There's no shortage of Android Wear watches to choose from. Companies including Huawei, LG, Casio, and Fossil all have smartwatches that run on Google's wearable operating system, and all of them can use Google Fit's activity tracking. Now, the fitness company Polar is getting into the mix with the M600 Android Wear-based fitness watch, which is the first device that integrates Polar's existing exercise software with Android Wear.

The M600 wants to appeal to a specific kind of user: one who is into fitness and wants a heart rate monitor and onboard GPS in their tracker, but who also cares about getting wrist notifications and using wearable apps. But at $329, Polar's device is right up there with the Apple Watch in price, and that might be too steep for some consumers, considering the experience it offers is much different.

Design: Too bulky for its own good

Like most hardcore fitness watches, the M600 is chunky. And since it is running Android Wear, that design almost works against it. The watch module, which can be removed to fit into different bands, is rectangular and holds the square 1.3-inch, 260 PPI touchscreen and two physical buttons: one on the left side of the device that opens the Android Wear app menu and one underneath the display that opens the Polar Flow app. The display is bold and bright, and while it can fall victim to glare in direct sunlight, it's easy to read most of the time and easy to navigate.

Inside the M600 is an optical heart rate monitor and a GPS chip. That makes the device fairly thick at .5 inches, and while it's not particularly heavy, it looks monstrous on my small wrist. The band is made of a durable silicone which is much thicker than the regular silicone used in others like the Apple Watch's sport bands. It does have a double-prong watch-like closure, though, making it easy to tighten just enough so that the heart rate monitor can do its job, but also not cut off circulation.

The M600's design is perfectly fine for working out, which is no surprise since it's basically just a wider, bigger vision of the $199 Polar A360. It's comfortable and also has an IPX8 waterproof rating, so you can swim in water up to 10 meters deep with it as well. But as a device you may want to wear all day long to take advantage of Android Wear and all its features, the M600 is simply way too big. Only if you don't mind bulky wristbands will you be able to wear the M600 without it feeling ostentatious.

The M600 comes with a proprietary charging port that sticks magnetically to nodes on the back of the band. Connecting can be hard if you don't position the charger correctly and allow the nodes to attach in every location. Since this is an Android Wear-based device, I used our battery test to see how long it would last. On average, the M600's 500mAh battery lasted 784 minutes (roughly 13 hours) on a single charge.

Our battery test continuously sends messages to the watch to ensure its display never fully turns off, so that estimate is based on never-ending activity. Polar estimates the M600 can get up to two days during normal activity (when connected to an Android phone and regularly receiving notifications) and 8 hours while training. So our test results fall in line with this.

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Features: Fitness made more practical with Android Wear

At first, you may not even realize the M600 runs Android Wear. The default watch face shows the time and date in large blue and white text, and it looks like Polar's other devices. As you move throughout the day, a bar slides up the display to show you how far you've gone to reach your activity goal. Of course, thanks to Android Wear, you can change the watch face to whatever you'd like. But since this is a Polar device first-and-foremost, the default display works with the embedded Polar Flow app to make sure you don't forget who made it.

On any other Polar device, the button directly below the display would open Polar Flow. But on the M600, it just feels like the default workout program (and it is). There, you can start a new workout session or tap "My Day" to get an overview of your activity progress thus far. You can program up to 20 sport profiles to appear on the watch under Training, so choosing the one you want to start is easy, and the watch will track you.

As soon as you tap on Training, the watch starts to glean your heart rate and kick the GPS into gear. Depending on the activity, GPS may not always be activated (it's turned off automatically for indoor workouts) which is convenient since I don't want to have to remember to turn on or off the GPS myself.

The sheer number of sport profiles that Polar can track will intrigue well-rounded athletes. But those sport profiles are available on most other Polar devices, so the M600 is just working with the software that wearables like the A360 already have. What makes the M600 so expensive (even for Polar) is not just that it runs Android Wear, but it also has the embedded heart rate monitor, GPS, and GLONASS technology.

When compared to the $370 Apple Watch Series 2 during a treadmill running session, the M600's heart rate monitor was a little slow to catch up to the Apple Watch's reading. At its worst, the M600 was nearly 20 bpm lower than the Apple Watch. However, as my heart rate plateaued and started to remain steady at about 168 bpm, both watches remained within 5 bpm of each other.

The M600 is also compatible via Bluetooth with Polar's H7 heart rate chest strap. So if you have an H7 already or prefer the precision of a chest strap, you have that option. The one thing you can't do with Polar's interface is take a manual heart rate reading. The monitor isn't on 24/7 and there's no option to read your pulse when you're not working out.

You can get around this by going into Google Fit and using that app's heart rate detection screen. However, I prefer the interface on Samsung's $180 Gear Fit 2 that lets you take a manual reading and tag it with descriptors like "resting," "after workout," and "happy."

The M600's GPS is automatically on for all non-indoor workouts, and it doesn't take long for it to grab your location. You can start an exercise session before the GPS kicks in fully as well, so there's no waiting involved. Every session recorded with GPS will have a Google Map included in Polar Flow underneath that session's stat breakdown. The GPS is quick, easy, and accurate, which are the most important traits for wearable GPS chips to have. Unlike Samsung's Gear Fit 2, Polar hasn't said it will allow you to view mapped routes on the watch itself. So you'll have to stick with Polar Flow on your smartphone to see all of your maps.

Long-pressing the side button or swiping left on the display are your entryways to Android Wear. Both will bring up the app drawer where you can access a bunch of Google apps and any third-party apps you've downloaded. Other Polar devices like the A360 can receive smartphone notifications, so what you really get with Android Wear on the M600 is Google's own spin on those notifications, as well as access to full apps. Notifications are certainly richer on Android Wear compared to the native alerts on Polar's other devices. You can scroll to see full messages and reply from the watch as well. You can't do that on the A360.

Even if you aren't excited by the third-party apps for Android Wear, at least you have the option to use them. I mostly stuck with Google's native apps like Maps, which let me view a map of my location and find destination spots from my wrist. This experience could get even better when Android Wear 2.0 is released and you can download apps directly to your wearable without needing a companion smartphone app. But that update won't be available until next year, and when the M600 will get it is uncertain.

Google Now-powered voice control is another feature you can use on the M600 but not on any pure Polar device. I used this a lot at home when I didn't want to unlock my smartphone, and it translates my voice to text more accurately than not. You also don't need to go into the Google app on the M600 to start Google Now either: simply saying "Ok Google" with the watch on your wrist will make Google listen, as on any Android Wear device.

The M600 can save music locally to its 4GB of internal storage, too. You can download tracks from Google Play Music or other sources and save them to the watch, pair some wireless earbuds to it, and go for a run without your phone. I had a pair of Jabra wireless buds on me for part of the time I spent with the M600, and the watch immediately sensed when the earbuds were within pairing range and asked to sync with them. These music features, combined with the onboard GPS, will be a huge convenience for outdoor runners and cyclists.

Listing image by Valentina Palladino