Recommend a heart rate monitor - Also some questions

[SkScotchegg]

Recommend me a heart rate monitor - Also some questions

Hi there people, its my birthday in a few weeks and I was thinking of getting a heart rate monitor, I've seen a regular at my gym with a black band round his chest and I wondered what it was and he said it was a heart rate monitor and that it sends signals to the watch on his wrist so I thought that sounds cool and since cardio is so boring, I'm currently cutting and I love my gadgets, I just thought to myself why not! Also it would be good to know my heart rate throughout the day and when working out to see how healthy or unhealthy it says I am.

So I've decided to get one, but the thing is theres litterally thousands online ranging from £20 to £300 and I just have a few questions:

• Which are the best brands?
• Does it matter how much I spend? (I think I'd like one for around £50 or less)
• Any particular functions I should look to get with the Heart rate monitor?

I did a search for "heart rate monitors" on this forum and it came up with nothing.

EDIT: Also I believe most of them dont function as a watch but I did find one online that is also a watch and I liked that idea because then its multi-purpose. Also another thing I thought is I hope they're all waterproof or at least water resistant because obviously if not my sweat would destroy it pretty fast which is what happened with my previous ipod and resulted in me having to buy a wireless and waterproof mp3 player from Sony to run with which has been excellent by the way, I bought the song W series that goes round the back of your head, £60, no wires, its great.

EDIT2: This is the one I've seen which is also a watch and within my budget: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sportline-A..._1_12?s=sports&ie=UTF8&qid=1314403437&sr=1-12

EDIT3: Actually just noticed it says "Quick-touch heart-rate without a chest strap" for the heart rate monitor/watch I linked above...which ones are best? with straps or without? I would have thought the straps would be more accurate myself but I have no knowledge of how this technology works for either.
Thanks in advance.

 

[SkScotchegg]

14 hours and no replies!

I guess it is a hard one though...I spent about 4 hours last night reading and searching online...this is how it went for me:

Found a website that sells HRM's > fought a HRM that looked nice > clicked on it for more details > read the details and sounded good > read the reviews and read some negative comments > searched again for another HRM > same thing again.

I couldn't seem to find one for the right price, which had good reviews, and some of the reviews really put me off. I think with a HRM especially you seriously cant go on the look, you need to find one that actually works, and that is the difficult part.

The worst thing I read on multiple HRM reviews was that the heart rate monitor didnt always connect with the watch and the signal was lost and also sometimes it would display the wrong details...like lets say your heart rate was 100 it would display as 30 for some strange reason...so it really does appear that sound work and some dont.

Even the ones I was reading reviews on were like £150.

Also I realised that my original budget of £50 is too low for this device if I want to get something thats accurate and wants to work so I'm thinking around £100 now after what I read last night.

Does anyone on OCUK have a HRM and does it work correctly and if so can you tell me which one?

 

[SkScotchegg]

Polar and Suunto are considered good makes. Dunno why you would want to use it as a watch as well. Most tend to be over sized so that you can read them easily on the move. Look a bit silly as a watch imo. If you find cardio boring then it isn't going to get less boring because you are wearing an HRM. And why do you need to know your heart rate throughout the day? I've used a Suunto T6 in the past as a way of targetting effort in training runs.

Well I just thought as a watch it would have two uses, and I thought it would be neat to know your heart rate all day long, both in the gym and when your just walking around or whatever, I thought knowing your heart rate can tell you if you're healthy or not? Like depending on my readings I could also inform my doctor of the information it gives me also.

Also what I meant about making cardio less boring, at the moment I have the sony W series wireless and waterproof headset mp3 player, its amazing and really motivates me during cardio to listen to music...if I had a heart rate monitor...I'm not sure what My heart rate should be or what I want it to be, but lets say my heart rate is 90 and I want it over 100 then it will motivate me to push harder on cross-trainer, rowing machine and treadmill and I'll keep looking at my watch to see if I am beating my previous score...so therefore it does make things more interesting.

They also come with GPS now, and also upload your info to your PC/mac and to a website where you can compare your stats to others...they also record calories burnt, distant ran etc, so there's a lot I can do with it to keep me interested.

I can then set goals to beat.

 

[SkScotchegg]

From what I remember when I looked into them is that a chest strap is better and more accurate. The higher the price the more features there are but you can get a decent Polar for aorund £30-50 if I remember correctly, and these will link into most gym equipment.

I didn't buy one because I realised It would end up sitting in a draw after a month or two ...

Yeah out of all the brands so far I kinda figured polar must be best because they keep popping up everywhere I look and every site seems to have more polar models then any other brand.

 

[SkScotchegg]

No good at this stuff, but the forum is nearly dead, perhaps ask the guy at the Gym what make his is etc.

Well I think I'll just bite the bullet and just go for a polar one with a chest strap and just hope that it works ok and that it shows the correct information, I just thought maybe if I posted I'd get 20 replies with people recommending spacific models, so thought it was a good idea at the time lol.