Affordable but Not All‑That‑Great: The Polar Street X Review

The Polar Street X is the first big watch from Finland’s Polar in 2026. It costs about $249 in the U. S. and £219 in the U. K. , so it is Polar’s cheapest GPS model. It also adds a flashlight, a feature that only a few sports watches have. The watch looks like a rugged G‑Shock. Its case is plastic, 45 mm wide and 48 g heavy. It can stay in water up to 50 m deep. A small button on the top left turns on a white or red light, useful for night runs. The screen is a 1. 28‑inch AMOLED touch display. It is bright enough for sunny days, but the menu can feel slow when you start a workout. Below the screen sits Polar’s Precision Prime heart‑rate sensor and a barometer. The Street X can record more than 170 sports. It keeps track of distance, pace and heart rate for each activity. However, the interface is old‑school. You can only show four stats on the watch at a time, and changing them needs the app. The training analysis is simple: it shows overall load and suggests a recovery time, but the details are not as rich as those from Garmin or Coros. GPS performance is decent for a cheap watch. It uses single‑band GPS, so its accuracy is lower than Polar’s higher‑end dual‑band models. In practice, the pace and distance can be off by a few meters per run.Heart‑rate readings are usually fine, but the watch sometimes shows too high a number at the start of a run. Battery life is good for an AMOLED watch. You can get up to 10 days in normal mode and about 43 hours of GPS tracking. If you keep the screen always on, it drops to four or five days when you run daily. The watch tracks steps, active minutes and calories. You can set a goal in the app and see how close you are to it each day. It also warns if you sit for 55 minutes straight. Sleep tracking is detailed, looking at total time, interruptions and deep sleep. Sometimes the watch only records half of your night, which can give a bad score even when you slept well. Smart features are minimal. You can control music and see notifications, but there is no onboard storage or NFC payments. Navigation uses breadcrumb directions; offline maps are not available. When comparing the Street X to other cheap sports watches, it falls behind. The Coros Pace 4 offers better accuracy and a lighter design for the same price. Garmin’s Forerunner 165 is slightly more expensive but gives a smoother experience and music storage. If you like the look of the Street X, consider higher‑end models such as the Coros Nomad or Garmin Instinct 3 for better performance.