The Polar Grit X2 Pro is positioned as Polar’s flagship adventure and multisport watch, both from a features standpoint, but also its high-end hardware. Given the flagship nature of the watch, I’ve been putting it through its paces across some pretty demanding scenarios. A multi-day trek across the island of Madeira, countless rides and runs into the mountains of Gran Canaria, openwater swims, and of course, just a bunch of more normal workouts that all of us do.
The question is: Does it live up to its touted accuracy claims? And do the features justify the eye-watering price today, relative to the rest of the market?
This review dives into all those things, one component at a time. From daily basic step and sleep tracking, to sports and workouts, to navigation and mapping, and finally the accuracy of the new heart rate algorithms and GPS antenna.
As usual, this watch is a media loaner, and it’ll go back to Polar. After which I’ll go out and get my own for any future testing needs. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter which makes the site ad-free, while also getting access to a mostly weekly video series behind the scenes of the DCR Cave. And of course, it makes you awesome.
With that, let’s get into it!
What’s New:
The definition of ‘new’ will depend on which previous watch you’re referring to. If comparing it (logically) to the Polar Grit X Pro (released in 2021), then there are a number of very substantial changes, outlined below. Whereas, if you’re comparing it to the Polar Vantage V3 released this past fall, there are precisely zero feature differences. Which I also explain down below.
First up, here’s what’s new compared to the original Polar Grit X Pro:
– Changed to 1.39” AMOLED display (326ppi, 1,050 nits)
– Maintains sapphire crystal glass
– Increased display size by 15% (versus GRIT X1 Pro)
– First Polar watch to have 810H durability mil spec
– Increased processor speed by 129% vs GRIT X1 Pro (275Mhz processor)
– Added dual-frequency/multiband GNSS/GPS
– Redesigned GNSS/GPS antenna
– Increased storage to 32GB (mainly for maps)
– Includes North America & Europe maps downloaded (and free downloadable maps for everywhere else)
– Changed Polar charging cable to USB-C (still magnetic on watch side)
– Added Strava Routes syncing (finally! Also coming to all Polar route-capable products)
– Added historical track/route on navigation map (previously only showed planned route)
– Added Vertical Speed and VAM (Average Ascent Speed)
– Added 3D speed (how it calculates speed in steep situations)
– Upgraded to Polar’s 4th Gen optical heart rate sensor + ELIXIR (same as Vantage V3)
– Added heart rate ECG functionality (Note: Does not include Afib detection)
– Added nightly skin temperature
– Added skin temperature tracking feature and baseline/guidance
– Added new optical heart rate backdated error correction feature (fixes bad HR data in realtime)
– Added two new watch faces since Vantage V3 (one analog, one digital)
– Added virtual flashlight (display based)
– Battery life increases to 43hrs in GPS training mode, or up to 140hrs in eco training mode
– Maintains 100m water resistance spec
– Maintains temp range of -20°c to +50°c
– Maintains stainless-steel front case, and plastic back case
– Two base model colors (Night Black & Stone Gray), and one Titan Edition
– Price increases from $/€529 to $/€749 for base edition, and Titan edition from $/€649 to $/€869
Note: Titan edition includes a secondary leather strap, and has a total watch+band weight of 64g.
Now, you may be wondering how this watch differentiates itself from the less expensive ($599) Polar Vantage V3. And the answer is simple: Purely based on external case design. That’s it. The two watches run the same exact software, have the optical HR sensor, the same GPS chipset, and even the exact same battery inside. In fact, the Polar Vantage V3 got the same software release (v2.0) the same day the Polar Grit X2 Pro started shipping, thus ensuring both watches are lock-step identical when it comes to features.
When it comes to material differences, they are as follows:
– Grit X2 Pro has a different external case design/look
– Grit X2 Pro has 100m water resistance, versus 50m for Vantage V3
– Redesigned external GPS antenna design, specifically for the Grit X2 Pro
Note that antenna designs would be different anyway between the Vantage & Grit X series, since the case designs use different materials. These days, the GPS antenna is arguably the most important component when it comes to GPS accuracy. Over the last few years we’ve seen countless examples of two different watches using the exact same GPS chipset, but different antenna designs. So much so that *both* Polar and COROS have made a point of publicly stating their first attempts at dual-band GNSS antennas on previous products (COROS Vertix 2 & Polar Ignite 3) led to not-awesome GPS results. This was aimed at resolving that.
Ok, so let’s see if all these newness bits hold true.
In The Box:
Inside the box we’ve got the watch, and depending on which model you’ve bought, two different sets of bands. If you got the Titan edition (which is $869), then you’ll get both the silicone band, and also the leather band/strap. This is the Titan edition unboxing.
It takes about 10 seconds to swap the bands between them. Obviously, you won’t want to use the leather band for any workouts, as it’ll quickly lose its luster. I did swap back and forth quite a bit for the first month, and then got tired of the swaps, and just left the silicone ones on. They’re perfectly fine straps.
In addition, you’ve got a USB-C charging cable, connecting the USB-C port to the proprietary charging port on the back of the watch. Watch companies use specialized charging connectors in order to ensure deeper waterproofing that doesn’t tend to hold up for using a standard USB port over time (sweat, dirt, sports gels, etc…). This is the same charging connector seen on the Polar Vantage V3.
