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This watch gives you flagship performance and recovery metrics at a mid-range price

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We are approaching the tail end of the fall marathon season, but I just spent a few weeks running in Washington, Maine, Rhode Island, and Maryland and saw hundreds of runners out on the local roads and trails. Many runners also participate in other activities to help build strength and prevent injury, so having a watch that supports multiple activities is important for them.

Also: The best sports watches you can buy: Expert tested

Polar excels at offering free training programs that mix various activities with running to help you achieve the best results. I’ve taken the new Polar Vantage M3 polar-vantage-m34

Here are the right-side buttons on three Polar watches.

Matthew Miller/ZDNET

That said, it has advanced training tools, recovery guidance, performance tests, advanced sleep tracking with skin temperature sensors, and offline maps for navigation that look great with the brilliant 1.28-inch AMOLED touchscreen. Weighing just 53 grams, which includes the band, the watch is very comfortable for wearing 24/7 and in my experience, you can expect it to last about a week if you run 30 to 45 minutes every few days.

Polar advertises 30 hours of the best GPS tracking mode with seven days of smartwatch mode. Over the past month, I charged it up every five to seven days.

polar-vantage-m37

Matthew Miller/ZDNET

While there are custom running programs for typical running events, you can also use the season planner to create custom programs for off season running. The various strength, stretching, and cross-training elements that you can include in these programs is fantastic. I’ve learned many new stretches and exercises thanks to Polar Flow, and love that the programs are not limited just to different sessions of running.

Also: I walked over 10,000 steps with 3 sports watches – this one was the most accurate by far

Smartwatches, like the Apple Watch, have fairly limited data screens for your activities, so you can only view the key metrics Apple wants you to see. Open up each of your favorite activities, labeled sports profiles, in the smartphone app or website and then fully customize each of the data screens.

You can have up to eight screens, with up to four metrics on each screen. These include rather unique metrics such as incline/decline, body temperature, power metrics, and cadence metrics. There are several other views and settings to completely customize and optimize your activity view. The Vantage M3 has more than 150 activities you can participate in and track.

to bed, you will begin to see sleep tracking results. In addition to your sleep details and nightly skin temperature (good for indicating possible illness), Polar provides a Boost from Sleep metric that shows how your sleep affects your energy levels throughout the day.

In the past, I rarely used the mapping and navigation features on my watches, but Strava heat maps have proven to be an amazing function when I travel, and it has also prompted me to add new routes to my typical running routine. After selecting my preferred distance and finding a route that interests me on Strava, I simply save the route, which gets synced to my Polar Flow account and then to the Vantage M3. It is easy to then start a run and have full color mapping guide me on unique routes in various cities.

ZDNET’s buying advice

Polar has taken the software features of its best watches and brought them to the masses with the Polar Vantage M3

Source : ZDNet

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