blood pressure/heart rate monitor

[carmensimpson]

I've been looking at heart rate monitors and don't know what I might need.  Can anyone suggest a good brand.  I want to be able to monitor my heart rate while I am using my One. 

[Colinm39]

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@carmensimpson wrote:

I've been looking at heart rate monitors and don't know what I might need.  Can anyone suggest a good brand.  I want to be able to monitor my heart rate while I am using my One. 

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@carmensimpsonI have two HRM's, my heavy duty one to check my zones, the Polar rs300x and an MIO Sport wrist touch HRM. I calibrated them so both give me the correct calories at a moderate+ walking speed. I find the MIO Sport excellent because it is my watch and it is my opportunistic calorie counter if I walk shopping malls etc.

It will probably come down to your budget, do you want a wrist or chest strap HRM.

This link may help because I found them accurate if I was doing moderate to higher intensity. I have a slow HR and walking at about 75%-80% of maxHR was accurate and any faster gave me more calories than the Fitbit. A trap recently in the summer here in Australia, all I was doing was resting, 100oF day, my HR was 96bpm and the calorie burn was very high. The danger of HRM's it uses HR and assumes you are active and your muscles are working.

Keeping all that in mind I found the MIO really helped at a price cheaper than a Fitbit, the battery is replaceable and lasts about 5 months, depending on how many touch ons you do to measure the effort, the touch ons for the MIO are about evey 5 minutes. It is an excellent entry model and in Australia $55.

[Dominique]

@Colinm39: the Mio Sport appears to be an older model, as it's no longer mentioned on the company's site. It still appears to be available on Amazon, though. It's not that much more expensive than a good Polar chest-strap HRM. However, reviews on Amazon suggest it's not reliable if you are sweating, which would limit its usefulness in intense sport activities.

Mio has other wrist-mounted HRM's. I've been using the Mio Alpha for the past nine months and it's very reliable, including when I'm heavily sweating. I wasn't aware of it, but they appear to have a new model (Mio Link), which is basically a Mio Alpha without a display. In other words, you must use it with a compatible smartphone, whereas the Mio Alpha can be used standalone. There's a comparison of Alpha vs. Link on their site. If I were in the market for a new HRM, I'd definitely buy the Link, as it's half the price and I always use my Alpha connected to my smartphone. The Alpha and the Link use two powerful LED's in order to illuminate your veins/skin and read your HR from your blood stream.

[Dominique]

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@carmensimpson wrote:

I've been looking at heart rate monitors and don't know what I might need.  Can anyone suggest a good brand.  I want to be able to monitor my heart rate while I am using my One. 

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Do you want to monitor your HR in real time during your activities (in which case you would need a device with a display, eg. the combination of a chest-strap sensor and a watch), or do you want to record activities with an app on a smartphone (in which case a chest-strap sensor would be sufficient) and view HR data afterwards?

Polar makes good HRM's. The H7 is a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) compatible chest-strap that can transmit either to a Polar watch or to a compatible smartphone. You can get it for a bit more than 50 bucks on Amazon.

I like the Runtastic Pro app that runs on my Nexus 4 Android smartphone. I usually record activites at the same time on my Fitbit One and in Runtastic. Fitbit gives me steps, calories etc., while Runtastic gives me info on HR (average, max, split between zones), distances, routes etc.

[carmensimpson]

Thanks for the information. I have been looking at several online. I have looked at wrist and regular ones but just don't know which one would be more accurate. I think the wrist kind would be easier to use since it wouldn't be as hard to keep in place as the regular type. Any more ideas?

[Dominique]

I've used both the Polar H7 (chest-strap) and the Mio Alpha (watch) at the same time, and they gave identical results. It should normally be easy for women to get used to a chest-strap model, since it's not that different from wearing a bra. Note that the Mio Alpha (and assumably the newer Mio Link too, since it works the same way) needs to be worn pretty tight. Here is what my wrist looks like after I take it off:

[gerrymcd]

I've owned a number of HRMs. From a cheapy that cost  $14 (including watch) to a high end Garmin that cost $200, and several in between.  All have worked more or less equally well.  The higher end watches tend to have more functions (for example, more sophisticated lap timers) and perhaps a more comfortable strap.  I'd say pretty much any HRM from a reputable manufacturer will do the job. 

[Heybales]

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@carmensimpson wrote:
Thanks for the information. I have been looking at several online. I have looked at wrist and regular ones but just don't know which one would be more accurate. I think the wrist kind would be easier to use since it wouldn't be as hard to keep in place as the regular type. Any more ideas?

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You mean accurate not for their intended job - which is monitoring the HR (which any are EKG accurate now a days), but rather accurate for calorie counts?

That is an estimate first, estimates using your stats to estimate other stats to then calculate a calorie burn associated with HR seen.

Can be very off, even models that self-test for better stats, upwards of 35% in women. Even after putting in lab tested stats for HRmax and VO2max, 13% off for women.

So realize it's an estimate of calorie burn. And there are all kinds of reasons you can get an elevated HR that has nothing to do with your exercise - dehydrated, very hot, double espesso, tired, ect.

That would lead to elevated calorie estimate.

The cheapest Polar I've found with required stats and self-test to improve the estimate - Polar RS300X.

Also be aware it's only for steady-state aerobic exercise - where HR is steady for 2-4 min.

Anaerobic lifting lifting and sprint intervals, and non-steady-state like many classes and lifting and intervals - would all be inflated.

As well as anything below the exercise level, like wearing all day.

That MIO that fits real tight is along the same lines with stats I think. I hate watches that tight though, I'd never be able to handle that.

