Polar M430 review

The Polar M430 is an excellent combination of no-frills simple yet completely fully featured. It is unobtrusive in the simplicity of its hardware yet can act as a personal trainer daily in training for something as demanding as a marathon. It takes a few days from first use to tweak the app to suit your use best, but once we did, we preferred using the Polar M430 to running watches with colour screens and more advanced design. It’s a running watch in its purest form at a good price.

Polar M430 Review

Polar's new fitness tracker for runners, the M430 ($229.95), hews closely to its predecessor, the M400, in design and functionality, but makes a few notable improvements. For starters, you don't need a separate chest strap to measure heart rate, as it adds six proprietary optical heart rate sensors. It also features improved indoor tracking capabilities, so treadmill runners can record stats without worry. Like the M400, the M430 is a great tool for serious runners, but a bit pricey for everyone else. Once More, With Heart Rate Side by side, you won't notice much of a difference between the M430 ($133.63 at Amazon UK)(Opens in a new window) and the M400. They both have large, monochrome screens, the same button placement, and track pretty much the same metrics—daily activity, steps, calories, and sleep. If you look closely, though, there are two key differences: A ring of six LED optical heart rate sensors underneath the face of the M430, and a perforated wrist strap. You ...

The Polar M430 is a great fitness tracker for runners, but a bit too pricey and sporty for more casual use.

Built-in optical heart rate monitor and GPS; Tracks indoor activity; Vibration alerts for push notifications; Thin, perforated strap

Sporty design and colors not for everyone; Can't swap bands; Slow syncing and unintuitive app design