Polar H7 HRM

I know Polar is one of the most popular brands of heart rate monitor out there, but my experience so far is the reliability sucks. I say this out of frustration. Over the last 3 years, I've bought 2 H7 and 2 replacement soft straps.

The thing is, they work fine for the first 10 months, and then go dead. The first one I had started not emitting a BTLE signal, so I sent it to Polar support. I had to pay for the shipping. The first time they spent 3 weeks on it due to the holiday and then mailed it back. That worked for roughly 3 weeks before it started to act up. In good faith I bought a second unit and sent the first unit back for service. Polar replaced the old unit with a new one, which was nice.

The second unit I bought started having issues after 5 months. At first I thought it was the sensor unit, but turns out it was the soft strap. I figured this out by testing the sensor with different straps. Rather than wait another 3 weeks, I went ahead and bought a replacement strap. Two more months went by and the new sensor unit started having issues. The behavior was the same as the first H7 I bought, the sensor stopped sending a signal. I sent the second unit in for service and again it took 2-3 weeks.

Polar didn't replace it, but they did get it working again. 4 months later the replacement unit Polar sent me died and stopped sending a signal. I tested it with new and old soft straps, no luck. This week, the second H7 died.

At this point, I've lost faith in Polar H7 and Polar products in general. I can understand some defect rate with hardware, but all three units died. Based on my experience, that's a 100% failure rate. I use my HRM almost every day and I do sweat alot. The thing is, these issues are fixable with proper design and QA. Earlier this year I got wahoo tickr to replace the first polar H7 that died.

Now that the second H7 died, I'm going to get another tickr instead. The other thing that sucks with Polar is their customer service. First thing is I paid 75.00 for each H7 HRM. Why do I have to pay to ship it to them for service? The right thing is to pay for the shipping. The second thing is the turn around time. It's never taken less than 3 weeks for polar to "service" the sensor.

In contrast, when my Wahoo speed/cadence unit died, they still sent me a replacement when it was beyond the warranty. They didn't have to, but they did. I got the replacement in 2 days and I was back in business. Another example of good service. When my stages power meter battery cover broke, stages sent me replacement covers. Both Wahoo and Stages provide excellent customer service.

Polar is a much bigger company, so they probably forgot what it means to provide good service.