review

Polar V650 GPS Cycling Computer with Cadence And Heart Rate

Monday, May 14, 2018

The purpose of cycling is not just to develop your fitness but to develop power so you can cycle faster!
With a bike computer such as the Polar V650 you can measure efficiently your power output so you can go faster on your bike and also get up to a target heart rate with ease.

The V650 bike computer works with popular cycling power meter manufacturers such as Stages Cycling and Rotor Bike Components.
The third party power meters that the Polar V650 bike computer supports include Favero Assioma (full support), Power2max NG (basic support), Powertap C1 (basic support), Powertap G3 (full support), Powertap P1 (Basic support (extended data not supported).
thickness 16 mm (with mount 20 mm)
The Polar V650 also fully supports Wahoo Fitness Kickr, LOOK Keo Power and Stages cycling power sensor (from version 2.0.76 onwards)
compatible with Training Peaks software
The included 60-day trial of Strava premium is great for keeping newish road bikers motivated by providing real-time alerts about the most interesting parts of a particular cycling route.
The V650 bike computer can be paired with cadence and heart rate monitor sensors to give you all the metrics you would need on a clear screen, plus you can upload your training sessions to the Polar V650 accompanying mobile app via Bluetooth connectivity.

The Polar V650 bike computer comes with maps that you can download offline so if you are a road biker that is into touring, you will find the maps useful for finding bike specific routes and points of interest for cyclists.
Built-in the unit, you get a 1900mAh Li-ion polymer rechargeable battery that can store up to 10 hours of power, as well as IPX7 rating so the V650 is rainproof but not waterproof (you can't take it swimming).
the micro USB port is protected by a cover
weight 120 grams
front led and single side button
The body of the Polar V650 is made of various thermoplastics (ABS and polyoxymethylene) and kevlar type polyamide material so the outer casing of the V650 is solid.
The display consists of a polycarbonate sheet that protects the asahi dragontrail 2.8-inches glass color touch screen display which has a 240 x 320 resolution that can be easily read in dull and bright sunlight.
Dragontrail is very much like Gorilla glass so it's a very hard and tough glass that is scratch resistant and virtually impossible to break (dragontrail glass is used on many Redmi, Oppo phones).
In order to use the built-in training features of the Polar V650, you will need a heart rate sensor. Polar includes as a bundle the H10 Bluetooth smart heart rate sensor as well as the strap which is made of 38% polyamide, 29% polyurethane, 20% Elastane and 13% polyester. 
On the inner side of the strap, you find the conductive silicone electrode area which doesn't require electrode gel, just water moisture for the electrical conductivity. The coin cell CR2025 battery required for the H10 heart rate sensor is also included.
Just like the Polar A370 and Polar M430, the V650 cycling computer features "Training Benefit" "Training load", "OwnCal" and "Recovery Status" which give you feedback on your personal training limits, calories burnt during a training session and the time necessary for recovery before the next training session.
For more detailed feedback, you can always login to the desktop version of Polar Flow or Polar Personal Trainer
You will need to setup your V650 in the Polar flow web service (available on Windows and Mac) by downloading the software from https://flow.polar.com/start
Once setup, you will be able to update the V650 firmware, download maps, upload training sessions and more.
As far as what the V650 can do, it can monitor live heart rate and calculate your maximum heart rate (HRmax), as well as monitor your training intensity and power output via Hear Rate zones and Power Zones.

There are also advanced power metrics that let you track Normalized Power, Intensity Factor and Training Stress Score.
front led
The V650 cycling computer also features a "moving zone pointer" that lets you see in-real time whether you are moving or keeping inside the target zone you want so you can increase/decrease the training intensity, pace and speed.

The V650 also integrates activity-based and heart rate-based calorie calculation which gives you a more accurate value on calories burned based on your individual profiles and type of training activity, while seeing the amount of energy used in kilocalories (kcal) during exercise and total kilocalories of the session after exercise.
"Back to Start" and Route Guidance" direct you back to your starting point  and guide you on the map while you ride.
The V650 bike computer can also calculate training distance and lap distance in miles or kilometers, as well as altitude and ascent/descent thanks to the built-in GPS chip.
autostop/start
With Bluetooth Smart, it means you can connect the V650 and others sensors to each other as well as sync the data via mobile. Features include real time and average cadence of your entire cycling session, as well as speed, distance, and incline which tells you the uphill or downhill inclination in numerical form.
The main menu consists of four main tabs which are History, Settings, Routes and Profile, as well as four icons which correspond to the GPS signal, heart rate sensor, power sensor sensor, cadence sensor and speed sensor. When a sensor is connected, the flashing green circle around the icon becomes solid green.
While the V650 doesn't do route mapping, you do get GPS mapping using OpenStreetMap which is free.
You can look at places and destinations you have been on a 450 kilometer square area. The map can be zoomed in to street level. Selecting Profiles takes you to four profiles including road cycling, mountain biking, indoor cycling and other. Each profile has four bike profiles which determine the training views while riding.
From the Routes tab, you can sync new routes to the V650 for live route guidance by importing the routes via the Polar Flow web service from services that support GPX or TCX files.
From the History tab, you can see each session, including the date, time, duration, distance, HR max, maximum and average speed, calories burned and fat percentage.
The Settings tab takes you to General Settings, Sport Profiles, Bike Settings and Physical Settings submenus.
From general settings you can change the language (15 languages), date/time, units (imperial or metric), as well as turn on/off the backlight and the front light led.
The V650 bike activity tracker can also be set to automatically power off itself after 15 minutes by default.
From general settings, you can also access pairing mode, maps and the About screen which contains the current firmware version number (4.1.8), the device ID number the Bluetooth MAC address.
Bike settings let you set each bike profile with a name, wheel size (mm), crank length (mm) and sensors.
The Physical settings of the Polar V650 GPS bike computer allows you yo set your sex, height, weight, date of birth, HR Max, resting heart rate and VO2 max. Check out the review of the new Polar Vantage M2 sports watch.

micro USB charging cable and handlebar rubber bands included

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