Good Heart Rate Monitor for Interval Training?

eponine1976

I've been looking at various models and would like to hear if anyone knows a good heart rate monitor for my purposes. This is basically what I'm looking for:

I want to do interval training using the heart rate monitor. It would be very nice if when I get in my "high" interval if it could display on the watch (while I'm still exercising) how long I've been in that zone so that I can easily see if I've been in the hard interval for 2 minutes or 3 minutes or whatever my target was. Then when I switch to my recovery period if it could display for the lower zone how long I've been in that recovery zone so I will easily know when it is time to pick up the pace to get back into the high interval. Based on what I'm seeing online, it looks like the Polar FT60 can do this but it would be nice if I can get a less expensive model if such a thing exists. I can't tell if the FT7 has this capability or not to tell me while I'm still working out how long I've been in a given zone or if you can only see that data after the fact and after you've used a transmitter to transmit to your computer. I want to be able to see it while I'm stil exercising.

Timex monitors seem good too if they will do what I'm wanting but I'm not sure if they will or not.

I do NOT care about: calories, GPS etc.

It would be nice to also have interval timers for things like C25k but that isn't a necessity. I know some of the Timex models have that but that the lower end Polars do not.

chrisleone

Polar FT7 does give a breakdown at end of workout of minutes in Fat Burn (lower end heartrate) and Fitness (higher end HR) It also has a screen that you can see which zone you are in as you work out with a warning beep when you exceed your recommended heart rate zone. I don't believe you can customize that zone though.. I think it figures it based on your age/sex/weight .

eponine1976

Bumping to see if anyone else has any thoughts

Snelllee

Darn I was looking for the same thing and hoped this post held all the answers. I need a HRM that has an interval timer built in. So that I can say, workout for a set amount of minutes then have a set rest period and repeat several times. I have been researching but it seems no product exists, am I wrong?

lizzyepp

So i see this thread is super old, but did anyone find something that works for them?
I'm looking for a bracelet/monitor/watch or SOMETHING that i can set to beep or vibrate after programmed length of interval.