Since I have larger wrists and love big watches, those two other Polar watches are best for me. That said, the Vantage M3’s smaller size and lower price will appeal to more people.
We’ve seen Garmin, Coros, and Suunto recently release watches in the mid-range market as well, so this space is heating up. Polar is clearly focused on serving as your advanced training tool, not just acting like a smartwatch. It has limited notification support, no third-party application support, no wrist-based payments, and no offline music support.
Dual-frequency GPS and five GNSS options are available, and test results show very accurate location tracking. The fourth-generation optical heart rate sensor closely matched the results from other watches and the armband sensor I compared it with while running, biking, rowing, and walking.
Once you determine that the Polar Vantage M3 is the right fit for your budget and wrist, explore the vast Polar Flow ecosystem. There is a Polar Flow smartphone app for iOS and Android, along with a website. I highly recommend that you do not limit your experience to just the app — the app provides glanceable information and some details of your activities, but the website is where you can go to dive into all the details of the vast amount of data the Vantage M3 collects.
Once you have your sports profiles set up, Polar’s Training Load Pro kicks in to evaluate the recorded data and your daily life metrics for recovery. After three nights of wearing your Vantage M3. You can now choose a smaller, lighter, more affordable Polar watch and enjoy the same advanced functions and options that are in the company’s flagship watches. It’s great to be able to choose a watch based on the size, style, materials, and design that works best for you, while trusting that the software experience will be the same as a watch priced almost twice as high.