Heart rate monitor

[anonymous-user]

I’m fat and need to get fit but want to avoid too much heart rate and keeling over.

What are the options for a heart rate monitor that I can download data to my pc to plot heart rate vs. time?

Are they all wrist bands or are there other types? My iPhone seems good for steps and calories. I just want something simple but accurate for heart rate. Many thanks

[Glade]

Lots of activity trackers now have heart rate built in.
But you can get a chest band that would connect to your phone via bluetooth...

https://www.wiggle.co.uk/wahoo-tickr-heart-rate-mo...

Sports watches have had it for a while and can use either a band around your chest, which I believe will be cheaper as it is old tech, or light sensors under the watch take heart rate from the skin in your wrist.

You can spend as much as you want, but in would say you probably can't go wrong with the cheapest polar/fitbit/Garmin that has wrist based heart rate, that you like the look of.

This is an example of the heart rate trace I get from my old (2014 vintage) Tom Tom multisport watch.

Edited by Glade on Wednesday 26th June 23:51

[anonymous-user]

That output looks great thanks.

[RobM77]

You can get a chest strap heart rate monitor that syncs to your iPhone; I bought one for my wife years ago. You can then track heart rate either via an inbuilt phone app (like iOS’s health monitor), or via an activity app like RunMeter, Strava etc. Chest based HRMs are generally considered more accurate than wrist based ones (not by me though, my wrist based one seems fine if I keep it clean). Most people use wrist based monitors on smartwatches and sports watches these days, purely for convenience and comfort. Such a watch is useful if you’re doing an activity where carrying a phone is annoying, like swimming or running (unless you take your phone for music of course, but then again you can get watches that’ll store music now…), or where checking your phone for pace, distance, time, directions etc is inconvenient. I have a Garmin 735 watch that I use for walking, running, swimming, SUPing and occasionally windsurfing and surfing and I love it.