Next, let’s just take a second to look at a gallery of photos of the Titan’s leather band. Seriously, it’s stunning. I’d argue it’s the best thing about the watch (which will concurrently make someone in the band department very happy, albeit at the expense of the rest of the Grit X2 Pro team). But even more than being the best thing about the Grit X2 Pro, it’s probably the best band I’ve seen on any GPS sports watch. Maybe…maybe, some of the Garmin MARQ variants (the $2,000+ watches), have on-par bands. But either way, this one is awesome.
Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison to the Polar Vantage V3:
And with that, let’s start using it!
The Basics:
This section of the review will focus on the general non-sports usage of Grit X2 Pro. Aspects like activity and sleep tracking, dashboards/widgets, and other basic smartwatch features. Plus of course, general usability of buttons/display/etc…
First up, the Grit X2 Pro has five buttons, alongside an AMOLED touchscreen. In general, you can use buttons or touchscreen interchangeably, however you see fit. The vast majority of the time I tend to use the buttons, rather than the touchscreen. Simply put, it’s faster and more efficient (this is true of virtually every watch I test). Still, there are areas where the touchscreen is easier – such as moving around within the map.
I haven’t had any issues with the touchscreen in any conditions, be it sun, rain, dumping rain, showers, or any other liquid-type scenario. Sure, as with most touchscreens, it might take an extra tap or two on a drenched screen, but it’s not uncontrollable. Likewise, in aquatic (swimming) sport settings, the touchscreen is disabled entirely, so you don’t have to worry about water-driven wonk.
When it comes to visibility of the AMOLED display, again, zero issues. As I keep saying over the last 12-24 months, the AMOLED displays today are not your grandfather’s AMOLED/LCD displays. They aren’t even the (often bad) AMOLED/LCD displays of just 36-48 months ago. There’s simply zero issues seeing these screens in any condition you throw at them, from bright sun mid-summer atop a mountain, to dark nights.
I will note that some reviewers will mistakenly try and take a picture of a black screen against a bright white background, then try and say the screen is hard to read. That’s incorrect. The screen is perfectly readable to your human eyes, but due to you or your camera improperly exposing the scene, it’ll expose the rest of the (larger) scene, rather than the comparatively small watch face
Now, that said, AMOLED does have an impact on battery life, depending on which setting you are using. An AMOLED display has two settings: Gesture-based, and Always-On. Gesture-based means the screen is black/off when you’re not looking at it. Then, when you raise your wrist, it turns back on again. This saves battery. Whereas always-on means the screen is always-on, thus burning more battery. In a gesture-based configuration, the screen is dimmed when your wrist is down, and then brightened when you raise your wrist. I used the watch in both configurations, though generally prefer the always-on configuration – despite the battery hit. Here’s an example of dimmed and not-dimmed, taken a few seconds apart in bright sun, at the same spot:
The gesture recognition on the Grit X2 Pro is OK. It’s not great, but it’s not bad either. It’s a tiny bit slower/laggier than I’d prefer, but is good enough in most cases. In gesture-based configuration, Polar claims up to 10 days of battery life, whereas in always-on it’ll cut that down significantly. Obviously, GPS time further reduces that. I’ve used both modes quite a bit over the last two months, and always-on seems to be about 3-5 days depending on GPS usage, whereas gesture-based seems about right at upwards of 10 days.
Now, looking at the watch face, you can choose from a number of Polar pre-loaded watch faces, though there isn’t any sort of 3rd party watch face App Store or such. Still, I was totally fine with all these watch faces and the ability to lightly customize them.
You can swipe down from the top to access some quick controls menu, including alarms, flashlight, timers, airplane mode, and do-not-disturb. You’ll swipe upwards from the bottom to access smartphone notifications. More on them later.
Instead, the majority of non-sport interactions you’ll take will be via the dashboards (widgets), for areas like daily activity tracking, sleep, weather, training status, and more. For example, you’ve got the Activity/Steps dashboard, showing steps but also heart rate data and energy (all under the ‘Activity’ panel):
If you tap into it, you’ll get more details about activity that day, including steps, calories, heart rate min/max, and active time. All of this information is also available on the Polar Flow app as well:
Interestingly, Polar converts all non-step activity into steps too. This means if you swim, cycle (even on a stationary bike), or do any other heart-rate-driven exercise, it’ll convert these to steps. This leads to wildly inflated step values.
However, I’ve also had unexplainable crazy-step values. Here’s a day where I did literally nothing workout-wise, only some office work, then a 4-hour drive. The Polar has me at 44,000+ steps! COROS a much more believable 4,360 steps (the 1hr 4mins of ‘activity’ time on the COROS was actually just me recording part of the drive to test something).
Yet other days, where I basically just did nothing except walk/run activities, it’s very close:
But on any other day except a strict run workout day, Polar tends to be double anything else I wear, but it’s often as high as 10x other companies. I don’t have a philosophical problem per se with converting other workout types into steps, but at the same time, I guess I kinda do. Steps are steps. There’s plenty of other metrics you can use to capture total energy per day (active time, calories, heart rate time in zone, etc…). It’s one thing to have a handful of extra steps on a ride due to bouncing and such. It’s an entirely different thing to add an extra 20,000 steps. Just my two cents.
Next, you’ve got your sleep metrics. These are split among three different pages, none of which actually show your core sleep stats at the top. Instead, they’re built into the sections of: Sleep Boost, Nightly Recharge, and Nightly Skin Temperature. Starting with Sleep Boost, this is where you’ll see which parts of the day you’re most likely to be tired or have lots of energy. You can see the differences here on this day when I had a 4:15AM alarm for an early morning flight, versus a more normal wake-up time:
If you tap down into that, you’ll see your sleep times for that night, as well as your sleep score:
Next, there’s Nightly Recharge. This shows how well you’re recharged after the previous night’s sleep. Again, you can see a comparison between the early morning flight (Compromised) and the regular night sleep:
Within this there’s a ton of sleep stats spread amongst two different pages, including components like HRV, sleep phases/stages, and more.
