Rugged looks, but too many compromises

Introduction

The Polar Street X is a multisports watch that Polar says is made for hybrid athletes and people who live, work and train in the city. 

So what makes the Street X a perfect fit for city-dwelling fitness fans over other watches? It’s built to military-standard durability, can track over 170 sports, and includes a built-in flashlight to make nighttime outings easier.

The Street X is a new watch line for Polar, but did it need to make it? I’ve been putting it to the test for two weeks to find out.

Design and screen

• Uses bioplastic for case and bezel
• AMOLED touchscreen
• Built-in LED flashlight

The Street X is what I’d describe as a mix of a Casio G-Shock and Garmin’s Instinct watch. It wraps up a 1.28-inch, 416 x 416 resolution AMOLED display in a plastic shell that’s nicely weighted and, as mentioned, has been tested to military standards for durability. That means strong protection against drops and bumps. It’s also waterproof up to 50 metres depth, like most other watches around this price. 

It’s not as hulking as your typical G-Shock watch, with the 45mm case size sitting in between the 40mm-50mm sizes that you can grab Garmin’s similarly rugged Instinct in.

There are five physical buttons dotted around the case, all with a textured finish to improve interactions with sweaty hands or gloves. They’re good-sized buttons, if maybe a little too encased in that shock and weather-resistant frame. It can make using them in a rush a bit awkward.

At the top of the case is an LED flashlight, a trendy feature for sports watches and marks the first Polar watch to include one. The flashlight is activated by the top-left button, where you can also adjust brightness or switch to red light mode for a less distracting, better penetrating light. It’s a bright flashlight that was useful for nighttime runs and for getting around a room without needing to hit the light switch.

There’s a 22mm silicone strap that’s available in three different colours, with a sliding pin mechanism to release it from the watch case. I wouldn’t say it’s the most comfortable strap I’ve worn on a sports watch. It sits quite snug, which means it stays well in place, but there were also a couple of occasions when I felt I needed to take it off to give my wrist a break.

That strap can also be replaced with one of Polar’s payment-enabled straps, which will cost you an additional £51 and adds the ability to make contactless payments.

The AMOLED screen, which is protected from scratches with Gorilla Glass 3, is a perfectly good quality AMOLED with good colour accuracy and overall sharpness. You can adjust the screen brightness, though I found that even at maximum, it felt a little dull compared to other watches I’ve tested at this price point. The screen responsiveness, while generally fine, does seem to experience slight lag at times, causing it to float between menus and modes.

Performance and software

• Works with Android and iOS 
• Works with Polar Flow app
• Displays notifications and music playback controls

Like other Polar watches, the Street X runs on Polar’s in-house operating system and can be set up using either the Polar Flow phone app or the desktop app. I did the former, which is relatively straightforward, aside from having to update the watch out of the box. That took about 20 minutes to complete.

The Polar Flow app dearly needs some love. It’s a very text-heavy app where data and insights aren’t particularly glanceable, and it all just seems a bit dated. Things are better on the watch, where that array of physical buttons and touchscreen makes it easy to get around a pretty straightforward user interface.

Something Polar lacks compared to Garmin is a rich array of smartwatch features. You can change watch faces, and while there are some nice options to pick from, most of the faces aren’t that exciting or memorable. You do have the ability to control music playing on your phone with controls well optimised for the touchscreen display. You can also simply view phone notifications and view some nicely detailed weather forecasts. 

While this watch can share data with third-party apps like Strava, Komoot and TrainingPeaks, when it comes to storing data on the watch, there’s just 32MB to play with. 

As a smartwatch, Polar is behind the competition not only in features, but in the execution of those features.

Tracking and features

• Over 170 sports modes
• Misses out on dual-band GPS and newer Polar Elixir sensor
• Breadcrumb navigation with turn-by-turn support

The Street X seems to have everything in its locker to be a very capable and competent multisports watch. It can track sports such as running, cycling, and swimming, as well as indoor workouts like strength and circuit training. It has built-in GPS, a heart rate monitor to track effort levels and the ability to help you find your way or your way back home on a run in a new location.

What it doesn’t do is give you the best that Polar has to offer on those hardware and software fronts. You’re getting a multi-GNSS setup for outdoor activity tracking, instead of a newer dual-band one. You miss out on Polar’s Elxir sensor, which means missing Polar’s latest heart rate sensor technology. That also means missing out on an ECG sensor and its latest skin temperature sensor technology. You also don’t get full offline maps to view your surroundings in greater detail, either.

Some of Polar’s standout software features do make it in. Like its useful FitSpark workout suggestions, with running, cycling and fitness tests along with Fuelwise fueling reminders. This is to help make sure you don’t crash during endurance-like training sessions due to a poor fueling strategy.

Let’s deal with the outdoor tracking performance first. While plenty of multi-GNSS-based watches can still serve up strong tracking results, the Street X isn’t a good example of that. Given that this is a watch designed for training in the city and doesn’t include dual-band technology to improve performance around tall buildings, this feature feels like an odd omission.

On most of my outdoor tests, the GPS performed fine, but I also had some bad moments on routes that I’ve tested other multi-GNSS watches on that have performed better.

The Precision Prime optical heart rate sensor technology is, unfortunately, not a fantastic performer all the time, as I’ve found on previous Polar watches that included it. On some sessions, like indoor bike rides, it matched up pretty well with graphs generated from a heart rate monitor. Average and maximum readings looked good, too.

There were also times when graphs and, particularly, maximum heart rate readings were off compared to a chest strap heart rate monitor. Thankfully, you do have the option to pair an external heart rate monitor to improve the accuracy of heart rate data during workouts.

Missing out on offline maps isn’t the worst thing here, as the breadcrumb navigation and features like back to start mode are effective enough in offering assistance when you’ve got a bit lost or need some guidance.

Sleep tracking is a strength for Polar’s ecosystem, and that remains true on the Street X. Whether that’s the recovery insights or Polar’s own take on telling you how ready you are to train, the core data underpinning those insights felt good enough to make those recommendations and guidance worth taking on board.

Battery life

• Up to 10 days battery life
• Up to 35 hours GPS battery life
• Uses proprietary charging cradle

The Street X features a 385mAh capacity battery that Polar says can go up to 10 days without its proprietary charging cable. Features like continuous heart rate monitoring and keeping the screen on 24/7 will lower that number a bit.

I found that the average daily battery drop was around 10%. When I switched to using the always-on display mode, the battery was closer to 3 to 4 days. The battery dropped by around 5% within an hour of switching to that more power-hungry mode.

Polar also quotes a 35-hour battery for GPS battery life, which can be extended to 170 hours when you switch the watch into its eco training mode. This reduces heart rate tracking and samples GPS positioning data less frequently. An hour’s worth of GPS use saw the battery drop by 5%. That works out to 20 hours, which is short of the promised 35 hours.

Should you buy it?

FAQs