Polar F4 Women’s Heart Rate Monitor Watch (Black Amber)
Polar F4 Women's Heart Rate Monitor Watch (Black Amber)
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 List Price: $99.95 Sale Price: $78.90 Availability: unspecified 
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Product Description
The F4 is the first women's specific unit from Polar, combining all the necessary heart rate features with a new, slim design. It includes the popular Zone Pointer feature that helps keep you in your Target Zone, and OwnCal to track the calories you burn in real time during your exercise. This well-rounded monitor offers automatic age-based heart rate target zones that will keep you exercising on the right track. You can also override the automatic setting to manually change this zone for fine tuning to fit your particular metabolism. With stopwatch and convenient button free operation, the F4 is a valuable fitness tool. Includes Wrist Unit with CR1632 battery, Transmitter with built-in lithium cell, and Elastic Strap to hold transmitter on chest.
Details
- Automatic and manual options to track target heart rate zone
- Displays maximum and average heart rate of total exercise session
- Zone Pointer function allows you to track the intensity level of your workout
- Includes T31 chest transmitter and strap
- Full-function watch includes time of day, date and weekday indicator, stopwatch; water resistant to 30 meters
Rating
Love this hr monitor. Easy to set and allows me to get the most out of my workouts. It is also very rewarding to see the calorie burn at the end of each workout. It asks for your height, weight and gender, and calories burned are predicated upon your specific data, rendering it much more reliable than estimates from most pedometers and gym equipment. My personal trainer recommended this brand (this is what she owns as well), and although you may see flashier, more attractive monitors, they will not be as reliable or user-friendly.
Rating
Works great, easy to set up, and transmits your heart rate to gym equipment. I love the calories burned feature of the monitor, it validated something I’ve long suspected – the elliptical machines at my gym overestimate calories burned by approximately 30% and the treadmills underestimate by almost 40%… I WAS actually running very hard!
I’m sorry I didn’t get this months ago…
Rating
I bought the F4 Heart Rate Monitor almost a year ago and love it! It is the perfect size for a woman’s wrist and has everything you need to track your progess during a workout. You can toggle between settings so you can see everthing from your current heart rate to your target heart rate to calories burned. I use mine in spin class, but have also used it when I go jogging or walking. It has a stopwatch, which I love, and many other useful tools. I especially love the calorie counter so I know exactly how many calories I burn during and after my workout. All you do is enter your height, weight, etc. and it is ready to go. I definitely recommend this monitor. It does have a chest strap which I found uncomfortable the first couple of times I wore it but I’m used to it now and it doesn’t bother me.
Rating
This is my first heart rate monitor and I love it! It has greatly improved my workouts. It’s very user-friendly and doesn’t take long to learn how it works. You can set it to show your heart rate or the %. It also keeps track of how many calories you have burned. The chest band is not uncomfortable to wear…I forget I even have it on. I highly recommend this monitor for anyone. The only negative thing I can say about it is that the watch is a little flimsy. It doesn’t feel very durable but I haven’t had any problems with it so far.
Rating
I’m enjoying my heart rate monitor quite a bit. I agree with previous reviews that it could definitely use a night-glow feature, and it takes a little while to change the time since you have only a two-button interface, (so don’t use this as your main watch if you change time zones often) but the controls are easy to figure out, and i’d rather have just two buttons than more buttons making things all difficult.
I love the nub at the end of the watch strap that makes it much easier to hold down slack from the watch so it doesn’t get caught on everything. This is the only non-velcro watch I’ve ever had that hasn’t had slack that gets caught on anything. Also, the band has a lot of holes so you can wear it if you have really tiny or fairly large wrists, or use it as an emergency hair-tie.
The monitor functionality also does everything I want it to.
Rating
When I started working out last year, my husband got me a strapless heart rate monitor. It was big and bulky and I needed to press two buttons to get a reading. It also didn’t track calories. It was very good for making sure my heart rate wasn’t going too high. (When you’re in your forties, those things become important.)
A few months ago, I learned that some heart rate monitors actually track the calories burned during a workout. I started researching and brought my choices down to the Polar F4 and a Reebook model that was strapless. I was hesitant to get a model with a chest strap because I thought it might be uncomfortable. I decided to take a chance on the Polar and am so glad I did.
