Tell me what to buy, please.

I’ve been looking at HRM watches, I’ve had a Garmin Forerunner with a chest strap HRM and didn’t like wearing the strap, but the new breed of wrist mounted HRM seem pretty decent.

I initially looked at the Withins (now Nokia) as they look smart, but then started looking at Polar’s range. Then I thought **** it, I’ll just buy an apppe watch.

Criteria:
Constant HRM without having to press to display
GPS recording so I can leave my phone at home for short rides but still record for Straaaaaava runs.
Not so chunky I can’t wear it under a long sleeve shirt for work.
IOS connectivity
Black coloured

Nice to have the ability to see who’s calling if I do have my phone on me, but not the end of the world.

Does anybody have experience of anything cheaper than just giving in and buying an Apple Watch?

Samsung gear fit 2.
£150-180 rrp.
Free with an s7 for the last month so plenty on ebay for 90 quid or so.
Battery betters my sony sw3 which did 2 days. It can also be set up to auto-detect activities and record them as well manually starting runs/rides etc.

Seems like it gets decent reviews. Cheers bud! I’ll get searching.

I have a Garmin forerunner 35 for all the reasons you mention .shows call, text and notifications (albeit basic), constant heart rate, gps is good (did HONC with it which for me was 7+ hours) and Bluetooth syncs to Garmin connect and strava.

I have tiny wrists but this is a normal size and covered easily by a shirt sleeve.

Garmin 235

Fenix 5s if your loaded.

Go and look at DCRainmaker.com before doing anything. Wrist HR is pointless for cycling because the vibration stops it working reliably.

I recently got the Forerunner 935 (with huge Wiggle discounts) and it’s honestly the best device I’ve had. I’ve used Suunto, Polar and Garmin of various types over the years.
I’ve found the Fenix 3 (non-HR) and Forerunner 920XT/935 fine under work shirts with normal and double cuffs. The Fenix 3 Sapphire with metal band even looks quite smart if a little large.

Wrist HR is pointless for cycling because the vibration stops it working reliably.

it really doesn’t. at least not for me.

My garmin 230 (like a 235) is a right pain for cycling as my glove hits the start/stop button, or if I wear it on the other wrist it hits other buttons.

Recorded about 10km less than my riding buddy on Sunday!

If you get one then get one of those bar mounts for it.

Garmin vivoactive hr is very good, lots of guys at work have them too.

Has a lock feature to avoid turnerguys issue.

I use a mio link with garmin edge 520 on the stem.

Works well enough together and still gives options for basic route following.

In the tradition of recommending what you’ve got, the Garmin forerunner 35 does exactly what you want.

Bit confused about not liking wearing a strap unless you had a terrible one before. Never actually notice i’m wearing one after the first 10 seconds.

I bought a few weeks ago a TOMTOM SPARK CARDIO + MUSIC for just over £100 using the discount code WELCOMEUK2017 https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/outlet/

Very happy with it

Garmin vivoactive hr

Has Fitbit style step counter as well

Pretty sure the entire market has been recommended here; cheers though. I’ll keep looking.

@fifeandy has a Garmin one and was just conscious of it all the time.

+1 for garmin vivofit HR, but you may struggle to get it under a work shirt sleeve as it’s quite bulky, no bulkier than a posh watch though

it really doesn’t. at least not for me.

Oh it’ll look like it’s working, but the numbers won’t necessarily be your heart rate. It’s a well known issue in the industry and one that DCRainmaker speaks about often. Same for running – it picks up your cadence rather than HR.
Optical is great for all day monitoring, but for activity it’s still chest straps for accuracy and consistency if you want to use the data for anything. If you’re just collecting more data then it doesn’t really matter and oHR will be fine to produce more numbers 🙂

Oh it’ll look like it’s working, but the numbers won’t necessarily be your heart rate.

Then it’s remarkably consistently inaccurate.

Gone for a Vivoactive HR. I’ll report back…

Fr235 (optical) gets my pulse accurate almost always. Just once on a run it picked up cadence, possibly because I was in full sun when I set off and it hadn’t locked onto pulse already. I think the earlier optical HRMs were dodgy (and was a bit sceptical myself at first) but nowadays they seem pretty good. Chest strap is far from perfect, mine used to regularly go bonkers if my chest was too dry/wet). Plus chafing on long runs. Ouch.

So the Garmin Viviactive HR seems good. Nice fit. Not too bulky. Did some cardio in the gym today and it was fine on the treadmill, Hr matched the machines own sensors (admittedly they could both be wrong, I’ll try it with a strap and compare in due course). Links to smartphone all seem good. Auto loading to strava was good, but annoying as it uploaded two treadmill sessions I normally wouldn’t bother.

The only issue I had was that I did 12 minutes on the never ending stair machine to hell (as I like to call it). I was at a slow pace but not holding on the bars and I was dripping in sweat, but it didn’t count steps and said my HR was 65; this was clearly wrong (it would normally be nearer 150 on that effort). I think it was looking for a treadmill type movement and it confused it.

Decent kit though, made up with it.

Fenix 5 here. Very pleased with it. Smaller than my old Fenix 3 but it’s still chunky. Fits under a shirt fine

Then it’s remarkably consistently inaccurate.

Yup cadence does look a lot like HR that’s exactly the issue.

Apple watch maybe best of the bunch for accuracy?

I’ve never done a direct comparison but my Wahoo chest strap appears to be related to Lord Lucan, so something is probably better than nothing, even if I’m just recording trends.