Seeking buying advice for Heart Rate Monitor

AJL_Daddy

Looking to start more accurately tracking my calories expended. Looking to buy a Heart Rate Monitor to achieve this. I would like some advice on which one to buy. LEANING towards the Polar FT4. Or maybe the FT7? What is the difference? If there is another model you like, I'm open the suggestions. Ease of use and accuracy are my 2 major points I'm looking for. Thanks!

babyshroom

I have the FT4 and love it. It's super easy to use, and from what the guy at the store explained to me, there isn't a HUGE difference between the 4 and the 7, so the cheaper 4 makes more sense. I don't know about accuracy difference between these and other models though.

JessHealthKick

I use the FT4 and have found it great so far! If you're female, you may find the strap a little uncomfortable at first - but that comes with all HRM. I have found the monitor itself sometimes unclips whilst I am exercising, but we are talking me snowboarding and rolling around the place, lots of layers of clothes pushing on it. Also I kept bumping to pause the workout with my snowboard gloves or if I had the watch even on my hip, so I learnt to lock it. This is of course being really picky, I don't see how it would be any different with any other monitor. I haven't had any trouble when running/doing at home workouts.

tommygirl15

I also use FT4 and am very happy with it - worthwhile purchase.
I heard somewhere that the difference between the FT4 and the FT7 is that you can change the battery on the FT7 yourself, but you have to send the FT4 out to get the battery changed for it. I'm not sure if this is true or not though.

kikicooks

I've been happy with my FT4 too

dotknott

I do believe the user can change the battery on the FT4, though Polar recommends you have them do it. The transmitters water seal might be compromised if you DIY.

jensan37

Bump

CarmenSRT

Looking to start more accurately tracking my calories expended. Looking to buy a Heart Rate Monitor to achieve this. I would like some advice on which one to buy. LEANING towards the Polar FT4. Or maybe the FT7? What is the difference? If there is another model you like, I'm open the suggestions. Ease of use and accuracy are my 2 major points I'm looking for. Thanks!

For accuracy I'd recommend the calorie monitor I bought, a BodyBugg SP. As far as accuracy goes it's at the 90% level based on studies. Beware you will likely find that the estimations of what you burn according to MFP's database is likely to be wildly off. Prior to buying my BB I'd only been eating back half my exercise calories all along because based on doing the math backwards I knew it was wrong. (Using the known weight change and the known caloric intake to determine what I was burning per pound of average body weight over a given period of time.)

The real benefit of an accurate monitor is not so much for exercise calories burned - once you know what you burn per a given time period of a given exercise you can create a custom exercise - it lies in finding out how many cals you burn on an atypical day. Yardwork, shopping, boating, etc.

arsan

Here you go
Check out this. http://www.comchoose.com/polar-ft4-vs-ft7/

Athena53

The real benefit of an accurate monitor is not so much for exercise calories burned - once you know what you burn per a given time period of a given exercise you can create a custom exercise - it lies in finding out how many cals you burn on an atypical day. Yardwork, shopping, boating, etc.

I agree- I'm a lot more conscious about making sure I'm exercising at a good rate now and that's helped. We've had a couple of heavy snowfalls here and I found that shoveling snow is just abut the same level of exertion as my typical workout so after an hour of snow-shoveling I didn't need to go to the gym!

To answer the OP's question, I have an FT7 and I'm feeling better about it since I replaced the chest strap, which started to fail 2 months after I got it. That was the one where the transmitter snaps onto the chest strap- it's a separate piece. My current chest strap has a plastic section at the front with the transmitter permanently imbedded in it. I've had it for 3 months and just got back from a trip to Phoenix, where I swam 4 days in a row. That was the first time I'd used it in water and I was very happy to find it worked. (When the last one failed, it kept losing my heart rate during swimming.)

kristy6ward

I went with the Polar FT60 for it's built in training program and fitness test. The fitness test give you a OWNindex number, basically your VO2 max, that when entered with the rest of your information is supposed to give you a more accurate calculation of calories burned.

arsan

I have a Polar FT60 and love it

jdad1

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