(Side note: All of these stats have been on-again/off-again broken for the last 4-5 weeks. As in, they wouldn’t even show up at all, virtually all sleep stats. Polar finally released a firmware update 4 days ago to fix it. Hopefully it sticks.)
My recommendation to Polar here is similar to that of the Polar Vantage V3. Polar has a lot of really good/interesting stats in here, but the organization of them all is kinda messy. There’s a reason why literally every other company first organizes the sleep basics (sleep times/scores/general analysis) into one area, and then all the fancy detailed bits into subsequent and more detailed areas: It’s just easier to consume. Right now, to view how many hours I slept or my sleep score, I have to dig around a bunch. There’s no quick-swipe view to view it.
Lastly, there’s Nightly Skin Temperature. This stat uses the wrist temperature sensor in the watch to track skin temperature changes. Like most of the other advanced sleep stats, this takes a few days of baselining before it starts illuminating the sleep data. As with other brands, I haven’t really found any actual use for this yet, especially as one who travels quite a bit (where environmental changes significantly impact this).
While it can be used in women’s period prediction (such as what Whoop and Oura do), it’s not used by Polar and most other wearable companies in that manner today.
Speaking of which, all of this stuff is collected using the optical sensor on the back of the watch:
This sensor is the same as the Polar Vantage V3, and is known as the Polar Gen 4 Optical HR sensor. Note that Polar also uses the Elixir name, but that’s actually not the name of the sensor (at all). Instead, Elixir is the umbrella term for a variety of different Polar proprietary algorithms that Polar uses in relation to signals processing.
So what about sleep accuracy? Glad you asked. I’ve gone down a stupid-deep rabbit hole over the last few months on this front. And in short, I’ve had no issues with it detecting fall asleep & wake-up times the majority of the time. Note that I don’t compare things like sleep phases/stages, since frankly, the tech to do that comparison really isn’t all that accurate to begin with (topping out in the low-to-mid 80% range), which doesn’t pass the bar for what I’d use for other metrics that I compare. Thus, I basically assume all wearables suck there (and many do).
In any case, here’s a fun chart computing some of my sleep metrics for a few week slice of that. I haven’t seen any meaningful change across the two-month timeframe.
Also for fun, here’s how HRV compared against a few different devices, noting that some devices have different calculation methods.
And how sleep scores compared. The blank days are times when Polar decided not to compute sleep scores.
Now, switching topics entirely!
When it comes to the oft-discussed flashlight, do understand it’s just the display turned to white and full brightness. Of course, an AMOLED display of this size at full brightness is more than enough to illuminate a tent, a hotel bathroom, or the back of the spice cabinet. However, using it on the Grit X2 Pro is cumbersome for quick access, in that you need to first wake-up the display (which at night requires a tap), then swipe down, then swipe to flashlight, and then tap flashlight. Their competitors require just a quick double-tap of the upper left button, and instantly on.
It’s these sort of minor-seeming things that add up over time. Polar needs to focus on these little details, just as much as the big-ticket feature gaps.
When it comes to text messages, the Grit X2 Pro will display texts and other smartphone notifications on your watch, per whatever you’ve configured on your phone’s notifications control center. You can’t respond to these messages from the Grit X2 Pro, but you can dismiss them.
Note that while the Grit X2 Pro has plenty of storage onboard for maps, there is no music storage or playback onboard. Instead, it has music control of your phone’s currently playing media (e.g., play/skip/pause/volume), but cannot otherwise navigate that music library. While many would love to have onboard music within the watch, the reality of the music industry’s fences means this simply isn’t going to happen (for streaming platforms like Spotify). Sure, Polar could relatively easily enable music playback of MP3 files and the like, but in 2024, that’s not what the market at large wants (and thus, in my opinion, would be a waste of Polar’s limited development/engineering time).
Likewise, the same is true of contactless payments (NFC), which it lacks. Those walls are well established, and at this point there’s unfortunately no real business path forward for a company of Polar’s size to get payments on their devices (short of going to WearOS). That said, Polar did recently hint that they are planning something around NFC. My assumption here is that they’re probably talking a Curve-like partnership, which would be limited to UK & EU folks, and has other limitations as well.
Sports Tracking:
Obviously, if you’re buying a Polar watch, it’s likely to do sports tracking. In this context, that means either GPS or non-GPS workouts/activities, which are all tracked and logged for analysis either on Polar’s platform, or 3rd party platforms you connect, like Strava.
The Grit X2 Pro maintains the same large sport listing of sport types as the Vantage V3 does. The vast majority of these don’t have any unique sport-tracking properties, but rather, are used to differentiate calorie burn. Certainly, a few of these sports have unique tracking bits – like cycling versus running, but most are just for calorie metrics.
In any event, to open up a sport profile, you’ll tap the lower left button once, and choose ‘Start Training’ (or, long-hold the red button to get to the same spot). This brings you here, to the most recently used sport profile:
You have store 20 sport profiles on your watch, and then can change these via the Polar Flow app, choosing which profiles you want. Within each profile you can customize data pages and data fields as well. You’re currently limited to 4 data fields, a seemingly small number of data fields compared to most of their competitors that are 8-12 fields.
