Right now I’m using a Polar H10 chest strap with a Polar M400. I like this setup except that the M400 battery life is too short (6-7 hrs) and I cannot wear it while it’s connected to an external battery.
The M400 is a chest strap only monitor but does anyone even make these any more? they all seem to have built in wrist-based HR monitoring. Are wrist monitors as accurate as a chest strap like the H10? Should I just forget about the chest strap and go with a wrist monitor with the green light?
I dont want anything fancy with a lot of bells and whistles.
The chest strap stinks and washing it does not help but I otherwise prefer the Chest Strap
There are a few factors affecting how accurate, or rather reliable (consistency and repeatabity).
For me, both my Garmin (FR 735XT) and Apple Watch (series 3 and 9) are within 1 bpm over different workouts (average). There may be a few seconds (3-5) lag in response to a big change in HR, but nothing dramatic.
Seems like there are just TOO MANY models on the market. Polar alone has too many models and they fill their web page with pictures of every color as if that was a separate model.
Maybe I’ll try it with a few straps. I put my old one on today, it took 6 months for the stink to go away. It’s a plasticky chemical smell but I quit using it because I was getting dropouts but I’ll see if it’s still doing that today. I found an old post about some sort of lotion that worked for a woman but I could not find that lotion on the market.
My daughter tells me to soak the strap in water with a little bit of vinegar or buy a spray bottle at the $ store and spritz lightly with Vodka. She tells me the Vodka method is how they deodorize and sanitize stage costumes in between dry cleaning. lol. I’m not kidding.
Well . . . my old chest HR strap dropped my HR 5 times and spiked it once in the first 2 miles but was good after that . . . I guess it’s time to throw it away.
The H10 is a very good device (and used by a lot of devs and researchers) but the straps are in my experience not that good. I had to discard the strap that came with the H10 after less then 6 months. Since the, the H10 is on my former Garmin Dual strap. Worked like a flaw for almost 3 years now. And the Garmin strap is easier to wash. I just take it with me in the shower once every week or every other week.
If you have other straps laying around, first check if the H10 fits on them.
Interesting . . . the Polar strap has a higher rating but the Garmin has 10x the number of reviews. Garming has a lot of 1 star reviews saying it’s crap just like Polar does. Ive had this strap exactly one year and it’s working perfectly. The original one that came with the H10 is buggy
cold (starting with contracted capillaries due to cold and then changing to be more open after warming up)
I use a garmin forerunner 55 with great battery life in combination with my HR chest strap. The watch lasts a week while doing 5x 1 hour runs with GPS recording, wearing it day and night with continuous HR monitoring and connected to my phone for all kinds of notifications. Without activity recording I forget when I last charged it.
It’s in my price range.
I like the square screen of the Forerunner 35. I found a used one for 75.00 that she claims is “like new” and she’s a read person, not someone that sells a lot of stuff
I gave up on Polar long ago. I had problems like mid ride HRM stopped working. Sometimes a little water under sensors got it going again but never without glitches. I’ve switched to Garmin and no problems at all. Garmin and Wahoo are what people I know are using.
Garmin has a great chest strap and offer another cheaper alternative. I’ve used both and surprisingly the cheaper one will last longer before delaminating. One year is how long the premium one lasted and the cheaper one will go longer.
As I said above, the Garmin straps are better quality IMHO. The Polar H10 sensor is technically more versatile. Single lead ECG for example, or Gyro sensor.
That´s why I use the H10 on Garmin strap.
My original H10 strap lasted 18 months. I replaced it with the soft strap from Polar.
The original strap developed cracks where the plastic at the end of the electrodes joined up to the fabric. The cheaper ones fits better, and so guess I have to wait another year and half to see if it outlasts the original.
Some time ago i meassured with a multimeter a new Polar Pro Strap’s and a new Garmin HRM Dual Strap’s resistance. Polar Pro Strap had much lower resistance (in ohms) between the electrode and the connector. In my opinion its the best strap and at 34€ its not that expensive, at least in Europe. I wear it not to tightly and wash it with light diluted soap. They last me between 2 and 3 years
According to this all three of my Polar Pro bands are bad, even the one I just got today that’s never been used. The new one is around 170 kΩ, the oldest one (that has dropouts) is 50 kΩ and the one in the middle that I’m using that’s almost flawless is 250 kΩ and he said they should be less than 10 kΩ
My old one has never had many spikes up, just a lot of drop outs and almost always only in in the first mile or two and I always wet it. It’s been so warm lately that I’m sweating before I start and it always works good the first 1/4 mile. Strava filters them out but I can see them in Polar Flow
My H10 orginal strap last about 2 years and now I’m using a non-orginal random belt from china. (well, nearly everything is made in china anyways nowdays)
I always put my HRM strap in the washing machine (in a little laundry bag) after each use along with my jersey and shorts etc. Never had any issues with a stinky strap, and not had other strap issues either (that I’m aware of!).