Polar Ignite 3 Review | Trusted Reviews

The Polar Ignite 3 is a more likeable fitness watch, and if not for a few software issues that let it down, it’s almost a great sports watch.

prologue

The Polar Ignite 3 is what Polar calls a fitness watch, and it does a lot of what the Pacer and Vantage range of multisport watches do.

It tracks your workout time indoors and outdoors, acts like a smartwatch when you’re not sweating, and brings some all-new and interesting features to the Polar watch family.

Crucially, this is the first Polar watch with an AMOLED display.It also follows Garmin, Apple, Huawei, Coros and Amazfit with a dual-frequency GPS that promises better outdoor movement tracking. It’s also the first product to include modes.

These new features come with a price increase in Ignite 2, but is the price increase justified? Here’s our verdict.

design and screen

• 43mm case
• AMOLED touch screen display
• waterproof to 30 meters

Polar has moved to a more stylish and less sporty design with the Ignite series, and the Ignite 3 is no different. A very sleek and unisex design, it comes in four case colors and can be paired with silicone, leather or nylon straps. Give it a more fashionable edge.

The size of the plastic case remains the same, the overall weight is 35g, but the thickness is increased by 1mm. It’s a slim watch with an attractive steel bezel, but it’s not as slim as its predecessor.

For some reason Polar chose to restyle the 20mm strap that ships with the Ignite 3, which is never a good thing. is pointing. This is more annoying and uncomfortable.

There’s just one physical button next to the star of the show, a new 1.28-inch 416 x 416 AMOLED touchscreen display. It’s a change in screen technology, and the screen size is also slightly larger, but it’s all improved. The watchface selection does a very good job of hiding its presence.

It’s a wonderfully bright, vibrant and colorful screen, a big step up from the Ignite 2’s TFT screen. Like many of his AMOLED screens, it can still struggle in bright sunlight, but overall visibility is solid.

You can set that screen to be on 24/7, but as we’ll talk more about later, it’s actually a big drain on your battery. There’s a raise here to activate the gesture mode, but it’s certainly not the most responsive.

Polar added Gorilla Glass 3.0 here to provide an extra source of screen protection, but within weeks of testing it already picked up scratches running all over the screen, so it clearly wasn’t enough protection. bottom.

Providing a single physical button to navigate to the main menu screen is welcome, but Ignite 3 offers an additional button, especially when tracking workouts or if you don’t have the screen set to always on. There were times when I felt I could use it. As mentioned earlier, Raise to Wake is not very responsive, requiring you to press a physical button to wake up the screen, often inadvertently pausing your workout tracking.

The Ignite 3’s water resistance remains the same as the Ignite 2, offering a suitable submersion in water up to 30 meters deep.

performance and software

• Faster than Ignite 2
• Increased RAM
• Show notifications and music controls

With the move to AMOLED displays, Polar has made some changes to the Ignite’s interface to make it better suited to higher quality screens. Its interface generally feels big and bold, making the Ignite 3 feel more like a smartwatch than a sportswatch with smartwatch-like features.

This means you can now use watch faces with complications (widgets) for heart rate, steps, battery status, etc. Swipe up from the main watch face screen to see phone notifications that won’t go away until you interact with them. Swiping left or right from the same spot reveals full-screen widgets such as music controls, training insights like cardio load status, and more detailed weather forecasts.

Its interface feels optimized for a brighter display, but whatever’s driving things is less impressive.Polar says the Ignite 3 is twice as fast as the Ignite 2. and jumps from 0.64MB RAM to 5MB RAM.

In practice, the Ignite 3 still lags a bit, whether it’s the swipe to bring up the notification stream or the physical button response to go back to the screen. Polar has been trying to address these issues with firmware updates, but unfortunately they haven’t had the desired effect.

Tracking and features

• 150 sport modes
• Sleepgate provides sleep time recommendations
• voice guidance
• Dual frequency GPS

Polar calls it a fitness watch, but it’s a multisport watch that can track running, biking and swimming (pool only) and has over 150 sport mode profiles. It also has many of the training features found in Polar’s Pacer series watches, but doesn’t offer much in terms of navigation.

One of the amazing things included here is the dual frequency GPS mode. This makes it the first Polar watch to include features that promise more accurate location data when tracking near tall buildings or in bad weather where satellite interference can increase.

In terms of dual-frequency GPS mode performance, I think it’s generally fine, but it doesn’t exactly match similar modes on Apple and Amazfit watches with dual-frequency GPS. Garmin’s Epix 2 and Marq Athlete Core data such as distance tracking and average pace were in good agreement with the multiband mode of the Gen 2 watch. In more difficult areas, with greater risk of satellite interference, the Ignite 3 still had GPS tracks through buildings.

Outside of that dual-frequency GPS mode, Polar includes the same Precision Prime optical heart-rate sensor technology used in previous Ignite watches, and results have been a bit inconsistent in terms of accuracy. For some activities, my average and maximum heart rate readings were significantly out of sync with my external heart rate monitor. However, you can wirelessly connect the watch to an external heart rate monitor. If you want heart rate insight, do it.

Polar also includes features that will appeal to fitness beginners. Depending on your workout history, there are still great workouts recommended by FitSpark based on strength, cardio and support exercises. Voice guidance has been added, but this basically just gives you updates on your progress during your workout and isn’t innovative. , now includes running and walking tests, making more of Polar’s performance ratings available.

On the outdoor front, Polar has introduced the FuelWise smart refueling reminder, but it feels a little out of place here. There’s also Training Load Pro and Energy Source Insights to dig deeper into your workout data. While you won’t get the level of navigation capabilities offered by more expensive Polar watches, the Ignite 3 has a return to start mode to provide a simple, basic hand to get you back to your starting point. increase.

It will continue to function as a 24/7 activity tracker and Polar has added some new features to its sleep surface to monitor your sleep. It has a tactile alarm. Now you can see how sleep affects and boosts your energy levels during the day. And after getting 7 days of sleep data, it unlocks a new sleep gate and tells you your ideal bedtime. Key sleep stats like duration and sleep stages matched well with Oura Ring 3’s sleep tracking, but additional insights, much like Polar’s Nightly Recharge measurement, communicated better both on and off the watch. and may be provided.

battery life

• Up to 5 days battery life in watch mode
• Up to 30 hours GPS battery life
• 100 hours in power save training mode

Polar hasn’t strayed from the up to five-day battery life promised on the first two Ignite watches.

Battery drains on average about 20% per day if the screen is not always on. Most of that drop happens overnight, and its extensive sleep tracking really drains your battery.

Toggling the always-on screen greatly reduces that battery number, and here we have just over a day of battery life.

In tracking mode, Polar says the GPS has up to 30 hours of battery life. When he ran for an hour outdoors using the best GPS mode, the battery dropped by 5% on him. It is said to take about 20 hours. Switching to a less accurate GPS mode definitely gets me closer to his promised 30-hour mark.

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As part of this mission, every time we review a product, we ask the company a series of questions that help measure the environmental impact of the device and increase transparency.

There are currently no answers to questions about this product, but we will update this page as soon as we receive answers. You can find a detailed breakdown of the questions we ask and why on our Sustainability Information page.