Back on that sport profile ‘waiting’ screen, it’ll start searching for GPS (if a GPS activity), as well as heart rate lock. Further, if you’ve got paired sensors (e.g. cycling sensors) or your phone nearby, it’ll connect to that. It’ll use the phone for voice announcements.
However, you can also tap the settings button in the upper left. This lets you choose a given structured workout that you’ve favorited, as well as a course/route. The next section dives into the courses/routes bit (navigation), so we’ll skip that for now.
In this area, you can also enable heart rate sensor broadcasting to 3rd party devices. This is done via Bluetooth Smart, and can broadcast your heart rate to an app (e.g., Peloton, Zwift, Strava, etc…), or even a bike computer (e.g., Garmin Edge or Wahoo GPS). Having used this feature a lot though, it’s just super finicky. Unlike all of their competitors, it doesn’t remember the setting (on or off) each time, and thus you have to do this silly dance each time, trying to get it re-paired with the 3rd party unit. It’s these sorts of little things that start to add up.
Once you do have it paired, it does seem to work/stay connected the duration of the session. I had no issues there.
Nonetheless, back on the watch, once GPS/HR is locked, you’ll go ahead and tap start to begin recording. From here, you’ll see your data pages as configured. You can tap the buttons to iterate through the different data pages.
If you’ve got things like automatic laps enabled, those will automatically trigger as well. Same goes for any structured workouts you might have loaded into the unit. Note that unfortunately, Polar doesn’t have any integration with TrainingPeaks for pulling structured workouts into Polar devices. Again, in 2024 (or even half a decade ago), this was totally commonplace. I’m being pickier in this review than past Polar reviews on these sorts of things, because Polar has to realize that when they increase their prices 50% from the previous edition, people expect these baseline features on a sports device.
Of course you can still create your own workouts manually in the Polar platform, but for any coached athlete, or someone following a training plan, doing that daily is just a waste of time.
In terms of things like pace stability while running, I’ve had no issues with that.
Likewise, I’ve had no issues with display visibility in bright sunny conditions (I’m in Florida for a few weeks, running/cycling/etc in the bright sun, and zero problems at all). Again, AMOLED displays of 2024 (or even 2022) simply don’t have visibility issues in bright sun.
Once your workout is complete, you’ll tap to pause, and then hold for three seconds to end the workout. At the completion of this, you’ll get a whole slate of metrics to look at:
All of these metrics are also available on the Polar Flow app (smartphone or website), if you want to dive into them.
Likewise, all of this data is then sent to any 3rd party apps you might use/authorize within Polar Flow, such as Strava or TrainingPeaks (Note: Polar will send data *TO* TrainingPeaks, but will not *RECEIVE* workouts from TrainingPeaks). Here’s a recent run, sent to Strava:
In addition to the per-workout analysis, you’ll also get larger trends via various features in Polar’s platform. Starting off with the most basic of those stats, is your weekly summary, which resets every Sunday night:
I do wish there was an easier way to see my 7-day (trailing) training load. Resetting every Sunday night isn’t super helpful come Monday morning.
After that, you’ve got your Cardio Load status page. This basically shows your current training load, versus your historical norm. Mine fluctuates up and down depending on the volume I have. So at the moment, with a bunch of recent travel, I’m slightly below my current norms:
In cases where my training has exceeded my norms, it’ll warn me that I’m at risk for injury.
After that, you’ve got daily workout suggestions. In my case of these next two photos, I did an interval run earlier in that day, so now the suggestion is for a ‘Supportive’ workout, which basically means stretching:
For lack of anywhere else to put it, the Polar Grit X2 Pro can pair to Bluetooth Smart sensors, namely: Heart Rate sensors, Footpads, Running Power Meters (Stryd), Cycling Power Meters, Cycling Speed/Cadence sensors, and some body temperature sensors. It connects to the Sennheiser Momentum Sport headphones I recently tested, and also pairs to the CORE Body temperate sensor. Though, pairing to the CORE sensor didn’t seem to result in any data showing up during my workouts. Not sure if that’s a bug or what.
You can see here for example, paired to a cycling power meter, my data both on the watch mid-workout, but more notably afterwards for analysis:
Interestingly, I just pulled the most recent ride to check out for the above screenshot, and this one had some odd dropouts, that I don’t see on the other bike computers/watches connected to that power meter for this ride. I looked back at every other ride of mine over the last two months, and none had dropouts, so…just bad luck that the first (and only) ride I went to grab a screenshot of, had a substantial power drop-out (note my speed/heart rate are constant on this pancake flat course, while the power/cadence go to zero for like 30+ minutes):
With that, let’s switch gears a bit into the navigation side of things.
Navigation & Maps:
The Grit X2 Pro has onboard mapping and navigation, though the level of navigation features you’ll get will vary considerably based on which online route platform your route originates from (e.g., Komoot vs Strava). In my case, I put things to the test in a three-day trek using the Grit X2 Pro to cross the Portuguese island of Madeira. This hike had some 17,000ft of elevation gain over nearly 100KM of trekking. It was epic, and I had planned my routes using Komoot – and specifically gone here to test the Grit X2 Pro’s navigation features.
To begin, let’s start with the maps. The Grit X2 Pro has preloaded US & European maps on them, at a so-called ‘Basic’ detail level. To get other map areas, you’ll simply go to Polar’s map website, where you can choose which maps you want to download. This is also where you can select to download more detailed maps (which is what I use). All of this is totally free, just like all of their competitors. Note that this does require a computer and USB connection, as the Grit X2 Pro doesn’t have WiFi on it (and there’s not enough bandwidth in Bluetooth to download these resolution/sizes of maps).
