This is the vantage m2. The polar vantage m2 launched this morning alongside the polar ignite 2, which i have another video about that i posted today and if you want to check that one out i’ll link it up here: real quick if you’re interested in the ignite 2.. But in this video we’re going to focus on the polar vantage m2 instead, as the name implies, the polar vantage m2 is the next iteration. From the polar vantage m that launched back in 2018., the original polar vantage m was very popular because it was affordable and it gave you a lot of the features of the higher end polar vantage v watch at the time. But it’s been a few years now and it’s ripe for an upgrade and that’s where the polar vantage m2 comes into play. Is it a big upgrade let’s find out before we dive into this? If you find this video helpful and you feel educated by the end of it, consider hitting the thumbs up button and the subscribe button down below so you don’t, miss more videos from me in the future, really helps out my channel more than you know, and if You are interested in picking up a polar vantage m2 or any of the polar watches. I will have links down in the description that do help support my channel, but they cost nothing extra to you at first glance, when you look at the polar vantage m2, you might think it’s a polar vantage m because it looks nearly identical to the first polar Vantage m it’s got the same 1.
2 inch transflective display it’s got the same laminated mineral glass on the front of that which is pretty durable and i haven’t scratched. Yet you will see on the bezel. There is a minor difference here: it’s, a stainless steel, bezel and it’s got this really cool. Looking almost like carbon fiber esque etching in the material itself around the back of the watch, you will find a plastic case and, of course, the polar precision. Prime heart rate sensor in the middle here this is the original polar precision, prime heart rate sensor, just like the one that came on the original polar vantage m. This is not the new heart rate sensor, the polar precision prime 2.0, that you can see here on the polar grit x. That is a strange choice, in my opinion, i’m. Not sure why they didn’t upgrade the heart rate sensor, but it’s the original one. But we’ll talk about accuracy a bit more later in this video. Something new with the polar vantage m2 is that it now comes in various different colors. You can get it in. I think white beige color this black one. I don’t really know the colors, but i’ll put them up on the screen here: it’s nice to have options, and i also really like this band it’s got holes all over it, so it’s really nice and breathable, and it is a quick release band. So you can pop it off with your fingernail and replace it pretty easily.
This is a 46 millimeter in diameter watch and it’s about 12 and a half millimeters thick, and it only comes in at 45 grams, which is pretty light for a watch of this size. Super comfortable on my wrist, i really can’t, complain about wearing it day to day and, if you’re interested in a size comparison. This is the polar vantage m2. This is the polar grit x and this is the polar vantage v2, the user interface. On the polar vantage, m2 is identical to that of the original polar vantage m. Unlike a lot of polar’s devices, this is not a touch screen device, it’s only buttons, which i actually don’t mind in some cases on the touchscreen devices. I wish i could just turn off the touch, interface and use the buttons, but on this one you don’t have a choice. As you can see, once you start pushing the buttons, you start cycling through the widgets on the watch and if you click the lower left button, you drop into your settings where you can start a training session. You can view your phone notifications. You can do a breathing exercise and you can do a bunch of other stuff that we’ll talk about in this video. Generally speaking, though the user interface and how this thing works is identical to the original polar vintage m. So if you want a real in depth, deep dive on this watch and how it works as a whole i’m not going to go through that because there’s a lot of other videos about the polar vantage m out there – and i don’t – want to waste your time.
So let’s just talk about what’s new in the polar vantage m2. First up is the smartwatch features of the polar vantage m2. The original polar vantage m didn’t have a lot going for it in terms of smartwatch features. For instance, here you can see the music controls. This is a new feature of the polar vantage m2. This allows you to control the music on your phone by skipping forward skipping backwards, pausing, and you can also adjust the volume of your phone on the fly. This is a handy feature if you’ve got your phone buried away in a backpack or somewhere, where you can’t access it really quickly. You can change your music settings right here on the watch without having to deal with that. Keep in mind, though, this is not offline. Music, you can’t store music on the watch itself and go for a run without your phone. The next feature is the weather widget, and this is actually a really nice implementation of weather on a smart watch. Basically, you’ve got your current temperature. You’Ve got precipitation. You’Ve got wind speed and direction, and then you’ve got your current humidity and following that, you’ve got a 48 hour hour by hour forecast, which is actually really nice there’s a ton of weather information here, and i really like how it’s laid out another new feature on The polar vantage m2 is this weekly summary widget, this widget. That tells you all of your stats for the week.
So you can see here. I ran 38.2 miles so far this week i spent seven hours in activities. I did five activities and i burned 5000 calories, along with my intensity graph here in my heart rate zone and then below the zone. Graph is your activity history for the week, of course, the polar vantage m2 can read your phone notifications. If you get a text message, it’ll pop up on the screen – and you can read it on the fly, however, one big issue i have with this is that it doesn’t work in an activity. So if you’re out on a run and someone texts, you you won’t be able to see it on your watch and that drives me nuts, with all the polar watches. I wish they would change that with a firmware update or something because, honestly, when i really want that feature, is when i’m running. If my wife texts me with something important, i want to be able to read that on my watch. Rather than hoping, i hear it buzzing on my phone and i have to dig my phone out and read it it’s, just kind of a headache. Another new feature on the polar vantage m2 is some level of customization. That didn’t exist on the original polar vantage m. As you can see here, we’ve got our watch face view settings i can click on in here and then i can disable or enable any of the widgets from here.
