Polar Heart Rate Monitors - accurate?

Ashleysh22

I'm confused. I got a really lovely heart rate monitor from a friend recently. And I know that the heart rate recorded is pretty damn close. As in - I take my heart rate manually, periodically throughout the exercise and it always yields the exact same number as the HRM.

However - the calories calculated seem to be off.

I believe the equation, for a female, to calculate calories burned is as follows: calories burned = (0.074 x age in years - 0.05741 x weight in pounds + 0.4472 x average heart rate - 20.4022) x time elapsed / 4.184.

so if I do a 38 minute workout, am 110 pounds and 25 years old, and have an AVG HR of 160:

According to that above equation, I should have burned 424 calories.
But, despite having input my age, and weight into the Polar FT4, it tells me that 38 minutes at an AVG HR of 160, I only burned 326.

That seems like a rather large discrepancy - any thoughts?

WAM777

This sounds like a very good question. I hope someone comes along that has an answer.

dport7

Thats interesting, I have the FT7. I can only go by what it tells me. i know it has artificial intelligence that is to help program it to monitor your body, maybe it is still acclimating to your body, just a thought.