Once you’ve downloaded the map file, you simply drag the file onto the Polar Grit X2 watch, just like you’d copy/paste a file from a thumbnail. Easy-peasy.
While having to use a computer may be annoying for some situations, I do appreciate that I can download smaller map chunks (individual countries). Garmin forces you to download massive sets of countries, which is a solid pain in the ass when you travel to a new country and forget to download maps, and need to do so at the last minute on a crappy hotel/cellular connection trying to get down a 13GB map file (versus a much smaller 500-800MB map for just the area needed).
So with maps all set, we can talk about routes. With the Grit X2 announcement, Polar announced Strava Routes support, allowing you to push Strava routes to the Grit X2 Pro. This joins the existing Komoot Routes support they’ve had for a few years now. The key difference is that when using Strava Routes, you WILL NOT get any turn-by-turn navigation support (just a breadcrumb trail). Whereas with Komoot routes, you’ll get turn notifications (including audio notifications if you’ve got the Polar Flow app on your phone within range).
In any event, to get routes on your watch, you’ll select them from the Polar Flow dashboard (phone or website). Note that there’s a limit of 100 ‘favorites’ synced to your watch (which includes both structured workouts and routes). That’s notable because by default Polar will actually sync *all* of your starred routes (which, is probably every route) – and you’ll insta-fill-up the watch. So just be aware after connecting that, you might need to do some deselecting of all the old junk you’ve still got in Strava (or Komoot).
In any case, I primarily used Komoot routes with the Grit X2 Pro, because of the fact that it supports turn-by-turn navigation. When you first load up a route on the watch, it’ll show details about the route, and notably ask whether to start the route from the beginning, middle, or in reverse.
Around this point, it’ll also ask you to calibrate the compass (which is required for navigation). This requires literal wrist gymnastics, as you flip your wrist around in circles according to the prescribed dance steps. If the judges decide you didn’t do the dance move perfectly, you get to start the entire game over.
Seriously, it’s annoying AF.
I can handle doing this once in a long while, but in the case of the Grit X2 Pro, you’re doing this constantly. On my multi-day hike I was doing this numerous times a day, and usually at the least awesome time to do it. Without it, the map won’t orient, and you won’t get turn directions. So, it’s kinda mission critical. I asked Polar why this needs to be done so often (when most of the competitors don’t require it ever), and they said they’re working to find ways to reduce the frequency of how often it needs to be done. Again, it’s the little things that add up. Each by itself isn’t a big deal, but in aggregate they become an avalanche that needs mitigating.
While navigating, you’ll see the newly updated route on the screen, showing your prescribed path, along with the new arrows showing the direction of travel. The map will orient based on the compass direction, and the update rate of the map oriented to the watch direction (heading/compass) is pretty good.
As you approach a turn you’ll get notified on the watch of the turn and the direction of travel. If you’ve got your phone with you, and the Polar Flow app opened, it’ll also give you voice guidance. I liked this during my hike, as it was just in my pocket and let me ignore the watch a bit more (and also ensured I didn’t miss the buzz/beep).
If you go off-course, you’ll get a warning when you go beyond the established course. Because the Grit X2 Pro doesn’t have so-called ‘routable maps’ onboard, it can’t actually route you on an alternate path back to the planned route. Instead, it just shows that you’re off-course and hints you should probably undo whatever it is that you (clearly) did wrong.
In addition, with a route loaded, you’ll get a profile of the upcoming elevation, such as below. This shows where you are, and the sections completed (the shaded sections). It also provides total completed ascent/descent, and remaining planned ascent/descent.
Unfortunately, there’s a bug that misplaces the location of your dot on the elevation graph (and thus, the shaded area) by a number of kilometers. This meant the watch would say I was at the top of a climb, when I was actually just starting the base of this 450-500m climb. This pattern would repeat itself on virtually every Komoot-based course/route I’ve used over the past two months. At right, below, Polar shows me descending down at this point, whereas in reality, I’m very much slogging it up the climb Garmin shows on the left.
Interestingly, after a few days of testing different variants, I found this bug only showed up when I’d select to start a given route (any route) from ‘the start’, whereas if I selected to start it at “A midpoint”, it correctly placed my dot.
Here’s another example of the offset, where I’ve very much been climbing some 900-1,000 meters already (as evidenced by the 932m on the Polar), yet the elevation plot doesn’t show me at all on that climb (whereas the Garmin Epix at left, shows me about half-way up the main climb portion.
Now, one notable change with the Grit X2 Pro (and also with the Vantage V3 on the latest firmware) in relation to mapping, is that you’ll see your historical track even if you don’t have a route loaded. Further, with a route loaded, when you go off-course, you’ll now see your historical track too. I was very critical of this very basic gap when the Vantage V3 launched last fall, and it’s good to see it fixed here.
Speaking of that map, you can zoom in/out as you see fit, as well as pan. Polar says they’ve sped up the map render times on the Grit X2 Pro & Vantage V3, due to some new optimizations that you confirm when the update is first completed. These all seemed fine/normal to me, so I’ve got no complaints there. Realistically, you don’t tend to zoom/pan the map on a watch a ton, rather, you’ll just double-check positioning with a quick glance.
Finally, let’s use this opportunity to talk about battery burn. Part of my interest in doing a multi-day hike was to see how well the battery handled. Polar claims 40-hours of battery life; could it achieve that in a typical hike?
