Which Unit : Polar vs Garmin

[Pah Bear]

Been using the Polar RS800 and for years knew nothing else neither needed anything else. Then along came Windows 10 and the world cave caving in. No iR port support and thus useless as I cannot download any data. Also always been a bit aggro with Polar for only having a service center in Gauteng. Turnaround time is not bad but the drag of every time having to post up North was irritating.

 

Got me the Edge 500 and the world came together again. Need to upgrade to cater for my running, but won't go back to Polar. The Garmin failed me once, and seemed terminal but seems to have 9 lives and is going strong again.

 

Old technology or not, by stopping to support their loyal following without even an alternative offer is just poor service.

[Pure Savage]

In normal careful fashion I managed to snap another mount for the 705 today, went to the garmin SA online shop, clicked on the item, still in stock. ordered with free delivery. Thats backing your product, still has stock of item 9 years later!!! 

[awesme]

I love the Garmin tech,

 

but because of the local support (lack to useless) I'm liable to say, if you know the Polar is good, will do what you need, and their support is good, then rather go that way.

 

G

[raptor-22]

My pal cracked the screen of his 705. Navworld replaced it with a 2nd hand out cover free of charge.

[Bateleur1]

Had a look at the Polar V800 and it is not a bad product and for multisport is propably not a bad buy. But I am still inclined to favour Garmin.

[SwissVan]

Had a look at the Polar V800 and it is not a bad product and for multisport is propably not a bad buy. But I am still inclined to favour Garmin.

Life long polar user I am, Had a V800 since it was launched and use it for all my sport (swim, cycle, run) and M400 (wife's for running).

 

Long story short, as you said it's not a bad product and they work pretty well if you just need a gps type indicator / recording device for basic data. Activity tracking with the V800 is quite good if you into that sort of stuff.

 

Hate the polar Flow software, IMO it's designed by a bunch of geeks who think activity tracking (as opposed to sports tracking) is the centre of the universe.

 

IMO polar are struggling to keep up with the latest trends, tech and what customers want. Even though they are considered to be the HRM experts there is much more to sports watches / computers nowadays than heart rate monitoring and this is where they have dropped the ball or lost the plot.

[2wieltjies]

I have now got polar v800 v650 and Garmin Edge 520.

 

By far I like the Garmin much more, smaller on the bike than 650, the software on cell phone much better, same reason Swissvan said in above post.

 

will keep using v800 for daily use and for gym. but for cycling garmin all the way

[BMXER]

I used a polar CS600 for over 10 years, now with the windows 10 issue I moved to garmin.

 

Polar let me down and have permanently lost a once loyal customer.

[KarlvN]

Have a polar V800.

On my last ride I had a bit of an incident (Wooden stile crash at 43kph or thereabouts according to polar, 2 x broken arms, seriously bloody face, heavy concussion, properly scratched bike board, 7 days in hospital kind of nonsense)

Polar, which was strapped to the handlebars at the time on Polar cradle, sustained ZERO damage...not even a mark. It is almost 2 months after the crash, have not ridden yet, but have started wearing the watch again. I am yet to charge it via the usb cable. It is still going strong, and looks like the day I bought it.

 

Cant say much about Garmin, but the V800 has not given me any reason to doubt its ability.

[Bateleur1]

Been using my S720 for over 12 years.  But the Win10 issue is also what ticked me off.