For those with an interest in the Polar RS200sd...

Aussie Cool Runner of the Year and blogging virtuoso Mr. Plu has gone and got his self a Polar rs200sd, same as mine and Keren's and Satohi's. When I first got mine I threatened to write up a review here, but haven't yet got around to it. In my comment to Plu about his purchase I suddenly realized I'd made a solid start on the review. So here is what I said to him:

Congratulations on the Polar. I have one of those too. So far I have been very happy with it except for one thing. I might as well warn you so that you don't freak out when (if) it happens. They seem to have some kind of glitch that means that suddenly the whole watch face goes blank and basically aborts whatever it is doing and loses data (if in the middle of a run). It has happened to me twice and to two other people I know [Keren and Satohi] once each. To get it going again, press all four silvery buttons at the same time. The clock will need re-setting, but most of the other saved setttings including previous runs and user data will be fine. Apart from that it's been great. Two more tips. One: for HRmax, try using the monitor's fitness test. All you have to do is lie still for five minutes. Two: when you calibrate the footpod, manually set the calibration factor to 1.000, then do a run calibration over 2 km. I have also found the footpod to be a fairly sensitive little bastard of a thing. If you move it from one set of shoes to another, the calibration will probably be thrown out. Overall, I know it is not as good as a Garmin 305, but one of those was just well out of my budget. And I am really quite happy with the Polar. Hmm...I might repeat much of this comment as a post on my own blog.

And so I have. But what else is there to say? Well, the footpod distance measurement can be a bit touchy. But if calibrated over 2 km and then left on the same shoes and running on the same terrain, it can be very accurate. I have found the pace readout to be a bit erratic though. Even when the pod is calibrated properly, I find that while running along at the same pace the pace readout can fluctuates within a zone of about 20s/km. That is not terribly satisfactory, but it gives you a fair indication and I tend not to even want to use that data very much anyway. It is far less useful than heart rate.

The heart rate strap is great. Very easy to use and comfortable, what with the sensors being embedded in a kind of fabric rather than hard plastic. Seems to very rarely give erroneous readings, which Polars are otherwise infamous for doing.

I have used the programmed workouts a few times and find them very good. You can set up to three zones based on either time or distance, and intensity based on either heart rate or pace. The trickiest part is getting to know the appropriate values to set. For example, lets say for a threshold workout you set Zone 1 to be 2 km at 68%-73% of HRmax, Zone 2 to be 7 km at 85-90% of HRmax, and then Zone 3 to be 1 km cooldown at 60-65%. Now, let's say you are expecting that when it gets to Zone 2 you will have finished the street/footpath section of your run and reached a bike path or park or something, i.e., where you can open up the throttle a bit. But if you mis-judge the distance, you might click over to Zone 2 before you get to the park and have the watch beeping at you to pick up the pace (heart rate). Or you may come to the end of Zone 3 before you get home, and then it is wanting you to run in Zone 1 again. But if you set it properly, these training zones are very good. You can also have it set with a single heart rate zone and no timer which is good for long runs and the like.

It is a little bit daunting to use at first as you have to do a lot of toggling to see all the different screens (while running) and to go through the menus. Even retrieving data requires drilling down through some screens to pull out whatever values you are after for the laps. But all this just requires investing a little bit of time in reading the manual and using it. I can imagine some people getting frustrated and ending up not using a lot of the functionality, but I now feel quite comfortable with it and use most features. One I like is the ability to customize the "one touch" feature. That is, as you are running if you hold the watch close to the chest strap it will do "something". That something can be whatever you set it to do, and includes: take a split, turn on the light, change the watch display -- I use it mainly for the last one.

Well, that's enough drivle for now. Perhaps not as structured and comprehensive a review as I first envisaged, but it'll have to do. If you've got this far, I'd be happy to take questions ;-)