The Polar FT/ Heart Rate Watch / Monitor is designed to let you improve the efficiency with which you work out and burn calories as well as helping you track your progress as your fitness improves. It’s also handy if you want to know the time, I suppose.
Design
The watch part is sturdy, well built and contains all the features and details you could reasonably expect. It is nice on the eye without having anything particularly arresting about it, which is quite possibly the idea. Anyone who is not familiar with heart rate watches surely wouldn’t recognise it as anything other than a good quality sports watch. It is waterproof up to 50 metres, so swimmers and heavy perspirers should have no problems using it.
The chest strap is comfortable to use and the battery is easy to replace when necessary, which is not always the case with other heart rate monitors.
Notable Specifications
The key feature of the Polar FT7 Heart Rate Watch / Monitor is what the company has rather excitingly called EnergyPointer. This nimble little addition gives you the good news when you are burning fat or have improved your level of fitness. Whether it works in reverse as you sit on the couch eating chips is unclear but it is without doubt a motivational feature of interest to athletes and people looking to lose weight as part of an exercise program.
You can either program in manually the heart rate zone you want to work within or choose an automatic level. An alert goes off when you exceed the desired rate. The OwnCal feature records and stored the amount of calories burned off.
Summary
The Polar FT7 Heart Rate Watch / Monitor is a great motivational and practical tool for athletes in training. It is also a useful way for people who are doing exercise for health or weight reasons to monitor their progress and avoid letting their heart rate exceed a safe limit. The fact it can be used as a nice looking, stand alone watch means that it will not only appeal to hard core fitness fans.
