Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsDeeply Flawed GPS Device
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2020
The primary requirement of a GPS device is to track my location, distance, and pace. This device fails at that. And it fails in crazy ways.
Today, I ran a 16 mile trail run. At the end of the run, the Grit X showed that I ran 4.93 miles. It was failing in the first mile. I had good GPS reception, so I have no idea why this would happen. The device actually did track the entire route, heart rate, elevation changes, etc., but the distance and pace were completely wrong. This is the second run in three runs where the device has failed. I ended up tracking today's run on my iPhone, and it had no problem tracking.
The other night, I left the device to charge all night. When I woke up, the Polar Flow app and the device were showing that I hit 503% of my activity goal. Again, it was on the charger all night. When I reviewed the heart rate data, it was fluctuating all over the place between 120 bpm and 175 bpm all night long.
I did reach out to Polar on both issues, but I have not heard back from them. However, I've been running for almost a decade and a half, and I've used many GPS units. I've never had one fail so badly. It is not a good sign for this product. I need my devices to do the bare minimum, at least: track my route, distance, heart rate, and pace. If you can't do that with an almost $500 device (with tax), it is a complete fail. Possibly Polar can fix it, but how could they ship a device this flawed to begin with? Maybe this is a defective one. I don't know, and I don't have time to figure it out. It's very disappointing, but this device is being returned.
UPDATE: It has been three weeks, and Polar still have not responded to my two support requests. I've checked my Junk folder and anywhere else the email could end up. They have not responded. I understand we are living through a global pandemic, so maybe they are short-staffed. But Polar decided to release this device in May, in the middle of the pandemic, so they should have support available (working from home, I hope) for this brand new device. But they do not.
I'm not sure why there are so many positive reviews for this device when my experience was so bad. However, if you plug this Amazon product page URL into the website fakespot dot com, you'll see that it gets a low rating (a "D" at the time of this writing) in regards to legitimate reviews. So, if you are still interested in this device, be prepared to be frustrated. But more importantly, check the return policy and order it. I don't recommend it, but maybe you will have a better experience. My experience was very bad. It was the worst device I have ever tried in my 12 years of running long distances and mountain biking on road and trails (mostly trails).
