[Closed] Heart Rate Monitors - the skinny?

Personal experience is heart straps never really worked for me and kept missing readings (Shape/Hairy/Sweaty?), wrist/optical is less accurate but reads more consistently so overall gives a more accurate picture

Serious question: Why are you looking to monitor your HR? What are you hoping to gain from doing it?

For me, the main issue with chest straps is comfort. They can chafe, and cause scars. Or just slip down my chest. Plus they usually wear out, and stop working reliably after a while.

I'm now using a Mio Fuse, which is an optical wrist strap. I mostly use it for running, seems to work fairly well for that. But maybe not so good for cycling, sometimes it can underread a bit.

The new upper-arm optical straps look interesting. Seems they are usually more accurate than on the wrist. eg Scosche Rhythm 24 or Wahoo Tickr Fit.

Also make sure it can transmit both ANT+ and Bluetooth LE. That gives you most options for connecting to a watch or GPS or phone.

Thanks for the replies to date. I am recovering from a heart-related episode and looking to use an HRM to give me info about about the operating zone of my heart rate during exercise so I can better measure my efforts. I've been advised to get one by the cardiac rehab people.

Tbh, I'm not sure how much value I will get out of using one hence not looking to spend too much. I'm open-minded about the whole thing but would like to give one a try.

I hear what CraigW and mikewsmith have said about optical wrist bands but frankly I find the whole fitness tracker/HRM 'market' a gobbledygook-infested minefield. More sensible, user-based, real life experiences that 'cut through the crap' would be greatly appreciated...!

but frankly I find the whole fitness tracker/HRM ‘market’ a gobbledygook-infested minefield.

It's a watch, I wear it all the time and it tells me what I'm doing, during exercise you can tell it to let you know about your HR zones. It's actually quite simple, maybe head into a decent sports shop and have a chat with somebody about them

If you're looking to track your heart's activity throughout the day/night then a wrist based HRM is probably accurate/responsive enough. If you want to know exactly what your heart's doing when you're running or cycling then you need a chest strap. Something like a Garmin Forerunner 735XT plus a chest strap would give you the best of both worlds, but it's not a cheap option.

Depends what you want it for really, there isn't a perfect answer.  I've got the scosche and a Garmin strap.  The strap is the most accurate BUT I have to wear it slightly skewed to the left on my chest for it to be completely reliable.  It will only work with ant+ devices though, not with my phone.

I also have an older scosche optical strap.  I find it works best either on upper arm or just next to elbow. Doesn't work well near my wrist.  It's more convenient than a strap but isn't so reliable when cycling and can be a bit unreliable when doing intervals - it will lose lock and then sit at some random heart rate until it locks in again.  It's great for steady runs though and scosche are great to deal with.  Oh, in cold weather it's not so good either, maybe your skin closes up a bit and is more difficult to see through. It's an older model though

Upshot is I prefer the strap when I'm riding and want reliability.  Battery life is great too

If you are after basic readings, then I would suggest a wrist mounted HR monitor is fine. My Garmin does the job.

If you are doing some highly dynamic sports (Squash in my instance), the wrist based HRM is literally useless in comparison to a chest strap.

I find with MTB it's also not great compared to the chest strap, but I hate wearing the chest strap. When racing (enduro type stuff) it's fine on transitions, etc, but on stages and rough bits, it drops out all the time & mis-reads.

I have a Forerunner that I use with these

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/garmin-premium-heart-rate-monitor-strap-1/

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/garmin-hrm-run/

The monitors themselves don't actually do much the analysis depends on the app, in this case Garmin Connect.

The Premium hrm is fine it simply transmits heart rate to the watch which in turn Bluetooths it to the phone and then you can see all the graphs and stuff. You can set custom zones or accept the defaults based on your age/size etc. The battery is in a capsule which clips onto the strap. The strap itself is mildy grippy and stays in place but the elasticity goes off after 18 months or so of regular use

The Run hrm has a wider more comfortable strap, does all the stuff that the Premium does and allows you to see all kinds of running-related waffle which is useful if you're actually training for something or like me simply want to keep track of your recreational performance

I have two cheap monitors which are probably OK for an average reading over a period. The chest strap one, a Polar FT!, gives  an average and a max reading over the recorded period. The wrist one, a Lenovo band, reads continuously and  can then be downloaded to an app which then shows a record of readings but as it only reads at 15 min intervals is useless for an accurate max reading. I guess it depends what information you are looking for and whether the monitor delivers that.

