Heart rate monitors

What do you guys use for heartrate monitoring.

I currently use my Huawei GT2e watch, But this morning when I was cycling I hit 210bpm,

I didnt die... which tells me it was nowhere near that. I counted the beats manually and came to around 140





So, looking at getting another smart watch, but I cant afford the super fancy garmins. Any recommendations?

Just get a compatible chest strap.
I have very varied results with wrist based measurements, chest straps are the way to go

huawei dont have them sadly

Samsung Active Watch

Heart rate monitors are a bit of a waste really, when it comes to cardio, just measure your pulse in the neck for 10 seconds and multiply by 6.

If you are using them for cardiovascular health, low intensity is pretty much where you can hold a conversation easily, moderate intensity is where you are doing more mouth breathing but still can be holding a conversation, but more laboured, if you can talk during high intensity, you are not going hard enough.

That is drastically way better, and cheaper than a smart watch for that. The major reason I personally would wear a smart watch is to track my steps through out the day.

Oupa, so glad to "see" you. While 8ve always known you to have your shit together, I have seen COVID wreak havoc on people. So when the Len Cloete scenario happened I couldn't help but wonder... Even though deep down I knew it wasn't you, there was some concern

Empire wrote: Heart rate monitors are a bit of a waste really, when it comes to cardio, just measure your pulse in the neck for 10 seconds and multiply by 6.

If you are using them for cardiovascular health, low intensity is pretty much where you can hold a conversation easily, moderate intensity is where you are doing more mouth breathing but still can be holding a conversation, but more laboured, if you can talk during high intensity, you are not going hard enough.

That is drastically way better, and cheaper than a smart watch for that. The major reason I personally would wear a smart watch is to track my steps through out the day.

I dont totally agree they are a waste of time. When doing certain types of cardio it is not the easiest to measure your pulse on your neck or get it accurately. I use mine very regularly and utilize it to alert me when in certain zones, to determine if I am actually working hard or just lazy and in some cases I can track when I am getting sick or fatigued / over training based on my heart rate patterns when waking up and sleeping.

Steps for me are moderately useful if stride length is entered correctly, but even then, the variance can be a fair whack between days and people. Not a bad tracker for me to see how much I have moved around though

For athletes, heart rate monitors with a step are completely necessary, but for the average Joe bodybuilder trying to loose some weight, measuring them on the back of the hand really are not that great. Do they have their purpose, yes. But many of the uses are very very minimal, if you are wanting pure tracking for empirical numbers and evidence. So as I say, application and purpose are very very different for joe average and athletes

Well since i have stopped tracking my heart rate on it, my smart watch is a pedo meter (finds Pedo's and beeps!)

also it tracks my steps and lets me read whatsapp messages quicker. I was really happy about the heart rate.

I struggle to find my pulse. Theres still alot of fat in the way

Cyclo wrote: Oupa, so glad to "see" you. While 8ve always known you to have your shit together, I have seen COVID wreak havoc on people. So when the Len Cloete scenario happened I couldn't help but wonder... Even though deep down I knew it wasn't you, there was some concern

Still going stong, thx Cyclo