Heart rate monitors

[ocaz]

Thinking of getting one anyone recommend a cheap good one?

Would like a watch style one with a stop watch too

[chi]

you cant go too far wrong with the Polar brand

[BengDogg]

yeah ive got a polar, its really reliable and simple to use as well as quality, look around and get a bargain

[Bullneck Pacifist Gimboid]

Having spent 4 years selling these at a running specialist, and another 5 years selling them with Affs, I would advise the following

1) Work out what the most you can afford to spend is
2) Get the most advanced monitor you can for your cash

The reason for this is that without question, if you don't, then in 6-9 months you'll want some of the features that yours doesn't have, and if you *could* have bought it at the time, then surely better to do so rather than shell out again before you need to.

I've sold, seen and used monitors by Polar and Cardiosport, generally with Polar you pay for the name in a lot of cases, and there's good points and bad points to each. Also remember that you have at least a 12 month warranty on pretty much any monitor, but some brands don't cover the batteries as part of that warranty so look out for that as it's usually the battery that goes if anything does.

[Tone C]

Polar are the big name brand but check the running magazines as they often have them being sold off cheap when a new model comes out.

[ocaz]

Thanks for the info guys.


To be honest not wanting anything fancy, want it to tell me the time, have a stop watch and measure my heart rate. Tez what else could you think i could need? Not really wanting to spend loads of money as it is just something i would like rather than desparately want

What about this one?

http://www.phd-fitness.co.uk/store/p/3410/1/Polar-Fs1-+-Free-Water-Bottle-and-Polygon-Fitball-worth-%A324.99.html

[chi]

thats very basic and no doubt would do a job, BUT i would stress what Tez said and get the most expensive you can afford.

The one you linked looks as if it will only tell you your current HR, i would want AT LEAST to review the session i've had to find MAX and AVG HR.

[ocaz]

What about this one?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Cardiosport-Go-10-Heart-rate-monitor-BNIB_W0QQitemZ120100062601QQihZ002QQcategoryZ13786 8QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

[BengDogg]

Nah, i gota polar f6 for £40 delivered last year

[Bullneck Pacifist Gimboid]

Thanks for the info guys.


To be honest not wanting anything fancy, want it to tell me the time, have a stop watch and measure my heart rate. Tez what else could you think i could need? Not really wanting to spend loads of money as it is just something i would like rather than desparately want



I would say as a minimum you want to have upper and lower limits, preferably ones that you can set yourself (the auto calculating ones are usually off the mark)

Avoid anyone trying to sell one with a calorie counter, they are notoriously inaccurate and essentially pointless.

Other stuff that is "useful" but by no means essential, would be interval timer on the stopwatch (handy for tabata training?), and to be able to save different heart rate zone limits (so you don't have to put the new zone in every time you want to go from low intensity to high intensity). Also as Chi says, Max and Average HR is also useful to know. (for example if you do a regular run with a bloody great hill in the middle, it'll be nice to see your max HR coming down as you get fitter and cope better with the hill)

If all you want to do is know your details while you're using it, then thats about the most you'd need IMO. If you want to be able to refer back to it, then it's going to be a pain in the rocks to copy all those details out every time, so maybe get one of the Polar ones that uploads to a section on their website where you can save the data from your previous session. Be careful tho cos the watch itself only saves 1 exercise session in some cases, so doing a 5 minute jog can erase the data from the 4 hour triathlon you did the day before (!)

You can also get more techy ones where you install the software direct on your PC, and you get much more info saved and more little features to do stuff with the data like graphs and charts and that sort of thing. I guess it depends how much you want to go into it.

I'd say if you're looking at the Polar stuff, then about £60-£80 is a sensible amount, unless you want a very sport-specific monitor.

[van_halen]

These things are awesome! I set mine to my recommended max heart rate for doing hill runs and managed to get my heeart rate way over that to about 214bpm. Ahhhh, the good old days when I did cardio!