According to Polar, the Ignite 2 is emphatically not a high-end smartwatch or sports watch, but a fitness watch. It is intended for everyone who is sporty and likes to be healthy, but also wants to enjoy life in style. This includes a watch that is not only beautiful, and that is the Polar Ignite 2 for sure, but also slightly smaller and lighter and at the same time a bit less extensive.
Polar Ignite 2
MSRP 229.90 incl. VAT
Guarantee 24 months
Website www.polar.com/en 7 Score 70 
- Pros
- Design
- Fitness focus
- price
- Polar app
- Polar online
- Negatives
- Screen activation
- Menus
- Battery life
The Ingite 2 naturally has a GPS and heart rate monitor and records sports activities indoors and outdoors, including cycling, running and swimming, but no multisport. In addition, it accompanies cardio and strength training with personal fitness advice in which it indicates the duration and intensity. It also measures energy consumption, nighttime sleep rhythm and recovery. There is a modest set of smartwatch functions such as controlling music that plays on a smartphone connected via Bluetooth and reading incoming notifications, but there is no contactless payment, for example.
Screen and features
You operate the Ignite 2 mainly via the 3.23 by 2.64 centimeters large touch screen. with a resolution of 240 x 204 pixels. The screen is round but flattened at the bottom, there is the Polar logo. There is also one physical button to open menus and navigate back, but in practice you mainly use this to activate the screen. To save battery, the screen is only continuously on during sports and fitness activities, but otherwise it can be activated by a quick wrist movement. Unfortunately, this does not work properly and therefore requires the push of a button.
Although our Ignite 2 is still a pre-production copy, because the previous generation Ingite already had this problem, it is questionable whether it will be solved this time. The IPS TFT screen is beautiful but does not have the quality of AMOLED as Garmin uses with the comparable but more expensive Venu series. And although personal, Polar’s menus and icons used are also clearly less appealing than those of the main competitor.
The Ignite 2 is available in rose, blue, champagne and anthractite colors, all with matching colored wristbands. The battery life is 5 to 7 days with normal use and 20 hours with sports tracking with the GPS switched on.
Conclusion
The Ignite 2 is a beautiful watch that fits every wrist and is wonderfully lighter and just a bit smaller than the high-end sports watches. In addition, it offers a large amount of sports functions that, together with the excellent Polar Flow app and web service, are among the best there is, integration with other services such as Strava is also not a problem. However, in comparison to direct competitors such as the aforementioned Gamin Venu, the Ignite has a difficult time despite the much more favorable price.