Fitness and Heart Rate Monitors
These are used generally to monitor the heart during cardiovascular exercise. These are for use by healthy adults with no known heart problems and should not be used to monitor life threatening health issues.
If you are worried about your cardiac health contact your doctor.
There are a small selection of proper ECG monitors designed especially for medically focused heart rate monitoring at home
See article on Heart Monitors
The sports watch models that connect to a chest strap allow for continuous tracking of your heart rate by sending information back to the monitor on your wrist.
The other type is a simple watch style monitor, which has no chest strap and requires you to touch your finger on a pad to get a pulse rate. This means you have to stop exercising to take your pulse and is less accurate then the chest strap models.
The aim of monitoring your pulse is to help you reach your target goal while you exercise.
It has been proven that the wrist style fitness trackers measure heart rate fairly accurately within 5%.
Best Fitness Trackers
Recommended for exceptional value and great performance is the
LetscomID101HR: price £23
Features all the essential features including wrist based heart rate, daily tracking with calories burnt and distance travelled.
The next that is good value for money is the
Garmin vivosmart HR Price approx. £75-£120
This has accurate heart rate monitoring without the need for a chest strap
Personal ECG Monitors
1. Kardia mobile ECG is a brilliant ECG sensor that connects with your smart phone
2. Heal Force 180 B Portable ECG is lightweight and easy to use.. It provides an accurate ECG on par with professionals.
3. The Heal force PC-80A can provide a 10 hour continuous recording
4. Beurer ME80 ECG made by a well known professional company. It will accurately monitor your heart rate without the need for wires. It can store up to 99 recordings
5. Omron ECG HCG 801 also a small portable accurate monitor. Easy to use and will take a 30 sec recording of your heart’s waveform