Earlier this week, Polar officially announced the launch of their very first bike computer – the V650. With limited feature details at the moment, the V650 looks to be the long awaited, non wrist-based addition to the Polar family and a direct competitor to the Garmin Edge family of products.
The Polar V650 features a 2.8” color touch screen for easy viewing of your various ride data such as heart rate, speed, distance, and altitude. You can customize up to 6 different display screens, each with the ability to highlight 1-8 pieces of data.
A built in barometer not only delivers more accurate altitude data, but will also provide ascent/descent information and indicate how fast you are climbing. The integrated GPS gives you more accurate speed and distance data during your ride.
Using Bluetooth Smart, the Polar V650 bike computer with connect with all your compatible bike sensors such as heart rate strap, speed and cadence. Polar plans to upgrade the Keo power pedals to be Bluetooth Smart compatible sometime later in 2014 as well.
The bike computer is capable of basic navigation, following routes downloaded from the Polar Flow website. The route directions will be displayed both as a breadcrumb trail and basic directional arrow.
For low light riding, an LED light on the front of the bike computer helps to make you more visible to oncoming traffic. The light works on two modes, constant and flashing, and can be set to automatically illuminate when the light sensor determines the appropriate level of darkness.
The rechargeable battery will last around 10 hours with the GPS set at a 1-second recording rate. Polar will start shipping the V650 bike computer in May 2014 with a price of $253 ($310 with HR Strap). Drop your email on the Polar V650 webpage to get up to date information on the impending release.