Polar Street X review: an affordable but underwhelming sports watch with a flashlight
The Polar Street X is the first big launch from the Finnish brand in 2026 and the first Polar watch to have a built-in flashlight. It also brings a rugged new look to the brand’s line-up with its chunky plastic design, and undercuts the Polar Vantage M3 to be the most affordable GPS watch Polar sells.
While it gets the job done as a fitness tracker, diligently logging workouts and providing training analysis and recovery advice, the GPS and heart rate accuracy are not as good as on the best sports watches, and the Street X’s user interface and partner app feel outdated.
Whether you’re an urban adventurer or an endurance athlete, I don’t think the Street X does enough to make it worth considering over similarly affordable alternatives like the Coros Pace 4 or Garmin Forerunner 165.
If you have a slightly bigger budget and love the Street X’s design then the Coros Nomad and Garmin Instinct 3 are worth investing in instead.
Polar Street X review: price and availability
The Polar Street X launched in March 2026 and costs $249 in the U.S. and £219 in the U.K., making it the most affordable GPS sports watch in the Polar line-up and one of the cheapest on the market in general. It’s available in white, black and green colors.
Its main rivals from other brands include the Coros Pace 4 and Suunto Run, which are the same price, and the Garmin Forerunner 165, which is a little pricier but often in sales as it’s an older model.
Polar Street X review: Specs compared
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
Polar Street X |
Coros Pace 4 |
Garmin Forerunner 165 |
Suunto Run |
|
Price |
$249/£219 |
$249/£229 |
$249.99/£249.99; $299.99/£289.99 (Music) |
$249/£199 |
|
Size |
45 x 13.8mm |
43.4 x 11.8mm |
43 x 11.6mm |
46 x 11.5mm |
|
Display |
1.28in 416×416 AMOLED |
1.2in 390 x 390 AMOLED |
1.2in 390 x 390 AMOLED |
1.32in 466 x 466 AMOLED |
|
Bezel |
Plastic |
Plastic |
Plastic |
Steel |
|
Screen |
Glass |
Glass |
Glass |
Glass |
|
Weight |
48g |
40g |
39g |
36g |
|
Water resistance |
50m |
50m |
5ATM |
50m |
|
Battery life (watch mode) |
Up to 10 days |
Up to 20 days |
Up to 11 days |
Up to 12 days |
|
Battery life (GPS) |
43 hours (single-band) |
24 hours (dual-band) |
19 hours (single-band) |
20 hours (dual-band) |
|
Storage |
32MB |
4GB |
4GB |
4GB |
Polar Street X review: design and display
The Polar Street X aims to capture the rugged style of watches like the Casio G-Shock and Garmin Instinct line-up, with a chunky plastic case and large buttons. The durable design is tested to MIL‑STD‑810H standards and water resistant to 50m.
It’s a fairly thick watch that sticks out from the wrist and the 45mm case is also quite large, but the Street X is light at 48g, and I didn’t find it annoyingly bulky to wear 24/7.
At the top of the watch is a built-in flashlight that you activate by pressing the top left button. It has four levels of brightness for the white light, and a red light option to preserve night vision.
Garmin set the trend for built-in flashlights in watches and I use it regularly on my Garmin Forerunner 970, so it’s good to see Polar adding it to its devices.
The Street X has a 1.28” AMOLED touchscreen that I found bright enough to see in all conditions. I sometimes experienced a tiny bit of lag when using the screen to navigate around the watch though, especially within the ‘start training’ menu when selecting a sports profile.
On the bottom of the watch is Polar’s Precision Prime heart rate sensor, with other key sensors on the watch including a barometer. It also offers GPS tracking, but not via dual-band like Polar’s more expensive models, which are more accurate as a result.
Polar Street X review: sports tracking and training analysis
The Street X tracks over 170 sports with customizable profiles for each, and records all the key stats you need for your workouts.
I mostly used the watch to track my runs during marathon training but also recorded bike rides and strength workouts with the Street X.
Polar’s user interface hasn’t changed much in the last five years and there are some annoyances with the way you set up sports profiles on the watch I wish would be updated, like the fact you can only show four stats at once and have to rely on using the partner app to customize your data screens.
