[Sportsandrec] My talking HR monitor

[Thornbury, Kelly]

I just received my Oregon Scientific heart rate monitor, and thought I would share my opinions. 

First, I purchased the chest strap monitor with the FM radio. The seek for stations jumps from one signal to another, so there is no fine adjustments, and the stations out here aren't real good, but I ordered this option anyway. I played with the chest strap for half an hour before realizing that the radio part was still in the box. This unit clips to your belt, and is hooked up to the chest strap, then the headphones connect to the radio. This allows you to hear the monitor information while listening to the radio. With the right cords, namely a male to male headphone wire, I think I can wire in my Trekker (what I use to listen to music) instead of the radio and still use the unit, but this experiment hasn't happened just yet. 

So, the chest strap...My first worry was that the set up wouldn't be accessible...the salesman kindly pointed out that it probably was because there is no display for the unit. With some patients, it was all accessible, but have someone read the instructions or something, because doing it the way I did (trial and error) took some patients and time. 

So, the unit can be set up for different training modes: manual, where you set your upper and lower limits; or automatic mode where you put in the exercise type (walking, jogging, or running...sorry, no biking I guess). I haven't used automatic mode, but I imagine it has different preset HR ranges. You set up user demographics (height, weight, gender, and age), and workout timers...there is a stop watch or a count down timer where you can set warm-up, exercise, and recovery time intervals. There is also a memory section that remembers the last workout (I think that is the limit of the memory), and records how long you were in the target zone, average heart rate, and the HR range during recovery (which is also an important evaluation of fitness). There is a three step volume control, and you can set the interval of HR announcements (you can also check manually at any time). 

One annoying feature (for those of us who don't like to be nagged), is the voice that tells you that you are not in your target zone and you need to work harder. 

I have yet to test it against other methods for accuracy, but I found it to be pretty accessible and will be a useful tool for information I previously had to track with radial pulses and stop watches. 

This unit was around $85 or so, and the model without the radio was about $44 I think, and the website I ordered from shipped for free, and it only took a few days or so. 

I would be interested in hearing about any other units listers have tried, but so far I really don't have any hard complaints about this HR monitor, and its much easier to use by myself than my Polar. 

Kelly Thornbury

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