I've never really had any interest in heart rate monitoring, nor power or cadence or owt like that, but I recently found my resting heart rate has dropped from 65-70 about 3 years ago to 55 which I thought was interesting. I'm after a watch/wrist band which will give a simple read-out as I'm generally more curious about how it varies during different activites. I don't want one of those chest strap things, nor a fitbit step counter type thing, and no need for gps or recording - just a simple readout will be fine. Also don't want to spend a fortune or have to have a mass of cables and charging paraphernalia. There's plenty of cheapo option on amazon and ebay, but I can well imagine them not working very well. Anyone got a product they can recommend?
Cheers,
I'd keep it really simple and find the second cheapest polar (with the zones)
There's plenty of cheapo option on amazon and ebay, but I can well imagine them not working very well.
Those will mostly be "monitors" that take the wearer's HR whenever they touch their finger/thumb on contacts around the bezel, so not really constant monitoring or recording of your HR...
For what you describe wanting you're going to want to find something with optical HR monitoring built-in, the prices go up for that feature and the reliability of the readings apparently goes down(from what I have heard)...
Chest straps (coupled with a running watch or certain fitness trackers) are still about the most reliable and cost effective way of monitoring your HR...
Which is of course the opposite of the answer you were looking for...
Back in January, I was using Mrsgoat's old Lloyds pharmacy HRM watch and chest strap, the figures it gave were wild compared to the Polar H7 I bought in Feb for ~£40.
I've got a Xiaomi Mi Band2, it's an optical heart rate monitor so it isn't going to be as accurate as a chest strap but from reading on the interweb about its accuracy it's good 90% of the time which is fine for my needs, cost was about £20.