I first got to use a top-of-the-range Polar HRM watch about ten years ago. It wasn’t mine and I didn’t think too much of it.
A couple of years later I joined one of the big health clubs. Their treadmills could read the Polar transmitter belt. I bought the belt. The watch was still kinda expensive and I never picked one up. I changed job and was no longer close to the health club so I quitted.
My friend Stephen who is a jogger/runner highly recommends the S610i for this is the cheapest model that could talk to a computer running their logging software via IR. The autologging is super convenient, and his training progress in the form of the nice charts and graphs the program generates is a great motivator for him. “Cheapest” in this case means ~HK$2,400. A local mountaineering shop is doing 10% off. It is however too ugly to be used as a primary watch, and 2 grands is also kinda out of my budget.
So I went for something basic, and picked this up last week for ~HK$800.
Went for a walk with my new toy on Friday evening. The reading was all over the place. My pulse was 55bpm (I WISH!) when I was doing some fast pace walking. It just didn’t make sense.
I went home and fiddled with the strap of the transmitter a bit more, and got some reasonable readings. I even managed to take a reading of my baseline heart rate this morning.
This afternoon I went swimming with it and it worked rather well. ~40 minutes at 65% of HRmax and I burned over 400kcal. The swim was good.
My BMI is 26.8 right now. My plan is to first get rid of about 5-8kg, which will be very beneficial to my knees in the long run (no pun intended).