Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Polar pairs Android Wear with fitness tracking for the M600 sports watch

Polar is known for its fitness-tracking technology, but it looks like the company is hoping to take things to the next level. It has just announced its latest and greatest tracker, the M600 fitness tracker, which is powered by Google’s Android Wear.

The tracker isn’t just aimed at being accurate and powerful — it’s also built for style. While it’s undoubtedly a fitness tracker, it offers a sleek build on par with many other smartwatches out there. The new tracker is waterproof and features Polar’s own wrist-based heart rate tracker, which uses 6 LED lights and is processed by an algorithm designed to be as accurate as possible.

Recommended Videos

“Polar created the first heart rate monitor, the first activity tracker, and now we’re the first true sports wearables company to announce a smartwatch truly made for sports,” said Polar Chief Strategy Officer Marco Suvilaakso in a statement. “Powered by Android Wear, Polar M600 offers our customers countless opportunities to customize their smartwatch and still rely on the unique Polar sports wearable experience that is at its core.”

polar-m600-2
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Pairing with Android Wear is certainly interesting, but does make sense. It gives users the ability to use the fitness tracking apps that they want to use, as well as the ability to use the device as a more general smartwatch rather than just a fitness tracker.

While you can use another fitness tracking app if you want to, the Polar apps are excellent choices. Polar Flow allows you to track your activity and heart rate, as well as things like sleep quality. You’ll also get access to the Polar running program, which offers personalized coaching for 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and full marathon training.

The new Polar M600 will be available later this year in either charcoal black or powder white, and will cost $330.

Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
How does Garmin measure stress, and is it really accurate?
Garmin Vivomove Sport dial close up. Credits: Garmin official.

Garmin watches are known for their robust activity tracking, but that's not all these fitness watches can do. Over the years, the company has been adding wellness features to its lineup of watches. These new health-focused metrics allow people to analyze their fitness and identify outside factors affecting their performance. One such factor is stress, which is something Garmin watches actively measures.
But you may be wondering—exactly how does Garmin measure stress? In this article, we break down how Garmin measures stress and delve into the accuracy of this metric. Should you trust your stress score? Read on to find out.

Is Garmin's stress score accurate?

Read more