After debuting my Polar Vantage V3 at the New York Marathon, I have been testing it for a few days in my training and I want to tell you about some of its most notable new features.

I suppose that at this point few people consider training without a heart rate monitor, and if you don´t know how you are performing, how your body adapts to your training, how you recover, etc... it will be very difficult to improve and meet your goals. But equally or more important than training is your daily activity and your nightly rest. With the new Vantage V3, Polar wanted to go further and bet not only on the search for high performance but also on health and quality of sleep.

Among the new functions to understand and improve our health, the possibility of performing a complete ECG (electrocardiogram) on the wrist in just 30 seconds, measuring oxygen saturation or the variation in nocturnal skin temperature stands out . Data that will help us anticipate or warn of diseases, check our acclimatization at altitude or detect medical problems.

In addition, thanks to the new optical sensor of Polar Vantage V3 (Polar Elixir™), the pulse measurement on the wrist is even more precise than in its previous version (Polar Precision Prime).

Although I started by mentioning the new health-related functions, what catches my attention the most about the new V3 is its design. Not only is it a very light watch (57g) but I was surprised by the brightness and sharpness of the 1.39” AMOLED touch screen. The colors are very vivid and it gives me great visibility in any lighting condition. All this without reducing autonomy, which reaches 8 days in watch mode and up to 61 hours in maximum precision GPS mode. The Polar Vantage V3 GPS supports dual frequency and multiple satellite frequency bands, allowing it to be much more accurate in low signal environments such as forests or between large buildings.

For me, another of the great novelties is offline navigation with offline maps that we can load directly on the watch. Polar Vantage V3 has 32 GB storage that allows you to upload maps from anywhere in the world through the Polar Flow web service completely free of charge. Includes areas of Europe and North America. In addition, as in its previous V2 model, it still maintains the possibility of loading routes with turn-by-turn directions through Komoot, but this time on a map in which we will see all the trails around us.

Polar Vantage V3 is a multisport product and proof of this is the possibility of being able to register almost any sport, there are more than 150 sport profiles available. I mainly use the Trail Running, cycling and HIIT profiles and each one allows me to configure the information I want to see in each training view to my liking. Additionally, I can load scheduled workouts from the Polar Flow web/app so I can follow my training schedule directly from the watch.

The “ Fit Spark ” function is also very useful, which suggests daily workouts based on our physical condition and previous training sessions. It´s ideal for days when you want to train but you´re too lazy to run or don´t know what to do. It´s like your personal trainer on your wrist. It guides you through each exercise with animations, duration and rest times. Something that I also value is the recording of daily activity and the quantity and quality of sleep.

In my daily life, smartwatch functions help me not miss anything. Mobile notifications, which allow me to see all the WhatsApp messages or calls that come into my phone, music controls or the weather, help me stay up to date.

In short, for me it is the ideal companion not only to train but also to recover and better understand my state of health.