New Polar Grit X designed for outdoor athletes

Polar's first watch dedicated specifically to outdoor and trail exercise has a lot that will make triathletes happy.

Triathlon Magazine April 22, 2020

If you’re a multisport athlete who loves to hit the trails you have lots of reason to be excited today – Polar’s new Grit X has your name written all over it.

by Ben Snider-McGrath

Today Polar announced the new Polar Grit X, a new running and fitness watch geared specifically toward outdoor enthusiasts. A staple of the wearable fitness technology world for over 40 years, Polar has developed products for runners, cyclists and multi-sport athletes, and today they add a watch for the outdoor athletes—the runners who prefer taking their workouts off-road and to the trails. The Grit X has an impressive lineup of features that will optimize your training (and racing) experiences, and help you be at your best on every run.

Cost: $610

Available in: Black, white and hunter green.

Where can you buy it? It is launching exclusively on the Polar Online Shop.

The Design

The Grit X has U.S. military-grade durability, and it’s designed to withstand even the harshest of conditions. With a a phenomenal battery life, it can last for 40 hours with the GPS and other features running at full capacity. Power-saving features can extend the already long battery life, pushing it up to 100 hours before needing to recharge. It also features a wrist-based HR monitor.

Multisport capabilities

While Polar might be a bit more focused on the Ultra and trail-running crowd with the Grit X, Xterra lovers and those who spend a lot of their training time on the trails will be fans of this new watch, which supports over 130 different sports. In addition to the extensive running features, in the water it will detect your heart rate, swimming style, distance, pace, strokes and rest times. On the bike, in addition to your speed and distance data, you can connect cadence and speed sensors and also connect to Bluetooth Smart cycling power meters.

Ultimate Accuracy

The Grit X also uses a new feature called Hill Splitter, which gives users elevation stats in real time and monitors your ascents and descents throughout each run. Hill Splitter uses your rates of ascents and descents to tell you how long it should take you to get up a hill and how fast you should be able to run down the other side. This will help you optimize your performance on variable terrains. Pacing on hills can be tough to gauge, but the Grit X makes that issue a thing of the past.

FuelWise

When you get in the zone during a workout, you can lose track of time, and suddenly you realize it’s been far too long since you last ate or drank something. The Grit X’s FuelWise feature takes care of this, and will remind you when to take a fuel break.

Not only that, but it will even tell you what your optimal caloric intake is, specific to you and the activity you’re doing. Your nutritional needs vary depending on the duration and intensity of your exercise, and FuelWise takes all of that into account to make sure you’re fuelling exactly how and when you should be.

Additional features

The Grit X uses Komoot, a mapping and route-planning provider. This watch doesn’t just tell you where you went after a workout—it will show you where you are and where to go during your run. You can go to a new area, map out a route and then follow along on your Grit X without having to worry about whether you’re making any wrong turns. You can also check current weather and a two-day forecast on the watch.

You can also use your Grit X indoors. Polar’s FitSpark feature gives you indoor training guidance, giving you personalized workouts based on your training load and recovery. Finally, at the end of a long day of training, sleep is the most important key to recovery. Your Grit X will measure your sleep and give you a breakdown in the morning with detailed sleep stages, so you can find out if you’re sleeping as well as you should be.

This story originally appeared on the Canadian Running Magazine website.