The monitor is really easy to use. You can use your computer to change the settings on it. It continuously tracks your heart rate and calories burned during a workout session. It keeps track of and totals a week’s worth of workouts. This is probably my best fitness purchase ever.
Rating
I love this watch! It’s easy to use. It’s also a very basic watch. It gives your heart rate, zone and calories burned. It’s very nice for what it is supposed to do. If you’re looking for a watch with a lot of bells and whistles, this is not the one for you. It looks nice and it’s not too bulky. The only reason I would have gotten the F6 is because it says it has something that prevents “cross talk” (interference with others wearing a heart monitor watch. There are three of us where this same exact watch in my cycling class and we’ve never had a problem with “cross talk.” As the other reviews said, there is no backlight. Would recommend!
Rating
I am very impressed with the F4. It is very easy to use and a good basic heart rate monitor. It is easier to program than my F6, and it fits better.
Polar makes the best HR monitors, and it works with all their chest straps – coded and uncoded, and even with ones that are not from them. I have Vision Fitness exercise equipment, and the strap works with their HR function. Sometimes I strap the watch to the equipment so I can read while I exercise, and I’m able to continually see the HR without constantly changing the view on the equipment.
The color is more of a gray color than an ice blue, so it goes with just about anything you wear. I’m really looking forward to using this unit while I go out and do my walks this spring!
I can’t imagine buying anything else but Polar. This is my third watch and all three of them are still working well.
Rating
I love my Polar F4. Just love it!
I don’t work out without it and am happy to say that since I’ve started working out (January 1) and using this gizmo, I’ve lost 12 pounds. Okay, so that had more to do with counting calories than it did with wearing a heart rate monitor, but this gadget tallies the calories I’ve burned so that I have a good sense of how much I can eat.
If anyone thinks the calorie calculation is off (because your treadmill says you burned considerably less), I’ll beg to differ. I use a spreadsheet and record calories in, basal metabolic rate, and calories out and every 3500 calories, I lose .8 to one full pound. (I attribute the .2 difference to water weight.)
The monitor comes with a size Medium strap and if you’re small framed, it may seem too loose. I use the band of my sports bra to hold the strap in place (in other words, I “tuck” the strap inside my bra).
Changing the weight on the watch is tedious because you can’t go “down”… you have to go all the way up to 300 and then start over again at 1. As a result, I only change the weight on the thing when there’s a three pound difference or more. Changing the weight is important as it more accurately will calculate the calories burned.
Other critiques stated that the watch had a stop watch mechanism. It does not. It doesn’t have a light either but I haven’t used it at night or in the dark. I don’t use this for time at all; I use it ONLY to report back my workout results.
I do own the black watch because I thought the blue one looked cheesy and had read that it yellowed with time. After ten weeks and almost fifty uses, the black watch is holding up just fine.
My ONLY beef is that the LCD sometimes shows the numbers (calories in Summary section) in such a way that you can’t read the first digit. A 6 may look like a 3 because the LCD isn’t in full function on the first digit. In other words, 690 calories burned may read as 390 calories. However, just before the summary, when you’re done working out, you get an immediate readout and I read the calories there.
Strangely enough, though, over the last two or three weeks, I haven’t had an LCD problem. It may have been a problem with cold weather, but just know that this might happen with your watch.
Would I buy it again? Yep! Was it worth the $70 or $75 I paid? You bet!
Rating
This is a great heart rate monitor watch for the money. I’ve been using Polar watches for quite some time and think this is the best I’ve owned. I recently tested/compared this watch (F4) to Polar’s M61. The F4 provided more accurate numbers regarding my calories burned (which is the most important thing for me–heart rate and calories burned). I wear an Apex Body Bug that also monitors my calories. When compared to the Body Bug (which is extremely accurate) the F4 was on the money. The M61 only showed that I burned about 1/2 of what the F4 and the BodyBug showed. I also wear my F4 while swimming (which I cannot do with the BodyBug). So far, this was held up great to all conditions. I’m considering purchasing another as a back up or in case Polar for some unknown reason discontinues the watch. Great product!!!