In short, no. But, that’s a caveated no. In my case, I gave it the best chance possible. I turned off always-on display (so you’d raise your wrist to see data, else, the screen is black). But, I did have a route loaded. The majority of the time, the screen was not on the map screen, but on various other data pages (either the elevation profile, or just some speed/ascent screens):
In that configuration during the hike, here’s how much battery was burned each day:
Polar Grit X2 Pro Battery Hiking Battery Results:
Day 1 – 12hr 50min: ~98% to 55% remaining
Day 2 – 9hr 49min: ~96% to 52% remaining (note: Grit X2 Pro got accidentally paused for an hour at one point at a break)
Day 3 – 7hr 4mins: 83% to 60% remaining
As you can see, I charged it each day (typically in the morning after waking up). The watch charges reasonably fast to about 90%, so it wasn’t too bad. Still, as you can see with basic math, I was essentially on-course for about 20-25hrs of battery per charge, rather than the 40-hours. Polar says those 40 hours are without navigation, whereas most people using it for trekking are likely to have navigation loaded.
For context, on the other wrist I had the Garmin Epix Pro (47mm, which is the middle-sized one), in an identical not-always-on mode and with the same Komoot course loaded, and using Auto-Select/SatIQ for GPS accuracy. I tried to keep the two units on the same rough data pages. That one has a claimed battery life in gesture mode of 20-32 hours (the range is because Garmin doesn’t specify ‘Auto-Select’, but rather forced multi-band or not). They also don’t specify the impact of navigation. Nonetheless, here’s my battery stats:
Garmin Epix Pro Hiking Battery Results:
Day 1 – 12hr 50min: 95% to 45% remaining
Day 2 – 11hr 4min: 94% to 46% remaining (note the longer activity duration vs above, due to accidental Polar pausing)
Day 3 – 7hr 4mins: 84% to 50% remaining
Both watches had Bluetooth connectivity to my phone enabled the entire time, though I turned off cellular most of the hike, so I didn’t really have any smartphone notifications coming in. As you can see, the battery life there was pretty close, with a slight edge to the Polar by a few percent. When it comes to daily battery life outside of that, the two watches are also essentially a wash at about 4-6ish days in always-on configurations (again, the 47mm Epix, the larger 51mm Epix has much more battery life).
Heart Rate Accuracy:
From an accuracy standpoint, we’ll start on the heart rate sensor – which is one of the areas that Polar said they spent a lot of time working on. The hardware is, of course, identical to the Polar Vantage V3, but the software has had substantial algorithm updates. Interestingly, this is the one area that I saw big shifts during my testing period. So much so that I’m really only looking at data for this review, since the final firmware release about 5 weeks ago.
For these tests, I’m looking at a variety of workout scenarios, and comparing them against both chest straps, other competitor watches, as well as other sensor locations (including optical bands like the Polar Verity Sense and COROS Heart Rate band). These workout scenarios include steady-state efforts, interval efforts, and doing so across multiple sport types.
We’ll start off with this trail run I did, as a good baselining moment. This route was mostly climbing steadily upwards for the first hour, then a bit of a descent (easier, because it was more technical/steep cactus/cliff avoidance, and thus more of a brief walk), and then back to running downhill the last 5-6KM. All of which is a great way to see how things perform.
I had the COROS Vertix 2S on one wrist (optical HR), the Polar Grit X2 Pro on the other wrist (optical HR), then a HRM-PRO Plus chest strap (connected to a Garmin Epix), as well as COROS’s own arm band HR sensor (connected to a Suunto Vertical). Plus, there was a Whoop 4.0 band in the mix too, though it’s not shown on this data set. Here’s the data:
As you can see, things are really darn good here from both units. Frankly, this was the best workout I’ve seen to date from the Polar Grit X2 Pro, as well as the COROS Vertix 2s. There was only one brief moment you see above where the COROS Vertix 2S brain-farted and spiked the HR value. I’m not quite clear why, as nothing special happened then.
Next up, we’ve got a hot and sweaty seaside run, which included some hills, but was also part interval run. I did the first half steady-state (to the extent the hills would let me), and then did intervals every kilometer for the second half. Same crew of watches as above, here’s that data:
Here we see a few wobbles from the Polar Grit X2 Pro, and one brief spike from the COROS Vertix 2S, but again, these all did reasonably well. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from here.
Next, we’ve got a run back in Amsterdam, this time in cooler (but not cold) rainy weather. This was an interesting run in that I did 2KM steady-state, then 250m as a hard interval. Rinse/repeat, for the entire run. Again, same crew of watches, but as you can see quite quickly – things aren’t so hot.
This should not have been a difficult run – heck, as I often joke, even the Whoop band got it right this time (mostly). Granted, removed from this graph is the horrific accuracy of the Sennheiser Momentum Sport optical HR headphones (because it was so messy you couldn’t otherwise make sense of the other watches on this graph).
In any case, as you can see, the Polar Grit X2 Pro & COROS Vertix 2S watches more or less missed every interval, as well as some steady-state sections. As my 4-year old daughter would say “It was not beautiful”.
Now, switching sport areas, here’s a 3hr ride. This one was a main climb section for about 75 minutes or so, followed by a steep descent, and then steady-state into a solid wind while slightly descending (so, still work). Same crew of heart rate sensors as above.
The Polar Grit X2 Pro (in grey) did pretty darn good here actually. A few minor wobbles on the descending portions, but that’s somewhat normal, especially given this descent was a bit spicy in terms of pavement quality, so I was gripping the bars tightly, while not actually putting out a lot of heart rate effort.
