OK I've spent a good long time getting my head wrapped around all these new tools from digital 3d axis pedometers, to "smart" watches and "fitness" trackers and HRM's in straps or wrist bands/watches, etc...and now I'm ready to buy...
In the past I loved using these digital 3D axis pedometers because they were so easy to use (just throw them in any pocket at any orientation) and very accurate and inexpensive. The one I liked the best was this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P03P11A/re ... UTF8&psc=1 and thats simply because it will measure steps walking, running and step climbing! So you can keep seperate tracking of each type of movement and at $20 you can't go wrong.
Now their are smart watches/fitness trackers that will do similar things and much more using the same digital tech, like keeping track of how long you sit and remind you to get up and move and measure your movement when you sleep to rate how well your sleeping pattern is and so on. Neat, but a bit more expensive and many folks complain about the wristbands being uncomfortable for long term wearing and such. But for double to triple the price of a pedometer they are probably worth it.
Then you have those smart wtaches/fitness trackers that also have a built in optical HRM as well which can do all sorts of neat things as well. However, the optical HRM's can have their own issues such as poor contact with your skin when arms are moving about, to slightly less accuracy to ECG type measurements due to the algorithmic calculations they have to make since they are making less direct measurements of HR (this is also why virtually none of the optical HRM's can properly measure RR's and HRV. They simply average and smooth the data curves too much to get the extra fine details for accurate HRV's. Now I believe the polar 800 claims they can do RR/HRV measurements accurately but thats a very expensive device at almost $400.
So finally we come to HRM straps, these are real ecg type measurement tools in that they measure the direct electrical activity from your heart. They are by far the most accurrate for measuring HR and some will also do RR and HRV measurements very accurately. However they don't directly count steps or particular movement, but some are waterproof. But they can also suffer from the same type of skin contact disconnects that wristwatch HRM's suffer from, but not nearly so badly as your body doesn't move nearly so violently as your arms do during hard training. But some folks don't find the chest straps all that comfortable either.
So my question to myself was what was I trying to use these devices for? My answer is I wanted to measure my level of fitness as directly as possible and with greatest accuracy and be able to measure stress levels more accurately (or at least what the science may say is possibly more accurate). Fitness trackers and pedometers are simply indirect measures of fitness, they dont really tell you what your heart is doing directly or if your working to hard or not hard enough. So that pretty much decided me on HRM straps as being the most direct and accurate measure possible, especially those that are accurate enough to present ecg type data with microsecond RR's and accurate HRV timings. The other great advantage to the straps is that the HRM can be kept quite small and light and cheap. All they do is record the data and send it off to your blue tooth device like a smart phone. This allows you to also use features from your smart phone such as GPS and gravity sensors and such to be able to massage the data and provide all sorts of charts and graphs of your activities both direct and indirect and provide you a choice of a ton of apps/software to do this with. Generally more than you can get from a wrist watch/strap tracker/HRM. And since most probably already have a smartphone these days, the cost would be relatively cheap for the accuracy and data that can be generated from a smartphone/HRM strap combination.
That significantly cut down my choices to pretty much 3 HRM straps that were readily available (via amazon). TICKRX for $99, Polar H7
for $50 or a Sigma Sport R1 for $39. All claim to provide accurate microsecond RR's and accurate HRV's. They all claimed to be waterproof, not just water resistant. All were bluetooth 4.0 capable and the TICKRX also was ant+ compatible. After tons of reviews, some from researchers/experts, it appears that the best HRM strap in terms of accuracy and usability was the Polar H7. It surprised me how many groups of tester's used this device as the standard for testing purposes (even consumers reports does this). And it also seemed to be compatible with the widest variety of free/pay apps on Android and IOS.
So bottom line, I've pretty much decided to get the Polar H7 strap for my training purposes. Anyone else have other suggestions?
