Polar rolls out huge 6.0.18 update to six watches

Polar has just pushed out a pretty chunky update to six of its watches. Firmware 6.0.18 adds new health graphs, more control over buttons and sport settings, an 80% charging limit and a decent refresh of the menus.

And there is actually quite a lot here. Vantage V3, Vantage M3, Grit X2 Pro, Grit X2, Ignite 3 and Street X all get changes you are likely to notice, rather than the usual collection of small fixes buried in a changelog.

There is a bit more context here too. For Grit X2 Pro owners, the previous major firmware release landed back in January, so this arrives after more than eight months without another big update. 

More of your data is finally visible on the watch

To start with, Polar is adding proper trend graphs for a bunch of metrics.

• You can now see seven-day graphs for Nightly Recharge, ANS charge, Sleep charge, nightly heart rate, nightly HRV, breathing rate and sleep duration.
• Running Index gets a graph showing the seven most recent results,
• Weight follows the same idea with your latest seven measurements.
• Compatible watches can also show the seven most recent ECG test results.

That fits with what Polar started doing with its OS 5 update earlier this year. That release added dark maps, RPE grading, new widgets and other interface changes. Firmware 6.0.18 pushes things further by making the watches themselves a better place to actually look at your data. 

The buttons are getting a lot more useful

On Vantage V3, Vantage M3, Grit X2 and Grit X2 Pro, the old LIGHT button can now work as a Custom button. You can choose what it does during normal use, then assign a different action for individual sports while training.

Street X gets the same basic idea, with its built-in flashlight making an obvious candidate for the shortcut. Polar only launched the device earlier this year, so it is good to see the newer model included rather than having its software branch off on its own. 

Early feedback suggests this is one of the changes people are noticing straight away. Users are also liking the redesigned pre-training screen, particularly the clearer indication of which external heart-rate sensor is connected. 

You can change sport settings without reaching for Flow

Polar has also moved the main sport profile settings onto the watch. You can now change them from the main Settings menu, from pre-training mode or while a workout is paused.

The menus themselves have had some work as well. Polar has updated the colours and transition animations, moved some settings around and brought Timers directly into pre-training mode.

There is another small cleanup that some users have already spotted. Strava Live Segments no longer takes up its own prominent item in the main menu, which should make the interface a little less cluttered for anyone who never used it. 

Buried among all the changes is an update to Polar’s optical heart-rate algorithm. The company says it has worked on reducing occasional heart-rate dropouts during workouts, sleep and normal daily use, while also improving performance across different skin characteristics.

Polar has added an 80% battery charge limit

Another addition is the option to stop charging at 80%. You can switch it on under the battery settings and leave it enabled when you do not need every last bit of runtime.

This is basically the same idea that has become common on phones and laptops. Keeping lithium batteries away from a permanent 100% charge can reduce long-term battery wear.

The update also adds more background options for digital watch faces and quicker weight entry from the pull-down settings menu. You can even set a reminder to update your weight, which should be handy for anyone feeding regular measurements into Polar’s training and calorie calculations.

Our takeaway

The Vantage, Grit and Street lines cover very different price points, so rolling the change across all six watches gives Polar a fairly broad test bed. It’s also good to see the company rolling the software to its new watches.

There are a couple of very early reports of update hiccups. One Vantage V3 owner reported the watch resetting during installation before successfully updating after pairing again, while a Grit X2 Pro owner reported the touchscreen becoming unresponsive after assigning the flashlight to the Custom button. That is nowhere near enough to suggest a widespread problem, but it is worth keeping an eye on as more people install 6.0.18.