Here’s another ride – this time some intervals as you can see. This was perfectly smooth pavement, but you can see the Polar Grit X2 Pro and COROS Vertix 2S still struggled a little bit from time to time. Not horrifically though.
When I did another ride a few days prior with faster-paced intervals, the Polar Grit X2 Pro definitely struggled here (in red).
Not as much as the COROS Vertix 2S struggled, but on the whole, both were on the Struggle Bus.
Next, another climb, and this time it sticks the landing perfectly on this 70 minutes of climbing section, where all is perfectly fine. Of course, it gets a bit messy for a bit during some descents in the middle (and then fine again as I get back to steady-state riding), but on the whole it’s pretty good here.
Overall, including basically daily workouts for two months, the results during the past month have been good and certainly improved, but not perfection-amazing either. There’s some times where it’s just hard-wrong for no explainable reason. And while Polar says they have a new error correction feature in the unit to retroactively correct the data, not once did I see that happen. In fact, I recorded virtually every workout with a secondary app that would take the live heart rate value from the Polar Grit X2 Pro, so that I could compare them afterwards to see any corrections. And it never happened, even in obvious failure scenarios. For example, there was that Amsterdam run above that failed really badly. A case where I stopped for 20-30 seconds, standing perfectly still during a steady-paced run, and it was maintaining a high heart rate (150bpm), despite all other devices being low (100-110bpm).
I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, as I think it does, but rather, the scenarios that trigger the retroactive corrections are so few and far between that I’d just assume it never actually fixes anything.
That said, as I noted, the majority of the running workouts are quite passable, and pretty good. Cycling is more iffy though.
GPS Accuracy:
Next, we’ve got GPS accuracy. The Polar Grit X2 Pro uses the same GPS chipset as the Polar Vantage V3. However, due to the different case design than the Vantage V3, it has a different antenna – which Polar specifically noted they worked on to improve GPS accuracy compared to the Vantage V3. Remember, in 2024, virtually all these watches from all the major endurance sports brands are using the same GPS chipset, it’s the antenna design (and sometimes custom firmware) that make the difference here.
In any case, I’ve thrown everything at this unit, from the the mountains of Madeira (including tunnels that enter/exit a thousand feet along the side of a cliff), to cities, and more mundane workouts.
Starting off with the trail run again, this was mostly open desert, except one loop that was in a canyon with tall cliffs on all sides. As you can see at the high level, things look pretty solid. Here’s the data:
So let’s zoom in a bit. Again, it can be hard to see, but I’ve zoomed in on the section up against the cliffs. Here we can see slight differences between the units, but only by a few meters. Everyone did really good here.
About the only spot on this entire run you can nitpick is this brief moment where, under an overhang, the Polar Grit X2 Pro plotted a few points off to the side, but really, that’s super nitpicky.
So let’s kick it up a notch. This time we’ve got a city run in Amsterdam. The first portion is relatively easy, though it does include a massive 8-12 lane highway + 4 train lane underpass, which all units nailed.
The other portions of the run before the tall-building sections were good too from most units, albeit the Polar did seem to wander a little bit off the track. Not much, just like a meandering toddler that’s not quite holding onto its parents’ hands (you have to zoom in above on the link).
In any case, the real meat of this run is the downtown building section, with tall buildings going upwards of 30 stories. I run up/down this stretch in virtually every GPS watch test I do.
Here, the COROS Vertix 2S did very well (alongside the Garmin Epix Pro). The Polar Grit X2 Pro cut some corners, and the Garmin Forerunner 965 also took a dip into a building for a second. This is probably the best performance COROS has ever had from any of their devices on this test.
Next, back into the mountains we go, this time on that 3-hour climb with a huge slate of competing devices. This is the who’s-who of GPS bike computers. Here’s a quick high-level map that basically doesn’t tell you anything useful, but I include it for context. Here’s the data link.
More importantly, here’s one of the switchback sections going up.
As you can see, it’s virtually identical to the other units out there, so good job at low-speeds climbing up these steep switchbacks against rock cliffs.
And then equally, going back down, it nailed the descents on these higher-speed sections. This is notable, because in green we’ve got the COROS Vertix 2S, which didn’t quite nail the faster/tighter turns. Thus, kudos to Polar here.
At this point, I’ve got probably 45-50 GPS workouts on it, and all of them are basically the same – no issues, and overall pretty solid GPS accuracy. I did though note the Madeira mountains, so let’s pull in that data set for funsies. Just for context, here’s the terrain we’re working with:
Fun stuff, huh?
Now, I will note that for these sets, the Grit X2 Pro was technically on the Release Candidate firmware. That said, Polar noted there were no GPS-related changes on this edition (compared to final version that came a couple days later). There were heart rate changes, which is why I only included data from later sets.
Looking at the first near-13-hour day, all three units were very similar. The denser the jungle and the steeper the terrain (sometimes 30-40% inclines), things got more variable, but nothing crazy different. A random section on Day 1:
Day 2 though saw lots of variances, as I was in the areas with the huge cliffs and tunnels. In this area (seen in the three photos above), tunnels would basically traverse from one cliff face, under the mountain hundreds of meters, to the other side of the mountain to another cliff face. As a result, you got some pretty crazy GPS tracks, like this:
In these tunnel cases, the Polar Grit X2 Pro did perfectly fine. The Garmin Epix Pro actually struggled each time at the ‘exit end’ plotting the first point correctly. Of note here is that I had the Garmin Epix Pro on ‘SatIQ’ mode, which saves battery life by switching between dual-frequency/multiband as needed. Whereas the other three units were all in forced dual-freq/mulitband the entire time. In hindsight, it would have been interesting to see if I had forced the Epix Pro into multiband, if it’d have done a better job at catching the exit points. Once it acquired the exit, it was perfectly fine again.
