Polar F11 Heart Rate Monitor Watch

Suggested Retail Price: $179.95

Rating: 9/10

Top Features

• Personalized workout programs (Polar Keeps U Fit)
• Measures your fitness level in 5 minutes (Polar Fitness Test)
• Personalized target heart rate zone indicator (Polar OwnZone)
• Personalized calorie burn counter (Polar OwnCal)
• Blocks signals from other monitors (Polar OwnCode)
• Polar Precision Performance 4.0 software with SonicLink

Product Specs

• Displays heart rate, average heart rate, and exercise time
• Full clock and stopwatch function with day of the week and date indicator
• 1 year average battery life
• Water resistant to 100 feet (30 meters)
• 2 year limited warranty

Disadvantages

• More expensive than most monitors
• Software can be difficult to use
• Instructions can be confusing

Review

Billed as a virtual personal trainer, the F11 is a high-end general fitness heart rate monitor.  It's also the most popular Polar model available.  In addition to being fairly easy to use, this model also has all the basic features that would come in a cheaper heart rate monitor, and contains some nice extras.  With all the extras, however, comes a higher price, and not everyone will find that it's worth the money.

If you've ever owned a Polar heart rate monitor other than the F11, you'll probably be familiar with the basic features.  These include the Polar OwnCal and Polar OwnZone technologies.  The OwnCal calculates how many calories you are burning, and the OwnZone gives you a customized heart rate zone.  These numbers are calculated by first establishing your physical condition, which can be done with the F11's Polar Fitness Test, which will give is able to accurately your fitness level by completing a simple 5 minute series of tests.

Because the F11 heart rate monitor is meant to be like a personal trainer, it provides custom workout programs with the Polar Keeps U Fit feature.  To use this, you first take the Polar Fitness Test, and then you get to decide whether you want to maintain, improve, or maximize your level of fitness.  Then, the F11 will create a weekly fitness plan for you, suggesting how many hours and at what intensity to workout.  Complete all of your goals, and you'll win the digital gold cup!  You can also keep track of your progress with the included fitness exercise diary.  Overall, the Keeps U Fit feature really is great, and it actually does feel like your heart rate monitor is doubling as a personal trainer.

By far the biggest downside of this heart rate monitor is the lackluster internet support.  First, it's difficult to upload your information, and then the website is slow.  Also, you have to view Polar's website to view your data.  And even if you figure it all out, all you can see is graphs and statistics for your time spent in each heart rate zone.  If you want to use the data for something like interval training, it will be almost useless, since you don't get the details that you would need.

Although it's not perfect, realize the F11 is the most popular heart rate monitor for a reason.  If you don't mind paying a bit more for a monitor, you may want to get this one, especially if the Keeps U Fit feature sounds appealing.