Tested: Polar Ignite 3 | life is a sport

With its brilliant AMOLED display, notifications and day-to-day analytics, the Polar Ignite 3 is one step closer to being a smartwatch. With some asperities to correct.

WE love

Since 2014, Polar has mainly made its mark with mid-range sports watches, with impressive autonomy. The newest product, Ignite 3, adds a layer of luxury, with the appearance of an AMOLED touchscreen, the one reserved for the best phones. With a resolution of 416 pixels by 416 pixels in a diameter of 43 mm, it provides unparalleled brightness and definition which means that the information displayed is always clearly visible, even in direct sunlight.

We also inherit a new mode, Always-On, which allows the time to be displayed at all times.

Its minimal weight of 35g makes it comfortable to wear, and its sensor array on the back doesn’t form a bulge like on most smartwatches, which adds to comfort.

Most configurations can be done directly on the watch’s touch screen. The screen allows a wide choice of displays, from the position of the time to four “widgets” that you choose and which allow you to display the number of steps, the heart rate, the battery level , weather or a timer. By sliding your finger on the screen from left to right or from top to bottom, you can access other menus or notifications from the phone. Emails, appointments, text messages and caller IDs are displayed here. But no answer is possible.

Music control, on the other hand, with Spotify or Apple Music, is effective, with volume, pause, song forward or backward.

On a day-to-day basis, the Ignite 3 is packed with features to advise on the quality of your sleep, the right time to go to bed, recovery capacity. It offers guided breathing exercises, balances calories burned and calculates aerobic capacity.

To start a training session, a tap on the right button brings up the choices of sports activities – you can select up to 20 of the 150 offered. The watch then displays a sober interface, with a colored indication at the top for the intensity of the cardiac effort and three continuous information that can be configured. The classic displays of time, pace and distance are arranged by default.

The GPS is also activated, with a precision that we promise remarkable thanks to the double frequency used. In our two races, the Polar Ignite 3 gave us with good precision the pace and the distance covered.

We still find here the proverbial autonomy of the Polar: we obtained six days with a full recharge in normal use. The use of GPS of course lowers this autonomy and then gives about thirty hours. The Always-On mode brings battery life down to around three days.

We love less

Unfortunately for Polar, we almost always use the same route for our runs. We noted incomprehensible discrepancies in the route on the map, proof that the precision of the GPS is not quite there.

The new processor in the Ignite 3 promises twice the speed, and for most touchscreen navigation gestures, the experience is smooth. On the other hand, from time to time, especially when returning to the home screen, the watch seems to freeze for two or three seconds.

The system used to attach the bracelet seemed laborious to us. While we only need 2 seconds for an Apple Watch, the operation takes about fifteen with this rough strap that slides with difficulty.

Compared to an Apple Watch, the Polar Ignite 3 does not have a microphone for voice interactions, cannot be used to pay at the checkout, does not have a sensor for blood oxygen and cannot establish an electrocardiogram.

One buys ?

For the user who wants an accurate record of their daily activities, who wants basic sports monitoring while having a watch on their wrist that displays phone notifications, the Polar Ignite 3 is a good choice. However, it is difficult for an iPhone owner to find better than an Apple Watch, which is more complete and better suited to the Apple ecosystem, but whose battery drains much faster.

And the seasoned sportsman will have to pay more for better GPS accuracy.