Screenless fitness trackers are having a moment. This year we’ve had new screenless fitness and recovery bands from Amazfit, Garmin, and Whoop, and now Polar is teasing the addition of a new screenless wearable.
Polar, which makes the H10 chest strap-mounted heart rate monitor considered the best heart rate monitor for accuracy, announced its new fitness tracker coming on September 3.
Now, it’s started to give more information, including that its Whoop rival will be subscription-free.
Whoop! There goes the subscription for Polar’s new MG rival
“This is not just a new POLAR wearable. This is a brand-new POLAR,” the marketing explains, with a comment from Sander Werring, the company’s CEO.
“Our users have been asking for a new kind of wearable—one that puts them in control of their health and fitness right out of the box, without the distractions of screens or the pressure of constant notifications. What they want is simplicity and freedom,” he explains.
The marketing here is leaning heavily into what the device doesn’t have, rather than what it does. There’s no screen, and ‘no compromise’, but the real killer feature could be that there’s also no subscription.
“Pay once. Own it,” the page explains, which is in stark contrast to Whoop’s varying degrees of subscription options, all of which require a user to pay in perpetuity. No subscription, no data, essentially, something Polar is looking to change.
You can stay notified by submitting your information on Polar’s site, but with a reveal on September 3, we’re just days away from finding out what it has planned.