Polar RCX5 Training Computer

We just got the new Polar RCX5 Bike and Run watches in last week. We had to ship out a ton of them but there were a couple left over, therefore I immediately began to tinker.

Why Learning and Adjusting Is a Process

We go through all types of rigorous testing but much of it has to last for months. Anybody who thinks that a tester using a product for a few days can give you the full drill is mistaken. It takes months to find all the capacities and quirks. I’m still learning new things on my Garmin Edge 800 every week and I have been using it for 4 months.

Fitness electronics today are very sophisticated and have an abundance of features and measurements, often too many for one mind to comprehend. This is where you have to narrow it down to what is important to you, the metrics, and learn those functions, first and foremost, to arrange your displays to correspond to what’s important.

Polar RCX5 Fit

My best barometer for a new product is to put it on the wrist of my wife. She is very petite, with 5 ¼ to 5 ½ inch wrist, so it gives me a sense of what women think.

When she put on the Polar RCX5 she said, “It is so light and I really like the large display”. It’s true the RCX5 weighs about 35% less than the new Garmin 610 GPS. GPS watches with their larger lithium-ion rechargeable battery requirements are never going to be as light as a standard watch.

The double set of band clasps also make it nice for women because when you have to pull the band through the metal clasp past a lot of holes to get it to fit there is a lot of extra band left over. It is nice to be able to secure this excess band in more than one location, which is precisely what double clasps were intended to do.

The profile of the RCX5 is also very slender, which was very sleek. This is the best looking watch Polar has ever designed in our opinion and the fact that the majority of the face is nothing but screen makes it all the more enjoyable.

Initial Start-Up Sequence

Push any button to turn on the watch. There are five button locations as pictured below- an Up, Down, Back, Light and the red center control button.

The first thing the watch wants to know is what language you would like to speak. Just highlight the desired language and push the large, red center button to select.
The watch walks you right through the whole setup process and it is quite easy. Just use the up and down buttons to highlight the desired field. The watch gets all of your biometric parameters loaded in and then it is time to go train.

Let’s Go Run, Bike, Swim, or Other Sport

Once you have completed the start up sequence you can use the large red center button to advance from sport to sport depending upon what you are doing that day. The choices are run, swim, bike and other sport.

It is pretty cool that Polar thought of this other sport option because the five custom heart rate zones you can use for each sport are going to vary depending upon what you are participating in.

You’ll find that you can get your heart rate higher at some sports, so using the same zones for every sport does not make sense.

The icon driven sport selection process is very nice and super easy to understand. Just hit the big red button to advance between sports. You check out the images of the various screens in the photos below.

You can customize many fields on your watch for each event. For swimming it is pretty straight forward because the only measurement is heart rate but on the bike you have speed and cadence sensors and wheel size to add. You can also set up for multiple bikes. Plus, you can add the G5 GPS sensor for the run, the bike or the swim. For the swim you will have to keep it waterproof and under the cap as the new G5 is not waterproof. I know other reviewers have shown the G5 getting wet and said that it works however Polar does not recommend it. If, and when, they do recommend it we’ll let you know.

The New S3 Plus Stride Sensor

Polar recently completed a makeover on the S3 Stride sensor’s attachment system. This new system attaches very firmly to the shoes laces but, it does require laces to hold it in place. It weighed 28.5 grams on our postal scale meaning that in imperial units it is just barely more than 1 ounce, certainly not enough weight to worry much about.

Several four lap miles at the local University track showed variations of 27 and 15 yards respectively, certainly not enough error to be very concerned about. This would be about ¼ mile for the entire length of a marathon.

The S3 is important and very different from other foot pod devices which strictly measure speed and distance. The S3 actually looks at cadence and turnover to help you develop a more efficient stride, which is what becoming more efficient as a runner is about.

Training software

The RCX5 synchronizes with Polar personal trainer software but there is a very, very important piece of software you will need to download at the Polar personal trainer website called Polar WebSync. This piece of software allows you to wirelessly synchronize data between Polar personal trainer and the training computer watch unit.
Here is a link that will allow you to set-up Polar Websync on your computer – Get Polar Websync here!

This is important because it allows you to move data both ways – from the watch to the computer and from the computer to the watch. This allows you to upload customized training to the RCX5.

The Polar personal training software has been recently upgraded significantly to account for the usage of triathlon competitors and to accommodate the training load factor. You can either let the software customize your training based upon your biometric parameters, or you can customize it yourself.

Training Load

As the RCX5 begins to understand your body from exercise and fitness tests it begins to make a more accurate assessment of your training load, or cumulative training activities.

The upgraded personal trainer software will help you develop training calendars and develop training programs with advanced training analysis. This will help you train more scientifically and insure that you dial in your training program to meet tour larger goals.

Weaknesses

If you train with power, or watts output, cycling then this training computer watch will not meet your requirements. Other than this one detail it is hard to think of a metric that it does not measure.

Our only wish list item on features would be a vibration alert. It is nice to have when environmental noise makes it difficult to hear audible alerts when you are near freeways or going fast on the bike.

Summary

The Polar RCX5 Run package is certainly among the top running watches available on the market today from either the GPS or foot pod categories.

Heart rate based training using anaerobic threshold is still the best methodology by which to improve your running and for these purposes this watch has all the tools when combined with the S3 foot pod and Polar personal trainer software.

The versatility of this watch further allows you to cross-train at any sport and access to data that is unique for that sport to analyze your performance. The ease of switching between sports makes for one of the best multi-sport user interfaces that we have ever tested.

The capability of this watch to gather heart rate data for swimming is unique thanks to Polar’s Hybrid Wearlink, a dual frequency chest strap that bridges this gap that was present in the RS800 series watches.

It is hard to imagine a multi-sport athlete or triathlon competitor that would not want to get their hands on one of these.

Source:
Rusty Squire
Heart Rate Monitor Blogger

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