Polar M400 for water-sports

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HelenWater
HelenWater Posts: 232 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I'm considering buying the Polar M400 with dragon boat paddling and rowing in mind. I would be interested to hear about your experience with the M400 and doing these kinds of activities. Specifically, I'd like to know if the speed/pace seems realistic, and if the GPS trace looks reasonable. I use a HRM for calorie burn, so I'm not concerned about that part.

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  • kozyranger
    kozyranger Posts: 2
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    The Polar can be used in the water and given your not even fully submerged I'd say it's a good product. The V800 would be best if you plan on using an underwater HRM. I personally own the M400 and I like it. If you can hold out the A300 is coming out and if you don't need the GPS it's going to be quite a nice unit. Either way MFP doesn't support Polar yet. They claimed they were going to have it supported by the end of January but they lied.
  • KathieD213
    KathieD213 Posts: 8 Member
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    Kozyranger - how do you use your M400 with MyFitnessPal? I am frustrated that my activity is not recorded unless I specifically add it. I don't know how to convert the steps and calories burned like my fitbit did. Do you use a formula?
    -
  • veloman21
    veloman21 Posts: 418 Member
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    Helen, I have an M400 and think it's a great device. I have found the GPS track to be incredibly accurate, even more so than my Garmin FR 310XT and about the same as my Edge 500.

    Their software Polar Flow allows you set up profiles for different sports with different calorie burn algorithms used for each profile. There is a rowing profile.

    @KathieD213 Allegedly Polar will soon sync automatically with MFP, supposed to be any day now. Until then the only way to get activity data into MFP is to export it out of Flow and then import it to an app that does currently connect to MFP, such as Connect, MapMyFitness, Strava etc.
  • HelenWater
    HelenWater Posts: 232 Member
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    Thanks @veloman21. The M400 seems very good, and it sounds like it would be good for rowing.

    I did use my Edge 500 once in the dragon boat, but with it not being on my wrist it was a bit awkward. I did like seeing where we had been and it seemed pretty accurate. I imagine the M400 would be very good for bush walking/hiking/rambling too.

    @kozyranger It's the GPS that I'm interested in and I would love the V800, but it's just a bit too expensive for me at the moment...I bought a lot of fitness gadgets last year.
  • jkleinhesselink
    jkleinhesselink Posts: 12 Member
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    All you polar users, http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/102409-polar-users here is a group with some polar specific information. I'm new to this and love hearing about everyone's experience as I just bought my first fitness tracker and it was the m400!

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