Polar FT7 Men’s Heart Rate Monitor Review
For a heart rate monitor watch, the Polar FT7 has some very useful features that offer more than the usual heart rate reading.
This also stores training files on your previous workout which include information such as the duration of your workout, how many calories you burned, how long you were in certain heart rate ranges for as well as being able to set your target and maximum heart rate percentages.
Attaching the Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor
As with other Polar heart rate monitors, the belt that comes with the Polar FT7 has a clip on design for attaching the monitor unit to the actual belt.
Once you have wrapped the strap around your body just below your chest, there is a very simple hook design for joining the two ends of the belt together. This can then be rotated around your body until the monitor is at the front and in the most comfortable position.
Both the watch and the main strap for the Polar FT7 are adjustable for both larger and smaller people. The holes on the watch strap are also positioned very close together to make sure you can find the perfect setting for you without it feeling too tight or too loose on the wrist.
Polar FT7 Men’s Heart Rate Monitor – Features Summary
- Time of day
- Fat burning or fitness improvement: The EnergyPointer feature lets you easily see if the main effect of your training is fitness improvement or fat burning, helping you focus on your workout goals
- POLAR OwnCal shows calories burnt during and after the training session. See also the estimated amount of fat (%) burnt as an energy source
- POLAR OwnCode prevents cross-talk from other heart rate monitors
- Wireless ECG accurate heart rate (% / beats per minute)
- Average and maximum heart rate of total exercise
- Memory features: daily, weekly and total summaries
- User changeable battery
- Accessories: POLAR FlowLink, Easy to use data transfer between the wrist unit and polarpersonaltrainer.com. It is plugged to the PC with a USB connection.
Body Measurement Features
- Heart rate – bpm / %
- Automatic age-based target zone – bpm / % – To help you train safely and effectively, the heart rate monitor determines your heart rate target zone limits automatically according to your age-based maximum heart rate (220 minus age).
- HR-based target zones with visual and audible alarm – You can define your target zones for a training session based on heart rate to help define the right intensity. When you are out of the preset zones, the training computer will give a visual and audible alarm.
- Polar OwnCode® (5kHz) – coded transmission – Coded heart rate transmission automatically locks in a code to transmit your heart rate to the training computer. Coding prevents interference from other training computers.
Connectivity between the transmitter and the watch
Once you are wearing the belt just below your chest, by pressing the ‘Start’ button on the watch the transmitter will send your heart rate measurement to your watch and you will be able to keep track of this throughout your training.
If you have set your maximum and minimum target heart rate range then this will now be displayed on the Polar FT7 watch screen together with your current heart rate to give you a clear indication of where you are within your target range.
Connectivity quality is another important factor in identifying between good and bad quality heart rate monitors.
For example if you are half way through a workout and the connection drops then some heart rate monitors will reset immediately which will set readings such as your calories burned back to zero. As with all Polar heart rate monitors the connection between the watch and the belt is excellent and we have heard no reports of this happening with the Polar FT 7.
Tracking your distance
For anyone that wants to also track the distance they run during their workout it’s worth noting that the Polar FT7 doesn’t have a setting to monitor this or display it at the end of the session. If this is important to you then perhaps the Polar H7 would be a better option as it comes with an app that can also track your distance.
Polarpersonaltrainer.com features:
- Training diary – Diary is available in Polar software. When you transfer training results from your training computer to your diary, you can easily follow up your training as well as plan your future training sessions.
- Training Load – This feature is available in Polar software. When you transfer training results from your training computer to polarpersonaltrainer.com, you can follow your training load and recovery in the training diary.
- Training programmes – The polarpersonaltrainer.com web service offers a training programme that creates training targets which appear in your diary. You can customise the programme according your current fitness level.
- Data transfer via optional Polar FlowLink (Pc and Mac compatible)
What’s in the box?
- Polar FT7 heart rate monitor
- H1 Heart Rate Sensor Set
- Quick guide
Watch features
- Backlight
- Date and weekday indicator
- Display text in English, German, Finnish, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian
- Dual time zone
- KeyLock
- Low battery indicator
- Time of day (12/24h) with alarm and snooze
- User replaceable battery
- Water resistant – 30m
Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor
The Polar FT7 Men’s Heart Rate Monitor offers an excellent range of functions for what is essentially a middle of the range price.
Being able to view all of your progress and training log from previous sessions is an important part of motivation for future workouts, as well as seeing how much you have improved.
While the Polar FlowLink is optional, combining this with the Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor will give you all you need for monitoring and clearly displaying information from years of training sessions that is usually only possible with monitors in the top price bracket.
Update September 2021
This product is no longer available for purchase online. To find current alternatives, please see the recent reviews of Heart Rate Monitors,