What is it? Well, if you weren’t listening the first time, it’s a Polar FT4 heart rate monitor and sports watch. Basically, it’s for people who want heart rate-based info during their workout to keep their fitness training simple.
How does it work? You attach a strap (the heart monitor) snugly around your chest and, when you’re exercising, it feeds your heart rate to the watch, and also tells you how many calories you’re burning. Even when your workout gets sweaty (sorry), the strap doesn’t rub and after a while you won’t even notice it.
Why is it so great? If you come over all giddy when faced with something technical, you’ll go gaga for this. The TNT member who trialled this kit set up their details (height, weight, etc) on the watch in under 15 minutes and felt so confident they used it for their evening run. The watch doubles as, well, a watch – you can also use it as an alarm, and the best bit? All of your workouts are saved, so you can make comparisons.
If you want to ramp things up a notch, you can also set a ‘target zone’, which might be suitable for people pushing their limits or those who love a high-intensity workout.
Any downsides? If you use this as a watch, not just a piece of kit, careful that you don’t use the backlight too often as it’ll run down the battery. Then again, that’s true of most electrical equipment. We were hard-pushed to find any negatives – this is a sturdy, hardworking bit of kit that we’ll be using for a long time to come.
Click here to visit the Polar website and find out more.