[TandemWalker]

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@Dominique wrote:

I've used both the Polar H7 (chest-strap) and the Mio Alpha (watch) at the same time, and they gave identical results. It should normally be easy for women to get used to a chest-strap model, since it's not that different from wearing a bra. Note that the Mio Alpha (and assumably the newer Mio Link too, since it works the same way) needs to be worn pretty tight. Here is what my wrist looks like after I take it off:

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I wear my Mio Alpha every day and it never leaves marks this bad - I think you might be wearing it a little too tight.

[slysam]

I use a Polar H7 strap and link it to the app Digifit ICardio. This would only work if you have a compatible phone, but most likely your phone is compatible if you are able to sync your fitbit device through your phone. I also have a Polar HRM watch (a now discontinued model--but they have a similar one just don't know the model number). I mainly just use my watch/chest strap for water activities.  I actually find the data in the Digifit app more useful than what my watch reported. I think with an online interface it can just report more. It reports my heart rate each minute of the workout--especially interesting for intervals. The app also uses GPS for outdoor workouts and ties the heart rate to selected points on the GPS mapped route. It has an option to record recovery heart rate (a fitness indicator) at the end of each workout--if you want. I purchased the fitness assessments and they estimate my Vo2max, maximum heart rate, lactic acid threshold, and set custom zones. The nifty thing is when the workout is complete, Digifit syncs it to my fitbit.com account for me. It is basically just logging the activity category (walking, running, cycling, spinning, cardio, hiking, other) and the calorie burn to fitbit. Digifit also pulls some stats from fitbit like the time spent and calorie burn in each of four activity levels (sedentary/sleep, light activity, moderate activity and very active).  You mention blood pressure in the subject line? I don't know of any fitness heart ratemonitors that track blood pressure. I think you would need a separate blood pressure monitor. I had an old digital cuff that doesn't sync with anything and would manually enter my blood pressure, I recently replaced it with a withings blood pressure monitor. The withings plugs into my phone and records the data on the Withing phone app. I do have it set up so it is synched to Fitbit and to Digifit, but to sync my withings cuff to fitbit did require an extra synching partner (I use syncmetrics.com). I use my heart rate monitor way more often than the blood pressure cuff though--I just check my blood pressure periodically. 

[slysam]

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@carmensimpson wrote:
Thanks for the information. I have been looking at several online. I have looked at wrist and regular ones but just don't know which one would be more accurate. I think the wrist kind would be easier to use since it wouldn't be as hard to keep in place as the regular type. Any more ideas?

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I think the most accurate is one that monitors continuosly so I probably would not suggest a watch you have to touch to get a reading (unless you just want it to periodically take your pulse, but not for exercise). I have a armband HRM Schoshe (uses the same type of sensor as the Mio) and a H7 strap (and an older Polar strap that isn't bluetooth that came with my watch). All three seem to read my heart rate about the same. My old hrm that wasn't a polar would pick up interference from other HRMs in the gym and electrical signals--so that is something to watch for with the cheapies. Most of the more established brands, like Polar have a mechanism to keep the watch from picking up false signals. I think sometime smy bluetooth HRMs' do pick up a false signal, but not as bad as my old Nike HRM watch (I will sometimes have weird spikes of 220 bpm at the start of a workout--it doesn't effect the calorie burn though). If you want it for calorie burn--I think continuous monitoring is important. Most HRM's use your average workout heart rate compared to your estimated maximum heart rate to estimate calorie burn. Continuous monitoring with give you a more accurate average. But otherwise it is probably just preference.

I don't find the chest strap to be a problem staying in place--it sits directly lower than my back strap on my bra so it just feels like the back strap is a little longer. It can shift if it isn't tight enough. The polar straps come in two sizes: xs-s and M-XXL. The default is M-XXL. I had to buy an exra strap (just the strap without the sensor for about $15) in the smaller size because the M-XXL worked at first (tightened as tight as it allows) but became loose as it stretched out from use.

One question about the Mio Alpha, I was told that it doesn't estimate calorie burn (and the Mio website seems to confirm that). Is that true? If so, where do you get that information? Or do you just use it for straight up heart rate monitor training? 

[LewWagner]

Ever since my TomTom heart rate monitor stopped reporting effectively (and the company has been really difficult to deal with and has not yet given me a new one), I went to a Walgreens and bought a wrist blood pressure and pulse monitor to take with me on my walks/jogs/runs.  Where the TomTom was able to give me continuous pulse readings every step of the way, This Omron 7 Series BP/P wrist monitor needs you to stand still (like most BP machines do).  So, at the start, two waypoints and end of my walk/jog/run, I stop and take measurements.  Then I average out the last three and that's my average BP and pulse.  The BP/P monitor I bough (using Walgreens card) was around $70 bucks.  It runs on two AAA batteries and I've been using it for over a month. 

[flyboy]

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@carmensimpson wrote:
Thanks for the information. I have been looking at several online. I have looked at wrist and regular ones but just don't know which one would be more accurate. I think the wrist kind would be easier to use since it wouldn't be as hard to keep in place as the regular type. Any more ideas?

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If you want it to be accurate as a HRM you need the chest strap, the wrist only options aren't going to be EKG accurate.

There are several reputable brands on the market.  I've used a HRM to train for Ironman Triathlons and the like for 10 years now and have had very good luck with Timex.  My wife swears by her Polars but the one she bought for me has never worked very well, subject to interference from power lines and such.  I'm currently using a Garmin HRM and GPS, while it isn't my old beloved Timex that died about a year ago, I'm pretty happy with it.  I've also really liked an Oregon Scientific one that I wore about 7 years ago, it was low priced and had great features, unfortunately when the battery died the watch repair place that I took it to didn't do a good job of getting the gasket back in place and it leaked on me the very next time I wore it swimming.