Polar S120 Heart Rate Monitor Watch - 2007 BCS

Someone said that it was very complicated to use with all functions and few buttons and a small display. Well, Windows and Mac are easier, but it's just a small watch! What do you expect? I'm very pleased with my watch. I think it's easy to use and it works great as long as you don't run besides the railroad ;-) I wonder why Polar is replacing this model.

My wife bought me the Pulse watch this year for Christmas and it's incredible. I am using just a few of the features but found them easy to use and understand. I am just getting back into excercising after eight years and would not want to do it without this watch! A GREAT BUYING EXPERIENCE AS WELL. Thanks!

Horrible directions...the thing works but there are horrible directions requiring lots of time to set up and use. Once you start using it, its ok.

Great watch, but the directions suck. It took hours to get a workout programmed in correctly. Polar really needs to rework the directions.

I read a lot of reviews that said this monitor was very hard to use/the user interface was poor/the manual was lacking. Aafter purchasing the watch, I don't know what the complaints were about. People, this is a watch, not Windows XP. What were you expecting? Context sensitive help? Anyway, I did not find it hard to use, and the manual was adequate. The watch works well for what is was designed for. And unlike a lot of other polar monitors, it actually has watch functions like stopwatch and alarm. A lot of the more expensive models were lacking these. You can wear this as your daily watch as well. The watch is comfortable on your wrist. It is lacking a light, and I'd wished for that a few times.

My first monitor just tracked my heartrate, but didn't track my workout time and didn't show the time of day. I'm very happy with the S120 - it does all that and more. One nice feature is that you can set it to beep at you when your heart rate falls below your pre-set level -- so you know when you need to kick it back up a notch. It also has many more features that I don't use, but might some day. I definitely recommend this product.

First, the good. Functionally, this has the key features, 3 ranges you can set, timers corresponding to each, and basic but handy watch functionality.
Now, the bad. I found this monitor to be extremely difficult to get some function out of. I'm a Polar certified sales rep and I had an evil time with it. The stretchy band doesn't provide enough friction and the tingly electric feel on your skin is noticeable and uncomfortable. In five attempts to use this HRM, I found it works fine sitting still, but a minute or two after I start running it tells me my heart is about to burst beating at 290+ Bpm, or has stopped and I'm dead.
I tried numerous things suggested in manuals and online (electrodes wet? Strap in right place, etc etc) to no avail. After a minute or two, I was in Faux-cardiac-arrest again.
For a basic consumer level HRM, it is far, far too finicky.