Polar Ignite 3 Titanium review

The Polar Ignite 3 sees Polar taking the fitness watch it launched back in 2022 and giving it an upgrade in the design department.

It's throwing a titanium case into the mix, all while adding new smarts to make it a better fit for gym workouts and boosting its abilities to delve deep into your sleep stats.

These upgrades come at a greater cost than the non-titanium Ignite 3, so is there enough of a looks and smarts upgrade to go for the titanium model instead?

Here's our comprehensive take on the Polar Ignite 3 Titanium.

Price and competition

As mentioned, the Ignite 3 Titanium ($369.95/£324) does see a jump in price over the standard Ignite 3 ($329.95/£289). 

Adding the AMOLED screen to the Ignite 3 has made Polar's fitness watch feel more like a midrange option than the first two iterations.

On top of that, you're now also paying a premium for the addition of a titanium bezel and software features that have since been added to the Ignite 3.

That price still means it sits below similar watches like the Garmin Venu 3 ($449/£449), but it is pricier than the Garmin Vivoactive 5 ($299.99/£259.99), a watch that also fits in the mold of a sports watch with a more lifestyle and smartwatch edge to it.

Design

Wareable

Pretty much everything we saw on the Ignite 3 remains on the Ignite 3 Titanium except for the added titanium bezel, which gives it a slightly more elegant look, but we wouldn't say it's a transformative addition.

You're still getting a fully round, 43mm case that measures in at 9.5mm thick with an extra gram in weight (36g instead of 35g), which means it's a pretty light watch to wear and isn't a hulking one to take to bed either.

The case is still plastic with a single physical button, surrounding a same-sized, 1.28-inch, 416 x 416 AMOLED touchscreen display.

There's Gorilla Glass to offer protection against scratches, which didn't do such a good job of fending off scratches on the Ignite 3 in our testing, but so far the Titanium has remained scratch-free.

It beats Polar's pricier watches to getting that boost of color in the screen department and it's a good quality AMOLED overall. It's bright, vibrant, and you do have the option to keep it on at all times.

Wareable

Polar offers the Titanium with a 20mm silicone strap that is easily removable, and you can pay more to have your pick of silicone or leather bands.

The silicone one we had strapped to our wrist is pretty standard fayre, and was comfortable to wear day-to-day as well as during workouts.

The WR30 waterproof rating means the Ignite 3 Titanium is safe to swim, and includes profiles for pool and open water swimming.

Fitness and sports tracking

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Polar refers to the Ignite 3 Titanium as a fitness watch, and it's a multisport watch at heart that will track runs, rides, swims, and more. You're now getting an extra mode to give it added appeal to gym fans, but other than that, the experience is nearly identical to the Ignite 3.

That includes the performance of the dual-band GPS mode, which has since rolled out on Polar's pricier and more performance-focused Vantage V3 but initially debuted on the Ignite 3.

That means you should be able to benefit from more accurate outdoor tracking than previous Ignite watches. Many other watches have embraced this dual-band technology including Apple and Garmin.

Wareable

Polar's execution of it on the Titanium isn't as impressive as the performance on the Vantage V3. We found that in tests with Garmin's similar dual-band mode, the accuracy of the Ignite 3's tracking wasn't impeccable.

Core stats like distance tracking and pacing seemed a little off while on mapped routes (image below), it can have the habit of plotting you moving through buildings or further away from the pavement or road.

Wareable

Heart rate tracking is a big deal for Polar, and the Titanium retains its Precision Prime optical sensor setup along with support to pair up external heart rate monitors.

The Ignite 3's heart rate sensor held up well for steady-paced workouts but faltered at times at high intensity.

On the Titanium, we found that it actually performed slightly better for us. We don't know if the bezel material change has influenced that in any way, but in our tests, it held up well against a chest strap monitor for steady and more high-intensity workouts. 

Wareable

That heart rate sensor is tied to the new Work-Rest guide mode, which has since been added to the original Ignite 3. What this feature essentially wants to do is give you a better idea of how long to rest in between sets of a workout.

It'll show you your real-time heart rate and current heart rate and will vibrate when it's defined your resting recovery heart rate to continue with your workout. If you get to the resting recovery heart rate quicker than anticipated, the watch will tell you to rest for a few more seconds before you get working again.

Wareable

This feature is hugely reliant on heart rate tracking accuracy, which we have felt has been good on the whole. It's for activities like strength training, kettlebell workouts, and functional training where the heart rate accuracy feels good enough to make it a useful tool.

Some of Polar's most likable features remain to make this feel like it's not just a watch for runners or cyclists.