As others have mentioned, it depends what you want to do with the data. You might not even know yet. Well over ten years ago I had a relatively inexpensive HRM connected to an equally inexpensive bike computer. I could set it to beep at me if I went above certain heart rates, but I soon stopped using it. That's largely because I neither knew nor cared what that data was telling me, so didn't see the point of the extra faff.

Fast forward to 2018 and I have a Wahoo ELEMNT Bolt computer with accompanying HRM. I love monitoring what my heart is up to *whilst I'm riding* and adjusting my efforts depending on what I'm trying to achieve. If I'm out for a short, fastish ride, I'll be in zone 3 most of the time, with some zone 4 efforts on the climbs. If I'm out for a long ride, I'll try and keep things in zone 2 so I know I can keep going all day. I've been pleasantly surprised by how useful that info is and how it's encouraged me to get stronger and fitter. Is that the kind of thing you're after?

Unfortunately, my setup is not the cheapest way into HRM. I assume you can just hook these things into an app on your phone rather than needing a dedicated cycle computer.

Thanks for the reply. I am not a fan of HR monitoring for monitoring or improving performance (of course you clearly have other reasons for doing it)

No issue with the concept but I think unless you can control all of the variables its of limited use. My younger days were spent hanging onto the coat tails of a large number of very good athletes, dont know one of them that used it.

20+ years on a Polar chest-strap, still works fine.

>20+ years on a Polar chest-strap, still works fine.

Can't have used it much, batteries don't normally last more than a few years..

Wahoo TICKR HRM here for the past year or so- £40-ish. Originally bought for research purposes ('Just how massively unfit am I?'), I now use it post-ride with Strava so that I can geek out over extra stats.

It took me a while to work out that the best place for the main bit was over my sternum, nestling between my moobs. I haven't had any slippage (of either TICKR or moobs).

I've had a Coospo that does Bluetooth and ANT+ since January, been great so far for £20 from Amazon.

I found a wrist one failed to pick up my HR accurately, whereas good old fashion chest ones have worked for years and years.

Also, they are cheap to replace if / should they stop working.

HRM are not new, get one that's old tech, you don't need new tech for something that simple.

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>20+ years on a Polar chest-strap, still works fine.

Can’t have used it much, batteries don’t normally last more than a few years..

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The batteries are repaceable.

I have a Garmin wrist one you can try. £30 if you want to keep it.

vivoactive I think it’s called. No GPS

I bought a cheap bluetooth chest strap HRM from Aldi a few years back. Don't really use it any more as I use a watch based one. You're welcome to have it if you want it.

I have a Garmin Edge 510 with HRM bought March 2015. Two years later - bearing in mind I use it for commutes 5 days a week plus a non-commute or two as well - I lost it and bought a replacement strap, which barely even lasted a year before falling apart by which point I had found the more robustly made old one and started using it again. Another year later I've given up on the Garmin straps and bought a Polar Pro chest strap but continue to use the Garmin HRM with it. HRM data is improved but still not perfect - Strava doesn't show drop-outs but Golden Cheetah does (and I don't use Garmin website stuff).

My usage is to just limit how much effort I put into my commutes to pace myself for the week, and is the reason I bought it in the first place after frequently over-doing the effort I put in. It helps me structure my rides. I now generally aim for Z2 heart rate on the commutes in to work in order to avoid working up too much of a sweat, and for easy/rest days aim for Z1 on the way home, and then once or twice a week let it hang out.

On the Garmin I generally just have displayed time-of-day, ride-time, heart rate, and a couple of other fields. Pretty much never look at speed anymore, sometimes average speed is displayed. I never found the bleeping alerts to be useful for heartrate zone training/limiting so I've memorized my heartrate zones instead. If I see it creeping up towards the upper limit for the zone I can ease off before it reaches it (mostly).

Was on a social MTB ride the other day with someone else who had HRM (via wrist) a couple of years younger than me, and a much less active cyclist, so it was interesting to compare heartrates and see how much of a difference regular cycling makes - even if it is reletively small distances (ie I get knocked off the STW Strava group top 100 list every week).

With regard to electrode contact of the chest straps, I just wet my hands under the tap and rub over my chest beneath the strap. If I forget to do this the readings are pretty unreliable until perspiring slightly.