So i can turn off the time. I can turn off my daily activity. My cardio load status. My continuous heart rate tracking widget, the latest training sessions, all that stuff, can be toggled on and off to be as complicated or as simple as your watch face wants to be and on the topic of customization. You can also dive into your watch face settings here and here you can choose digital or analog and then within there you can actually choose a theme. So you’ve got symmetry small seconds minutes in the middle i’ll. Just click that one and then you can actually choose an accent color for your watch, face i’ll, go ahead and choose green and we go back to the watch face. You can see that it looks different i’ve customized. My watch face a little bit: there’s, not a ton of customization here, but it’s good to see them moving in the right direction, with customization the polar vantage m2 and the original polar advantage m share the same gps on battery life at 30 hours, and they also Have the same extended battery life in smartwatch mode at seven days, however, in the polar vantage m2 you do have the ability to go into power saver mode. That gives you up to a hundred hours in a gps activity. Guess what i’m editing the video you’re watching right now and i realized that i totally forgot to talk about one of the features of the new polar vantage m2.
And that is the new fuel wise feature that was debuted on the polar grit x and then showed up on the polar vantage v2 as well. Now we get that on the polar vantage m2 as well. Basically, fuel wise is a smart nutrition reminder, that’s great for ultra marathons or endurance events. You can set it up to remind you in a duration of time, or you can actually use the smarts of the watch to calculate how many calories and carbs you’re burning it’ll remind you in real time, based on those numbers, pretty cool stuff, and i have found Use for it in the past, however, it’s not something i use every day, it’s really only for those race environments where you’re really out there for a long time, that’s when you might find some value in it. Okay, back to the video and that’s kind of it. In terms of what’s new in the polar vantage m2 let’s talk about gps accuracy, i don’t know if anything’s changed from the original polar vantage m to the m2 in regards to gps accuracy. I’Ve been running with this thing for about five days and i’ve, been comparing it to my garmin foreigner 745, along with the polar ignite 2 that i have here and, generally speaking throughout all these runs looking through all the data, i think the polar vantage m2 does A pretty good job it’s, definitely not perfect, but it’s doing a better job than the ignite 2, for instance, it’s still not quite as good as the garmin foreign or 745 that i have here.
That said, the garmin 400 745 is kind of the gold standard. For me personally, i don’t know why it’s just super accurate in my testing. The data coming out of the polar vantage m2 is totally acceptable, though, and i wouldn’t complain about it. If i didn’t have other watches to compare with now, let’s talk about heart rate accuracy – and this is a weird one for me because on some of my runs, i got super accurate data and on other runs, i didn’t again for testing. I ran with the polar ignite 2 and the garmin 400 745, along with the polar advantage m2 and to get a good baseline of accuracy for comparison. I also wore the garmin hrm pro chest: strap that was paired to the 745.. So in these graphs, the garmin stuff should be the most accurate, because i was using a chest: strap versus the optical wrist heart rate sensor on some runs. The polar vantage m2 is doing really well, it stayed mainly in line with the garmin hrm pro chest strap, and i was really impressed by that. But there were a couple of other runs that were on the trail, maybe that’s, why that were kind of all over the place, and i don’t know why i wear my watches super tight. I don’t have clothing near it. I know all the rules of getting the best heart rate data and on some runs it just wasn’t there, but on other runs it did really good.
This could be because it’s pre production firmware. However, this is not a beta unit, so this is the production box. It came with, and so this should be production worthy software. That said, generally speaking, it was pretty good, but on some runs it wasn’t, so good that’s, just my experience so far. Okay, final thoughts on the polar vantage m2. I kind of feel the same way about this watch as i do the polar ignite 2 that i reviewed in my other video this morning. Generally, it seems like everything in the polar vintage m2 is a software update. I kind of wish they just ported that over to the original polar vintage m and brought it up to modern standards rather than releasing a new device, so they’re, essentially just replacing the polar vantage m with the m2 and giving it a few more features. There could be more under the hood to the vantage m2 that i don’t know about that would prevent it from being ported over to the original polar vantage m. It just seems like from the outside. That would have been easy to do and i think, with the existence of the polar vantage m2, you can safely assume they’re not going to roll. These features back in a firmware update to the original polar vantage m, because that would kind of defeat the purpose. The good news is that the polar vantage m2 retails for 299 dollars, just like the original polar vantage m, so you’re getting all these new features, but they’re not adding more money to the price tag.
That said, if i was somebody that bought a poor vantage m just a few months ago, i’d be pretty upset that this thing actually exists. Anyways that’s all i’ve got for this one if you’re interested in a polar vantage, m2 or polar ignite or any of the watches i’ve shown in this video make sure you check the links down in the description. Those are amazon, affiliate links and they do help support. My channel, if you found value in this video and you’re walking away, educated and happy, might as well hit that thumbs up button down below and maybe subscribe. So you don’t miss more videos from me in the future. I would really appreciate that. Okay, i think i’m done now.9f2MFeR5Yf0
