While known for advanced and often niche fitness trackers, Polar isn't afraid of the smartwatch market. Today, the company announced a new kind of fitness watch: the M600 is, in the words of Polar's reps, a cross between an Android Wear smartwatch and the A360 fitness band, one of the company's mid-tier devices. Polar reps told me the company wanted to combine the best parts of a smartwatch with the efficiency and features of a serious fitness device. The M600 is the first Android Wear fitness device to be made by a major fitness company, rather than a tech company.

The M600 retains the signature look and feel of Polar products. While most Android Wear devices go for style, the M600—with its simple rectangular module, square display, and interchangeable silicone band—looks and feels like it's built for fitness. Inside is a built-in GPS, and underneath the module is a 6-LED optical heart rate monitor. The M600's HRM is a modified version of the A360's HRM, with extra LEDs for reduced noise and improved accuracy. The M600's HRM also works with Polar's heart rate chest straps, in case you’d rather wear the strap instead.







While the M600 looks more like a fitness tracker, it has the battery life of a smartwatch. A single charge should last 48 hours, while iOS users will need to charge up every day. No word on battery life while using the GPS, but you can bet it will be mere hours. That's a drawback for anyone who uses the M600's fitness features as regularly as they use the smartwatch features—all that work will drain the battery even faster. The interface is similar to other Android Wear devices, with the time on the default homepage, an app menu when you swipe to the left, quick settings when you swipe down from the top, and your most recent notification when you swipe up from the bottom.

Seeing the M600 for the first time felt like someone took the innards of Android Wear and stuck them in a device that mainly works with Polar Flow. That's certainly what Polar was going for, but it's a change of pace for anyone familiar with Android Wear. Most Google OS smartwatches try to disguise themselves as regular wristwatches—take the Huawei Watch, the Moto 360, the LG Watch Urban, and so forth. Seeing a device that so blatantly disregards style was jarring at first. However, the M600 could end up being a good marriage for those who are interested in having Android Wear on their wrists but still need comprehensive fitness and sport tracking. The Polar M600 will cost $329 (£265) when it becomes available in Q3 2016.