In total, there were only three of these tunnels, everything else was boringly the same. I will note that the Polar Grit X2 Pro did have some substantial elevation offsets on the first two days though (as seen in the data below), but given it wasn’t technically the absolute final firmware, I’ll let that slide for now. I haven’t seen elevation offsets in any other data sets since (including plenty in the mountains).
Here’s all three days, for those that are bored and want to look at the routes in more detail:
GPS Comparison – Day 1
GPS Comparison – Day 2
GPS Comparison – Day 3
Oh wait, we’ve got one more thing: Openwater swimming!
I did a massive set of some 14 GPS watches as part of an Openwater Swimming GPS Watch Accuracy Extravaganza. That post will go live next week, but here’s the Polar Grit X2 Pro’s performance in that test: Blah.
It did good enough to avoid landing in the ‘Failboat Finale’ category, but only just barely (seriously, it probably was 3rd from worst). Specifically, you can see it clearly undercutting here. This matched some of my earlier swims with it as well, thus, the pattern seems to be holding here for not-awesome-but-not-horrible GPS accuracy on this unit.
What’s funny is that if you were to look at the total distances here, you’d think they were close (Reference Buoy at 1.19km, Garmin Epix Pro at 1.19km, and Polar Grit X2 Pro at 1.16km). But what that overlooks is that the Polar track ‘gained’ distance due to all the wobbles, even though it clearly undercut the turns and corners.
That said, aside from openwater swimming, I’m pretty happy with the GPS performance of the Polar Grit X2 Pro, and have no real complaints there. It appears Polar has stuck the landing on their antenna design, and GPS algorithms. Good job!
What’s The Path Forward?
There’s no question that the Polar Grit X2 Pro is Polar’s best watch to date. It’s certainly the most stunning looking visually, and of course, has the most features of any of their watches released thus far too. I think the leather band that comes with the Titan model is absolutely stunning, arguably one of the best, if not the best band included inbox on any sports watch today. It looks very sharp when not working out. Additionally, when it comes to the software side, there are some minor little upgrades that are a nice touch – such as adding the directional arrows on your routes within the map.
With the launch of the $750-$860 Grit X2 Pro, Polar appears to try and emulate some of their competitors by offering a higher-end looking watch that has the same features as their plastic-equipped variant (the Vantage V3, in Polar’s case). After all, it contains the exact same internal components, chipsets, and even battery. It only differs in the externally visible aspects, like the case design and an upgraded glass on the screen. With that difference, Polar substantially increased the price over not just the Vantage V3, but also relative to the previous Grit X Pro. As a result, and simply put: This watch is well beyond overpriced. It’s not going to attract new customers to Polar, but only tempt the most loyal of existing Polar fans. You can’t launch a more expensive product with substantially less features and accuracy than the base Garmin Epix, which has been floating in the $550-$630 range the last few months. One could also look at the $699 COROS Vertix 2 series, which also even includes two different straps/bands in each box. The Suunto Race ($449) has virtually identical maps to the Grit X2 Pro, as it’s literally from the same source. And Suunto has an app store on the watch, and I’d argue a better smartphone app too, especially for navigation.
In many ways, at a software level, the Grit X2 Pro reminds me a bit of the Garmin Instinct 2 when it was released two years ago. It was close, but also not ready – and had numerous bugs. Some minor, some more notable. Things like Polar’s wrong upcoming elevation profile are annoying, but not a deal-breaker. Same goes for the advanced sleep-related metrics failures many experienced since launch, that appears resolved with most recent update. Stuff like this are relatively easy things to fix (given they were working previously on other Polar devices), just like it was for the Garmin Instinct 2 series. So I’m less worried about this stuff.
To Polar’s executive team, I have a few thoughts that may be worth considering. First, you need to change the pricing of this watch, and the Vantage V3. It’s not really debatable, and undoubtedly, your pre-sales numbers vs expectations likely demonstrate this. For contrast, we saw competitor Suunto take a much different pricing approach going from Suunto Vertical to Suunto Race, and it’s clearly paid off. Second, you need to focus on closing the gap on headliner navigation features people expect of a navigation watch that costs $750-$870. That includes some form of ClimbPro-type feature. That includes additional street/names/etc details on the map. But it also includes more nuanced AMOLED display-related features that Suunto, Garmin, Apple, Fitbit, and many others have around better sleep modes/display brightness, better flashlight modes/interactions, and more. And finally, if you’re trying to get the athletes, in 2024 (or even 2020) people expect features like TrainingPeaks structured workout integration to the watch.
Undoubtedly, this review will sound negative. Sure, it’s largely a good enough watch. It navigated me mostly fine through a multi-day trek in the mountains. And over the last two months it’s captured every one of my workouts without crashing. But “good enough” doesn’t work in today’s competitive landscape, especially at these prices. When priced beyond the market norms, you have to: Excel in features, or excel in accuracy, or excel in material construction, or excel in premium brand value. I struggle to see which category the Grit X2 Pro can check that box in, relative to either their like-priced, or cheaper competitors.
Hopefully, they can demonstrate a forward-looking roadmap on how they’re going to close both the feature and accuracy gaps, if not update their pricing scheme. As the competition over the next 3-6 months is only going to get (substantially) stiffer.
Thanks for reading.
0 Commentaires