The Polar FT80 G1 Heart Rate Monitor has all the features to help you achieve your fitness goals.

The Polar FT80 G1 is a heart rate monitor with advanced features for the gym that also includes all the speed and distance features you would expect from GPS watches. It provides a cross-training solution that is unsurpassed for the active gym goer who really likes to get in some aerobic time on the roads and trails.

The Polar FT80 G1 comes equipped with a G1 GPS sensor, a Flowlink data transfer device, and Polar Personal Trainer software so you have got all the ability to analyze your data for further improvement.

GPS watches, like the Polar FT80 G1 heart rate monitor, are the ultimate training tool for data and they further allow you to use programs like Google Earth or May my Ride, or Map my Run, to let you map your routes of travel. Having GPS with a heart rate monitor in combination completely elevates the data available for outdoor sports.

The Polar FT80 G1 heart rate monitor comes with all of Polar's advanced heart rate features including Polar's innovative strength training guidance and the Polar Star program, which helps you establish weekly targets and adapts to your training habits. What we really like about Polar's heart rate monitor features is the graphic display of heart rate and zone limits on a chart. This very visual display of where you are at in real-time with respect to your zones is enormously helpful.

Any Polar FT80 G1 is enhanced in a way to make it very useful for aerobic activity outside the gym, if inside the gym is where you stay the vast majority of the time than you should consider the regular FT80.

Polar's Wearlink chest strap is one of the most comfortable chest straps available on the market today and is completely supple, making it a hug upgrade over previous chest straps with hard plastic fronts. The watch unit is water resistant to 50 meters so you can of course swim with it.

Button key locks are very handy to prevent unintended button presses during exercise and we really like the Heart Touch button-free operation of the wrist unit.

If there is one weakness it is the ability to read the white lettering on a black background in intense, direct sunlight as we pointed out in our regular Polar FT80 review. If you ride with the watch as a bike computer on your handlebars it is a good idea to position it with some steeper angle to take it out of the suns direct glare.

All in all we feel that most serious cross-training athletes will be very satisfied with the Polar FT80 G1 heart rate monitor because GPS watches add a dimension to your training and an inner-competition factor that just cannot be replicated by other products. For this reason we feel that cross-training athletes looking a great tool to elevate their game will be quite satisfied with the Polar FT80 because there is no question that Polar has the best heart rate features on the market today.