Polar has confirmed that there's an update to the Polar Vantage V and Vantage M coming down the pipeline.

The company's smarter sports watches will get an update that brings a range of new features. Leading the charge is a feature called FitSpark, an enhanced personalised training guide that takes into account your current status, looking at your recovery state and suggesting suitable workouts. 

The system relies on all the data that the Vantage models will collect, from your sleep and recovery through to recent activity levels and will make suggests across a range of different workout types, through cardio, strength training and performance training.

FitSpark was first introduced on the Polar Ignite, but now this wrist-based coach makes the jump to a wide range of devices.

That's not the only new feature coming to the watches. There's a clever new Race Pace feature that will calculate the ideal race pace for you, dynamically changing through the event. That means you can set your target time and the race pace will tell you how far ahead or behind you might be, so you can make adjustments accordingly. 

This should, in theory, help you to allow for things like hills on the route, letting you adjust your pace slightly during the event to make sure you stay on target.

Finally, the Polar Vantage V will also get support Strava Live Segments. This will let Strava users see where a segment starts and finishes and also how you compare to the expected time. That should mean that rather than getting back home and examining your data, you should be able to compete with the Strava community better when you're out on the road or tracks.

The new firmware update is available from 31 December.

Polar Vantage V

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