Best Bluetooth 4.0 Heart Rate Monitor?

Skipmeister
Skipmeister Posts: 5
in Fitness and Exercise
iPhone5 is coming out this week and seems I'm getting one - so trying to find the best option for corresponding HRM. To date I've dabbled with a few wrist HRM's and been frustrated - so moving to a chest one as the 1st requirement. I currently use Runkeeper for cycling (wish it integrated into MFP) and am doing P90X for fitness.

Bluetooth 4.0 is basiclaly available in iPhone 4s/5 and Droid Razr/Maxx - maybe a few others but basically latest models and my understanding is that it's primarily a low energy form of bluetooth meaning longer battery life, etc. You need to have the right phone to use them but since itlooks like I'll qualify, trying to get the right HRM to go with it... The 2 primary options I can find both seem to come with differing caveats if I search reviews on the web - but they are the Polar H7 and the Wahoo Blue HR...

Does anyone have personal feedback on either or both of these? Feedback on general compatibility with other apps, etc? Anything else I should look to be aware of?

Thanks much!

Replies

  • Skipmeister
    Skipmeister Posts: 5
    Been a week and no responses at all tho plenty of views... Just ordered the Wahoo - will post thoughts after I receive it and get a chance to test so that hopefully someone else will have some feedback! :)
  • Skipmeister
    Skipmeister Posts: 5
    Wanted to post an update now that I've been using my Wahoo Blue HR for a bit... Unfortunately I didn't get my iPhone5 until 2nd week in November roughly - but that gives me about 4 weeks of experience with the HRM to comment on.

    So far - it's worked VERY well. I have seen a few hiccups and not sure where the 'fault' is - but fix tends to be simplistic. I've seen it where the HRM isn't detected by the phone... Usually I just unclip the HRM - put a little water on the strap where it touches my chest and re-clip it and the phone will then detect it. I have seen a few times where nothing seems to work and then I'll just reboot the phone and everything works fine from that point on.

    The implementation is such that you have to turn on bluetooth within the iPhone settings - but it won't detect the Wahoo Blue HRM. You then have to load the Wahoo App, chose a workout and THEN discover the HRM and it will work fine. I do like that I can upload my HRM settings to Runkeeper for example - but still trying to figure out how to get it to upload in a way that Runkeeper sees this as an activity rather than manually entered data.

    I've been trying to work through how to get many disparate apps to synch between tehn to remove the grunt work from myself - and fortunately there has been a LOT of recent work within MFP (thank you!) in a similar approach... I use a Withings scale which synchs daily to MFP and is pretty flawless! :) My issue right now that I'm working through is synchronizing my Wahoo Blue HRM to an app (trying to use Runkeeper currently) for a cardio workout and then have it feed that information to MFP directly so that I can skip the middle step of manually entering the workout and calorie count into MFP. So far I haven't had a bunch of luck - but plenty of things left to try :)

    Anyways - hopefully this is some useful feedback for anyone else out there looking for a HRM!
  • eyebrowpaul
    eyebrowpaul Posts: 32 Member
    Thank you so much for posting your information

    Paul

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