Polar Vantage M3 review: a connected sports watch that misses the point

Construction

The Polar Vantage M3 sports a sleek plastic body with a stainless steel bezel. The whole thing is quite compact (44.7 x 44.7 x 12.2 mm) and light (35 g without bracelet). The latter is also made of silicone and does not irritate in any way, even when wet. It has a quick attachment system allowing it to be changed at any time. As a result, once on the wrist, this Vantage M3 is pleasant to wear.

The watch offers on its front a 1.28 inch Oled screen displaying 416 x 416 pixels. The panel is touchscreen, offers an “always on” mode and adapts to ambient brightness via a sensor. The variations in light are also managed rather well: the brightness of the screen goes low enough not to damage the eyes in the dark and rises high enough to remain readable in bright sunlight.

A multisport connected watch, the Vantage M3 is waterproof up to 50 m. This means you can shower or swim with it. However, avoid diving or water sports like jet skiing, which may cause pressure changes that are too large and could crack the housing.

User experience

With this Vantage M3, Polar seems stuck between two worlds. We thus find technological contributions anchored in the era, Oled screen in mind; and on the other, menus that are as austere as ever. One wonders if the company really accepts the proposed developments. Of course, Oled, brightness and clarity improve the experience, but Polar does not seem to be in a hurry to adapt its interface to make the most of the visual possibilities offered by this display technology.

Regardless, the Polar Vantage M3 offers navigation based on the five buttons surrounding the case and the touchscreen. Let's start with the buttons… The one placed in the upper left corner allows you to turn the panel on and off manually. With the one enthroned in the lower left corner, you access the main menu, while the lower right and central right buttons allow you to scroll through the menus. Finally, the upper right button validates the choices.

Added to this is touchscreen navigation which provides access to other information. With a horizontal slide of your finger, you scroll through the different screens of data measured by the watch, and with a downward slide, a quick settings pane opens. With the reverse movement, notifications are displayed. Once the adaptation time has passed, all this is done without problem.

Where other sports watch manufacturers integrate more urban features here and there, such as payment by NFC, calls on the wrist or music storage, nothing of the sort here. The Vantage M3 remains focused on its primary function, namely sport. You can record your workouts, perform performance tests, breathing exercises and that's about it. Notifications are displayed very clearly thanks to an imposing font and a simple display, but it is impossible to respond to them.

Finally, the Vantage M3 synchronizes with Polar Flow and Polar Beat, apps available on Android and iOS. Polar Flow, the benchmark between the two, first offers an analysis of the status of the training load, compiles all the data collected from the wrist, as well as physical activities, while offering in-depth performance analyzes. However, the application still lacks a little clarity, so you have to get to grips with it quickly. Flow also gives access to the settings of the watch and those of the Polar account more generally.

For its part, Polar Beat focuses on physical activities. There is a history of physical activities accompanied by a report for each of them. As with Polar Flow, it is possible to launch activity tracking from Polar Beat.

Sports & Health

The Polar Vantage M3 has a heart rate sensor, dual-band GPS, an accelerometer, a compass, a barometer, an oxygen saturation sensor and an ECG sensor. A piece of equipment that simply lacks an altimeter to compete with the big names.

Regarding GPS, the data is mixed. If the watch manages to precisely follow movements in nature, those made in the city are more approximate. It is therefore not uncommon to see the route cross a building or get lost in a tunnel.

The Vantage M3's heart rate monitor is even more capricious. During a calm session, without abrupt variation in heart rate, the watch follows the essentials, but misses in places. We can thus observe an overestimation after 25 minutes on the curve below, compared to the readings from the Polar H10 chest strap which we consider to be the reference. Nothing very serious, the plot remains consistent with the overall trend.

During a split session, all this comes to a head. The watch underestimates cardio at times and overestimates it at others. It becomes really complicated to follow and the route offered ultimately loses coherence. Too bad for a watch that wants to be dedicated to sport.

The Vantage M3 also measures sleep, blood oxygen saturation and performs electrocardiograms. However, in the absence of dedicated laboratories, it is impossible for us to know whether the data collected is realistic. We can only say that the Vantage M3 doesn't err in the wake-up time and it didn't report any false positives in our test.