What is the best most accurate heart rate monitor to buy?

Any heart rate monitor that includes a chest strap will be a good buy as it will be more accurate and give real-time feedback. I hear people like the Garmin brand. I personally like Polar products.

Everyone will have different opinions, but I personally love my Fitbit Charge HR and consider it a very important tool in my fitness journey. I wear it 24/7, eat the calories it tells me, and I still lose weight even though I'm 5'3" and 114 pounds. Sometimes it seems like they give me too many calories, but everything has been pretty accurate so far. No HRM will be 100% accurate, but each one does give a good general idea of your activity level. It's not a necessity, but it can be a big help. Whatever fits your price range and appeals to you is the one you should go with.

rabbitjb wrote: »

maidengirl_ wrote: »

Any heart rate monitor that includes a chest strap will be a good buy as it will be more accurate and give real-time feedback. I hear people like the Garmin brand. I personally like Polar products.

This

But only used for steady state cardio

The wrist worn 24 hours ones are in my honest opinion merely a marketers dream...no better than a standard pedometer at measuring TDEE (well marginally dependent on activities, but not enough to bother with in the world of estimated numbers)

Hi,

I have a microsoft band 2. Once you have run with it with its internal gps turned on so it can calibrate your heart rate zones, stride length and vo2 max I've found it quite accurate.

I tested it alongside my polar strap for a few exercises (weights, running outdoors, cycling, treadmill and static bike (last two to see how it does without gps data)) and while the heart rate maxes can be off compared to the polar the calories burnt seems pretty spot on, I guess it just collect so much data that it smooths out the inherent inaccuracy in measuring wrist pulse with a ir camera. I dont use the chest strap anymore and Im pretty confident of the numbers.

Obviously I cant test its 24/7 functionality against anything as there's not really anything else that measures it but number of steps taken matches closely what a pedometer measures and its daily calorie burn is close to what I would expect so I tend to assume its reasonably accurate, my main reason for using these feature is really just the activity alert which tells me I'm low on calories or steps for the day so I know to go drag the dog around a muddy field for a bit, its just a good motivational tool really. It also helped me spot some patterns in my sleep habit depending on workout time which I've been able to adjust.

So yeah, not as accurate in moment to moment as a chest strap, but the amount of data collected does reveal patterns and helps motivation. Just my two cents.