're looking at this watch with running in mind, we'd urge you to consider something with integrated GPS, like the Polar Ignite or the Garmin Forerunner 45. For cyclists or walkers that's fine, but for runners - unless you absolutely always take your phone - it's a bit of a limitation. There's no GPS, as mentioned, so things like speed and distance are dependent on getting a GPS reading from your phone via the Polar Flow app. ![]() Ultimately, if heart rate accuracy is what you're after, the Polar Unite doesn't seem to be quite on the pulse. In many cases the average is close - within 5bpm over a 90 minute workout - but it's not as precise as you might want it to be.Īt other times we've found the Unite to struggle to return an accurate reading, dragging down averages and leaving some strange HR traces that don't reflect the experience of that activity. Comparing data from the Polar Unite and the Garmin Fenix 6 Pro and, on a number of occasions, Polar often starts lower than Garmin and fails to reach the same peaks. That often results in a resting heart rate that's reassuringly low, and slower heart rate rises than you'd expect once you start an activity. It corrects itself soon after, but again, when exercising, these glances are brief - you don't want to be taking your eyes off the road on a fast downhill descent for any longer than absolutely necessary. This might sound like a minor point, but we've been caught out by it many times, glancing when riding, seeing old data and wondering why the heart rate displayed didn't match that which we perceived. Glance at your watch and you'll see old data, which will be shown for a brief moment before it updates. There's another downside which is a little more technical: when the display wakes, it wakes the screen showing what was on it when it turned off. That's a slight downside when you're in the zone and wondering if you're on target for a personal best but end up struggling to get the screen to illuminate. That's just fine when you're strolling down the high street, so it doesn't randomly switch on and off, but means that you can't glance when exercising without a much more deliberate lift of the arm. That awakening action has to be rather a deliberate too. ![]()
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