heart rate bands

shaunmac997

hi all,

thinking of getting a heart rate monitor for whilst doing cardio. I have seen these new bands which work with apps on phones, xiomi do one for £8 or up3 do one for £90. anyone used the bands as opposed to the conventional trackers? any advice?

regards,

Shaun

BunnyBomb

I use my FitBit HR and it's quite good, though I had to mess with positioning at first to get it reading accurately during cardio.

Luckily, I had another heart rate monitor to use with my Elliptical (goes around my waist) which has always been super accurate. I used this to compare to the Fitbit at first. I had to swap wrists, move it up my arm, wipe the reader part with a cloth each time before exercise...

If I didn't do all these things, the Fitbit HR would be around 20 bpm lower then my actual heart rate!!! Not immaterial.

EvgeniZyntx

Look at DCRainmakers site: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/11/winter-sports-gadget-recommendations.html

it’s really best to look at whatever activity trackers either:

A) Your friends are using
Your existing device is on

Seriously. If you’re motivated by competing with friends, then you want to be on the same platform as them. So if they’re all on Fitbit – go get a Fitbit. And same goes for Garmin or Withings, or anyone else.

Secondly, if you already have (for example) a Garmin device, heck, it’s likely it has an activity tracker in it. But say you want something else – in that case, get something on the same platform as that – so you can track everything in one place. It’d make no sense to have a Fitbit activity tracker and a Garmin GPS watch.

Next to last – the vast majority of activity trackers are roughly accurate. To that I meant that no activity tracker on the market is perfect. None. Instead, they are estimations – treat them as such. Each company tries to fine tune their algorithms for various use cases. Some might be better at guarding against false positives in the shower, but less so doing dishes. Others the inverse. What matters is that at the end of the day if you’re activity tracker said you only did 2,000 steps, and you’re goal was 10,000 steps – then you were…lazy. Meanwhile, if it says you did 9,782 steps and you think you really did 9,923 or 9,458 – just go walk around the block an extra time. It’s about tracking trends – not exacts.

betsy329

I use a Fitbit Surge, and a Polar FT7. The Polar comes with a chest strap, and typically those are more accurate. The Fitbit takes the reading from your arm, and isn't as accurate, but automatically syncs to the phone/app.

omma_to_3

I've used the Polar H7 which is a chest strap HRM with bluetooth that will connect to your phone. It worked very well.