Accuracy of heart rate monitors?

msmileyface

Hey all.. I bought the New Balance N4 HRM and really like it. However, I'm wondering about the accuracy of "calories burned" for certain activities. I heard that HRM's aren't really accurate for calories burned when you aren't doing true cardio exercise (i.e., strength training).. something to do with it not being based completely on your heart rate, but rather the number of muscle cells being worked.

So today.. I was gardening (digging, planting, weeding) today for about 75 min. The HRM says I burned 527 calories. That seems a bit high, although I was making sure to make it as much of a workout as possible. When I looked it up in the database here on MFP, if estimates 397 calories.

Does anyone have experience with this or know if gardening is a true cardio exercise, and if the HRM should be on target for that kind of movement? I want to be accurate and not inflate things. Also, I never input any personal data into the HRM (have not had it for more than a week yet) so we're going based on factory settings.

Can anyone advise..? Thanks

lupa01

I bought a S7 Sportline HRM from Walmart about two weeks ago and I was wondering the same thing. I jogged/walked for about 71 minutes yesterday and it said that I had burned over 1300 calories.lol Of course, I did not consider this to be accurate so I just went by what MFP said I should have burned, which was 743 calories. I have an elliptical at home and sometimes it is consistent with it but sometimes not. When I workout in intervals it is consistent, but when i work at only a low resistance, the HRM shows that I have burned more than the elliptical does, which I don't think is correct either because I work harder when I do intervals. I did put in my profile information, but I really think the HRM is just basing the calories burned on that alone, and not my actual heart rate; I could be wrong, its just hard to tell sometimes.lol I'm going to take mine back and get a better one. I've heard that the Timex ones are pretty accurate but I think I'm gonna read the reviews first.lol Good luck!:-)