Heart Rate Monitors

You are right - either needs to know your weight and height and age and such - the heart rate burns calorie rates differently at different weights...so whatever you are reading from (whether machine or HRM) needs to know your specifics.

I did a ton of research before finally going with the HRM's my wife and I use ($50.00 at Super Walm-Mart). If you are going get a heart rate monitor that you can depend on to give you accuracy you need/HAVE to get one that you enter your Age, Gender, Height, and Weight. With those entered in it can give you an incredible workout without too much or too little strain on your body (believe it or not you do not have to kill yourself to get in shape or lose weight). Actually, by straining your body too much you actually end up burning less fat and tearing or damaging muscle putting off exercising for days. Also, you cannot depend on those watches that do not get continuous heart rate monitoring for accuracy. If they do not use a chest strap they probably aren't that accurate. Those that do not have a chest strap and say just touch or one touch are considered non-continuous and you really need to be holding the watch constantly during the exercise to get an accurate reading.

I hope this helps!!!

I know it is confusing since there are literally millions of reviews, but it all comes down to:
Comfort (both chest strap and watch), Accuracy (does it allow to input profiles so you can put in gender, weight, height), Features (do you want just a HRM? / a watch?/ stopwatch?/GPS?/pedometer?) and finally price. You need to seriously think about what is important to you. Do not get one without a chest strap. The non-continuous HRM's are not accurate unless you hold them the entire time. They are great if you are on a walk and want to know where your heart rate is, but it will not give you an accurate approximation of calories burned. Polar is a well-known, well-built brand with a great warranty. That is why a lot of people go with them. (You do have to have Polar replace your watch battery which a friend finds annoying.) Finally, in the end, my wife and I went with a couple of watches from Super Wal-Mart which were Sportline brand. They are more widely known for their pedometers, but I liked the look and feel of their watches, setup was easy and we use them ALL THE TIME!! We have taken them on hikes, exercising in the morning and I wear mine just day to day (without the chest strap), because it is a comfortable and stylish digital watch. The unique thing about ours that we liked is it is both a continuous (with chest strap) AND non-continuous (without chest strap) HRM. So we can wear them on walks without the chest strap just to see where our heart rate is and pick up the pace to get it a little higher.