Heart Rate Monitors

I have the Polar ft4. I've had it for 8 months and it works great. Has just enough specs. Calorie count seems dead on. It's fairly inexpensive.

This^ Polar chest strap models are great. Got mine on polar.com

I use a Polar FT80 and my wife a FT60. Both of these offer the "Ownzone" and "STAR" features,and you can upload the workout data to the Polarpersonaltrainer website. Depending on what you want from your HRM these are features I feel were very much worth the extra price. The "STAR" feature is a goal based program generated and adjusted weekly by the watch. You heart rate is split into 3 zones and each zone has a weekly amout of time you try to record in that zone. I have mine set to start my week on Monday, and many times I am motivated to put in a good workout on Sunday to fill my STAR goals when it would have been easy to skip that day. I look forward to Monday morning when it shows that weeks goals, and I usually hit it hard on Monday as well to start the week off right. If all you want from a HRM is cal burn, then the base models will keep it simple. But the extra features on the other models are worth considering. I started MFP in Dec 2011, upgraded to the FT80 in Jan 2012, this Friday I will hit my first MFP goal weight (having lost 60 pounds in 6 months). I can honestly say that the motivation and challenge I got from my HRM was a big factor in making this happen.