How accurate are these heart rate monitors?

280tofit2014
280tofit2014 Posts: 52
in Fitness and Exercise
I used the polar ft4 for the first time today and I exercised for an hour and it says I burned 530 calories. My heart rate stayed between 130-165. That just seems like a lot of calories burned to me and makes me wonder if it's accurate. So, I don't include the calories burned in my calories I still have left for the day. Should I? I could very well just be ignorant to all this, that's why I'm asking.. Thanks!!

Replies

  • chunt87
    chunt87 Posts: 161 Member
    I think it all depends on what you were doing for the hour. I bought one after having some serious doubts about the calorie estimation from MFP and fitbit for certain activities, turns out I was right. My zumba classes with the H& average around 450-500 calories when this says 700, that could have been 200 calories of disaster right there! The spin bike at the gym usually tells me I burn like 500 when I burn 350 for 40 minutes and I average about 100 less for whatever the heck the treadmill says I did.
  • TiberiusClaudis
    TiberiusClaudis Posts: 423 Member
    I have a polar. When I match it up against other various pieces of cardio machines monitors, its runs about 10% higher.

    Matched it up against over 20 different machines and got roughly the same results. So I knock off 10% from what it tells me and call it a day.

    When I plug the exercise calories into http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/, it spits out how many calories I can take in that day.

    Has worked pretty good for me so far. No surprises at the end of the day.

    And I've made it down to 7%BF so far, on a journey down to 4%.

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