The training analysis is similarly long in the tooth, and while it does show key information like your chronic training load, it’s not presented that clearly on the watch and you have to use the app to get more detail.
Even within the app, Polar’s training analysis is not as rich in detail as that of Garmin, Suunto or Coros, but it will advise on your suggested recovery time, and you do get daily suggested workouts across cardio, strength and supportive training types, which can be useful.
Polar Street X review: GPS & heart rate accuracy
Throughout my testing of the Polar Street X I compared its GPS accuracy with the Garmin Forerunner 970 and Coros Pace 4, looking at the tracks after each workout to check for errors.
To test the heart rate accuracy I compared the Street X with the reading from a Garmin HRM 600 chest strap monitor — chest straps are more reliable than the optical sensors on watches in general, so I always wear one for my training sessions.
Since it’s not as focused on endurance sports as other Polar models the brand opted not to give the Street X dual-band GPS tracking, which generally leads to more accurate results but burns through battery life more quickly.
In my runs with the Street X it did produce more errors with its pace and distance tracking than dual-band watches. While it was mostly OK and would be fine for casual run and ride tracking, if you’re a keen runner or cyclist I’d say you’ll notice the benefit of a more accurate watch.
It was a similar story with the heart rate tracking on the watch. Most of the time the Street X was fine, but it often produced erroneously high readings at the start of a run, and on a couple of occasions gave me the wrong reading throughout a workout.
Polar Street X review: battery life
The battery life on the Street X is strong for an AMOLED watch, with it lasting up to 10 days in watch mode and offering 43 hours of GPS tracking for workouts.
Those numbers will come down if you have the screen set to always-on like I did, but even then I got four to five days of use out of the watch between charges when running every day along with doing some indoor workouts.
Polar Street X review: activity and sleep tracking
Along with your workouts, the Street X will track your daily activity, including steps, active time and calories burned, and uses this data to work towards an overall activity goal.
There are three levels for this goal which you set in the partner app, with level 3 being the most demanding, and you can see how close you are to hitting your goal throughout the day based on percentage.
The Street X will also give inactivity alerts if you’re still for 55 minutes, prompting you to get up and move around.
Polar’s sleep tracking is very detailed and scores your night based on the amount of sleep, how interrupted it was, and how regenerative it was based on the amount of deep and REM sleep.
The watch will also give you a ‘boost from sleep’ rating and suggest when you’re likely to feel most energised throughout the coming day.
When it all works, it’s one of the more interesting and insightful sleep trackers I’ve tried, but all too often I noticed that the Street X had only tracked half my night’s sleep, resulting in poor sleep ratings across the board even when I had actually slept very well.
Polar Street X review: smart features and navigation
The Polar Street X is quite limited in the smart features it has, only offering basic music controls, notifications and a weather forecast widget.
Unlike other sports watches and smartwatches, it doesn’t have on-board storage for music, the capacity to make NFC payments, or any kind of app store to call on.
There are no offline maps on the watch either, though you wouldn’t really expect that at this price point. The Street X does offer breadcrumb navigation with directions, and you can also use it to direct you back to your starting position during workouts.
In general I’d say the user interface on the watch and Polar Flow app feel outdated and both are not that intuitive or enjoyable to interact with compared with rivals.
Should you buy the Polar Street X?
While the Street X is a welcome addition to the Polar line-up as a cheaper model with a flashlight, I don’t think it offers enough features or good enough performance to justify picking it up ahead of the best options from other brands.
If you’re a keen runner or endurance athlete in general the Coros Pace 4 is a better sports watch for the same price, with a slimmer, lighter design, more accurate tracking and a better user interface. The Suunto Run also outperforms the Street X in my opinion, but I prefer the Coros overall.
The Garmin Forerunner 165 is more expensive, though you might find it in a sale and it does offer music storage and a more enjoyable user experience all round.
If you love the look of the Polar Street X it’s still worth upgrading to the Coros Nomad or Garmin Instinct 3, which have similarly rugged designs but more features and better sports tracking. The Nomad also has built-in maps, but does use a memory-in-pixel display rather than AMOLED. While it gets the job done, there are better options out there when it comes to your next sports watch.
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