Its FitSpark suggested workouts are some of the best-designed workouts on a watch you'll find, and for those who want to track steps and for those who want more hardcore features and training insights, those are here too.

 It's the most accessible Polar watch, with room to go deeper if you need or want to, and the type of modes that will appeal to those starting out on their fitness journey.

Sleep tracking 

Wareable

Sleep data and the insights attached to it are areas that Polar is really hoping will help separate it from the competition.

With the Ignite 3 Titanium, Polar introduced skin temperature tracking during sleep, offering another metric that can be used as an indicator of illness, though it isn't a feature designed for medical use or diagnosis.

That joins existing sleep features like tracking sleep stages, duration, generating sleep scores to quickly get a sense of your sleep quality.

You also get Polar's Nightly Recharge measurements to get a better sense of your recovery during sleep along with SleepWise insights to tell you how well-equipped you are for taking on the day and when the best time is to go to sleep. These features work entirely the same as they do on the Ignite 3. The presentation of your sleep gate (read ideal sleep window), your energy boost from good quality sleep along with the useful nightly recharge measurements feel like a lot to take in and absorb.

Wareable

Basically, there's a lot here, and some of the insights feel more useful than others. In terms of that core sleep tracking, it's much of the same as what we experienced with the Ignite 3. It's pretty good overall and seemed to align nicely with the core sleep stats from the Oura Ring Gen 3 we were also wearing to bed to compare those stats. Elements like sleep duration, time fallen asleep, and sleep stage breakdowns were very similar, so that's good to see.

Wareable

With the nightly skin temperature measurements, you'll need to wear the watch to bed for three nights and make sure continuous heart rate tracking is enabled on the watch.

Then you'll be able to see temperature variation on the watch and app, telling you if those variations are usual, above usual, or much above usual. This variation is something Oura also tracks.

The temperature variations reported across the two devices were identical on most days, though as the screenshots above illustrate, sometimes the two devices suggested drops instead of small rises and vice versa.

The way Polar displays that data on the wrist is more engaging in the app, where looking over trends in Polar's graphs doesn't feel very user-friendly.

As we said, Polar offers a lot in the sleep tracking realms. Some of those additional insights are easier to take on board than others and crucially, the core sleep tracking is some of the best you'll find on a sports watch.

Smartwatch features

Wareable

If you're hoping to get the same level of smartwatch support as you would on a similarly priced Garmin or Apple Watch, that simply isn't the case here.

Having a color screen certainly helps the Ignite 3 Titanium feel more like a smartwatch, and if you want something to view phone notifications and have a way to control music playing on your phone, even during workouts, then the Polar has you well-covered. 

You do have the ability to change the watch faces, and the user interface in general is nice and easy to get around. We did experience some syncing and pairing issues with our first Ignite 3 Titanium review unit, but those issues seem to have disappeared on our second watch.

What stands out most about the Titanium is that the software runs smoother than it has previously and even compared to the Ignite 3. Boosting the RAM from 0.64MB to 5MB does seem to have a positive effect on removing that lag that we've experienced on Polar watches pre-Ignite 3.

Battery life

The Ignite 3 packs a 215mAh capacity battery, and that's expected to give you up to 5 days when you're just using it in its watch mode without any sort of tracking. 

When you're tracking using GPS, Polar states 30 hours of GPS battery life. That's extended to 100 hours in its training mode where heart rate data is sacrificed and the highest GPS accuracy is too to boost those battery numbers.

Polar doesn't state a battery life for when the screen is on 24/7, and there's probably a reason why. When we used it on the Ignite 3, it lasted a day.

If you can live without that 24/7 screen, it's a watch that's more likely to get you 4-5 days and not quite a week. The battery drain, much like the Ignite 3, is notable overnight and is typically around 5%.

GPS battery life numbers seem a little generous to us too. An hour of GPS use in the top accuracy mode saw the battery drop by 10%, which would suggest lower than quoted by Polar.

Ultimately, there's no change here from what we experienced on the Ignite 3. It's good, but not the best battery life you'll enjoy from an AMOLED-packing sports watch.

Should you buy it?

If you like the look of the Ignite 3 and take no issue with it lacking a titanium bezel, then you don't need the Ignite 3 Titanium. Features and performance-wise, you're getting the same watch for less money.

The only thing that really stood out for us in our time with both versions is that the software was noticeably less laggy on the Titanium. 

Compared to the competition, the Ignite 3 Titanium is a good match for the Garmin Venu 3 and cheaper.

Both are nice-looking fitness-focused watches that offer good designs. If you're not hugely fussed about the titanium and want a better mix of tracking and smartwatch features, it would be worth looking at the Vivoactive 5 instead.