Hr monitors, body fat calculators, and gadgets oh my!

Hi everyone! I wear the Fitbit HR. I find it seems fairly accurate unless I wear it less than tight as can be or I am doing some serious, sweaty cardio for a extended period of time (think military ruck march in Texas heat). For my normal gym stuff (an hour on a cardio machine, zumba class) it does fine. I know as I timed manually with watch VS the fitbit reading. The stairs are steps seem extremely acurrate! It is a fun way to give myself validation. I am a visual learner

I prefer the Garmin HRM. I do a lot of running and use the HRM and the foot pod for cadence. Part of it depends on the gadget you use to read it. We have 2 Garmins and my daughter and her husband each have one. We don't worry about the day to day stuff, just the things that put us above the baseline (running, shovelling snow, etc.) so we don't see much point in the fitbits.

I've just started using the fitbit charge hr and really like it. My only issue is that I want to exchange for a large soi can move it further up my arm for kettlebell. I also like buying cute new workout clothes, it is motivating!

I have a polar FT7 and I am really pleased with it.

If you run at all, I love my Garmin Forerunner 15. It has all the standard features of an entry level GPS run watch, so you can do pacing, map runs, view records etc etc, but it also has the fitbit style motion tracking included. You can get the chest heart rate strap if you want it, and the whole thing is pretty reasonably priced. Also has like a 4.5 star rating on Amazon, way ahead of most other fitness goodies.

I've owned a garmin vivofit, 2 tanita old school fat scale, polar loop, an mio alpha and a bodymedia device for personal testing and waiting on delievery on a M400 with HRM strap.

I have some basic experience with the fitbit line but them not being waterproof is a deal breaker for me. I swim so that's an important aspect for me.

I find all the activity monitors are just technical reminders to move.. If you do that it will always contribute to your fitness goal. My polar annoys I mean reminds shows me a bar the little bar isn't filled yet (I rarely do) but my bodymedia devices thinks I'm burning a lot of calories when I'm just walking around. It could be I'm just terribly unfit lol.

All devices are inaccurate. The GPS function I am getting isn't super accurate and regardless which you get it will just be approximate. The fitbit HR goes off when you try and do gym strength training.

None of the tracking devices do well with weight training.

Oh and of course you can wait for the new device that measure calories you consume, a Healbe GoBe.

I use a fat scale from the 1990's and the technology is about the same so I never upgraded.

In terms of HR, garmin HR doesn't work under water, Polar older tech does, but may have issues with the newer bluetooth ones. The cloth bands are much more comfortable than the plastic rubber ones that tend to dig into your chest.

I've researched that Bitfit wrist based HR will skip and give you inaccurate readings if you are doing stuff that giggles your wrist like lifting weights (as you should).

Ongoing heart rate kills batteries, so if you want to charge it one a day fine. Statistically you don't need it.

I have a blood pressure monitor that I use (an ihealth wrist monitor) and told me I have a slightly elevated blood pressure and a very high resting heart rate. who knows if that will save my life one day. My exercise the last few days have seemed to reduce it.

I could go on about sleep monitors and RIFD alarms but that's a bit out of scope but all of it helps structure your life to help/force you to do what's right.

People want simple convenient, and automatic.. but when you think about it, isn't that what got people in trouble in the first place?

It boils down to a trainer, or yourself to ask the simple question. Should I be moving?