Gear Review: Polar FT4 Heart Rate Monitor

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This gear review is going to cover the Polar FT4 Heart Rate Monitor (HRM).  I bought this HRM in a effort to keep track of my level of fitness during hikes and routine exercising.  I also have an interest in understanding my long-term trends of fitness and performance. Throughout most of my hikes, I use this to gauge my time(duration), heart rate, and assess my caloric burn.  In my hiking posts, I’ll reference this device quite a bit for the different metrics.

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I got this device via Amazon back in September 2016 for about $48.  I just checked on Amazon (7/30/18) and the prices area much higher than that ($80-180).  Back in 2016, I was looking for something relatively inexpensive, ie less than $100, that gave me a basic reading on my instantaneous heart rate and some metrics for the exercise recording session like max, min and ave, as well as how long I was in a preset heart rate zone.  Pretty straight forward, no extra bells and whistles necessary.  I didn’t really want a FitBit for a number of reasons.

I had a heart rate monitor by Polar during my biking/racing time in high school and that seemed to be what I was looking for this time around.  I was content with something more cost conscious that had a good battery life for both the watch and the chest strap transmitter.

The Polar FT4 provided just that back then (at the time I purchased).  The reviews were decent and I think the price had just dropped from the $60-70 range, so I got it.  As a note, I tend to shop around for quite a while and monitor prices to know what prices are normal, high and low so I can pick up items on the lower end of the spectrum. Why pay full price when I don’t need something right away?  I have nothing but time because it was more of a nice to have device.  Also I have no color preferences, so which ever is cheapest. If it were pink and $40, I would be showing a pink HRM watch.

What are the different features?

The watch monitors your heart rate continuously as well as provides your caloric burn, session duration(time).  The caloric burn requires you to enter some basic information about yourself like age and weight.  I would likely assess that the burn rate is a rough estimate, since everyone has different metabolisms as well as other factors that affect individual caloric burn rates.  You can have the watch make sounds/alerts when you are above/below your target heart rate zone.  You can modify your heart rate zone limits if you want to change what the device suggests.  You can also modify how you see your heart rate as either Beats Per Minute or Percentage of your Maximum(set in personal information).

How long does the data persist?

I think this really depends on how long each of your recorded exercise sessions are.  Right now my data only shows my sessions for the entire month of July-2018, though there have been a lot of long use sessions (7+hr/day). Something I have considered doing, but haven’t yet, is to log the exercise information into a spreadsheet to do some longer term analysis.

Battery Life:

I have used my device rather heavily in the past year, meaning its on for 7-10hrs at a time on my hikes (~1-2 days a week) and about 1hr during exercising at least 3-4 days per week.  Given this information, I replaced the battery for the first time since original purchase sometime in October 2018 (almost 2 yrs).  Now that I have a baseline as to my general daily exercises, I do not tend to wear it outside of hiking, biking or climbing activities, so the battery may last 1-2 years since its.  I’ll update this the next time I change it to give a better description of frequency of use and longevity.  It takes CR1632 batteries.  (Link below for your convenience).

During Hikes:

I usually start the recording at the trailhead as I’m starting.  Sometimes, Ill forget until about 15-30minutes into the hike.  Its been a good means to know how long I have been going for so when I get to my turnaround point, I can have a good idea of about how long it will take to get back.  Since I don’t normally wear a watch, Ill sometimes attach it to a shoulder strap on my pack.  Throughout the hike of intense elevation gain, I’ll check the watch to see what my heart rate is. 

In general, I can guess what it might be but this serves as a good reference point to help pace myself.  When my heart rate gets above 170-180, I tend to stop and focus on taking some deep breathes, as well as intaking some water.  This usually brings my heart rate down a good bit before pressing on.  When going up in elevation I shoot for a solid pace in the 150-170 range.  I find this to be conducive to maintaining endurance for longer periods of time rather than trying to sustain something in the 170 and above range.

Overall Assessment:

This has been a great product for me.  It provides me the basic information that I want during my activities, as well as access to the records after.  The battery life has been great, so very little maintenance and up keep costs associated with this product.  Knowing that I bought my device I would be hard pressed to pay anymore that $48 for my next device, though I think this one will last for several years.

They are always coming out with newer models so this applies to the FT4 as it was purchased around September-2016.

If you have any questions, write in the comments and Ill try to address it through an update to the bottom of the current post.