[Closed] Heart rate monitors - accuracy?

There's a bit of a lag but I think they're reasonably accurate most of the time
The odd abnormally sometimes shows up though

I've got a polar one, out of interest I wore it to the gym and took 2 different HRM watchs, the polar one, and one from tesco (cant remember the brand). The gym kit also has HRM built in (that picks up non coded polar chest straps).

All 3 gave different results but I put it down to different methods of averageing the value (one may be averaging the last 5 beats, another the last 5 seconds, one a logMean, one an instantaneous value etc etc etc). So not inacurate, but you dont nececeraly know what it's showing.

There's not much to measure so they should be as accurate as the watch theyre based on, and seeing as digital watches lose seconds in decades I'd hazzard that its pretty spot on.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2306564

this says good.

Thanks very much for replies. 8) Link was useful too.

Funny, I was thinking whe I read the title, "how accurate do they need to be? they only need to count a couple of things a second, either they can count or they can't!"

Interesting to see that there are loads of different ways of representing a count of 2 or 3 things a second.

All the (admittedly high end) Polar ones I've had have had a little heart symbol which flashes with each beat, putting ones fingers on your wrist it seems to match what my fingers detect, so they should be pretty accurate - the sampling rate must be pretty high.

Saying that my MHR seemed to drop reasonably significantly last winter, which co-incided with me changing to a Garmin HRM!

I'd imagine that accuracy is pretty constant across the price range. It'll be the bells and whistles that make the difference on price between low and high end.

Since getting a Polar HRM I've been very impressed. I don't have anything definitive to benchmark it against, but it seems to return very consistent figures in the course of a workout. The only glitches I've run into have been down to either not wetting the chest strap sensors, or not looking after it. It likes a wash now and again.

While my Garmin forerunner is much better in many ways than the el-cheapo HRM's I'd used before, it doesn't look like the cheapo ones were inaccurate as they do seem to generally match up.

For what you say you want, accuracy isn't that important. Repeatability/concistantcy would be more use. Doesn't matter what it says your HR is, you just want to know if it goes up or down over time.

Anything else apart from spit that works on the chest strap?

So far, I've managed fine with tap water.

Actually the soft style Polar strap that I have ("wearlink"?) probably wouldn't work with spit. The sensors need to be fairly saturated. I'd be dehydrated before I set off...

But if you've got rubberised electrodes, you might find that a little spittle goes a long way.

Anything else apart from spit that works on the chest strap?

Tap water: wet fingers, rub on contacts. Make sure it's fairly wet.

Anything else apart from spit that works on the chest strap?

you can buy gel

They are accurate enough. Had my resting and maximum Heart rate checked at hospital and it was the same as the polar. The polar online diary is very good and has been a great help in training. Keeps you honest and helps you check when you should rest. It's the best bit really. You can use it to monitor loads of healthdata. Not just heart rate.

I have the cheapest polar i could find that had a zoning alarm. Its great!!

Assume it won't interfere with a gps? Was thinking of putting the watch on the bar.

Nope it wont I have garmin gps. I bought Polar RS300x heart rate monitor. The real benefit of HRM is being able to upload all the data and have graphs read outs etc to see whats happening. Mine has zone etc but like I sad its the online diary that brings it all together.

cinnamon_girl - Member

Anything else apart from spit that works on the chest strap?

Stick 'electrode gel' into google. Either mail order or some chemists have it if you can make them understand what it is you want.

Anything else apart from spit that works on the chest strap?

CG this might give you the info you need

http://www.polar.fi/en/training_with_polar/polar_personal_trainer