Today I had a running session in the maintenance power based plan from Steve Palladino (more details here) and I thought of bringing the Vantage V with me, just for fun.
The Fenix 6X (on the left hand) was connected to the Polar H10 chest strap and the Stryd as footpod, while the Vantage V was single (on the right hand). It’s easy to see that the Vantage is easier to wear during workouts because of it’s weight compared with the bulky Fenix 6X, which needs external HR to have reliable heart rate readings because of this.
So, when comparing the data, I looked at the:
- distance
- power (Stryd vs Polar)
- HR (Polar H10 vs Vantage V oHR)
For distance, Garmin (with Stryd) measured 11.20km, while Polar measured 11.29km, the difference being 0.8%, I’d say decent.
The track looks decent from both devices, but also they didn’t have to fight for satellites connection in the woods or canyons. If I’d had to choose one only looking at the GPS track, I’d use the Vantage V.
For power, as expected, Polar has higher values but the evolution and trends are similar, I wouldn’t say though that we can defined an exact formula to transform Stryd power into Polar power by adding a fixed amount.
For HR, the optical heart rate from Vantage worked well, except the last 3 minutes of the run, when Vantage remained higher compared with the H10. That made the average HR from Vantage to be higher with 1 bpm (155bpm vs 156bpm).
If Polar would add the structured power based workouts in their platform, even with the other limitations, I’d switch to wearing the Vantage V permanently. It’s only when you see how you need to deal with power workouts on your Garmin you understand that this area is still not yet well supported for the moment, maybe excepting Apple Watch which only deals with apps and happens to have a good Stryd app.
Stay safe and enjoy your running!
Fenix 6X FW 9.0 Vantage V FW 5.1.4 Stryd (non-wind) FW 1.2.0 Polar H10 FW 2.1.9
Liviu Nastasa 