Boundary Waters Quetico Forum :: Gear Forum :: Fitness Tracker Watches
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andym |
I use an Apple Watch and have extensively tested it while playing squash. At high heart rates and lots of motion, it would often give a much too low heart rate. With a heart rate strap, I get much different results. I now use the Apple Watch but with the readings coming from a Polar strap. That is very accurate. There are some great apps for the phone that give useful graphs of heart rate. For less active exertion they will do better. You can give it a try and sometimes take your heart rate and see how close it matches. Of course, it will come down a bit while you take it. It also depends how accurately you need it. For actually using heart rate to guide interval training it needs to be accurate and give rapid updates. For general tracking, you may not need such accuracy. |
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andym |
I have found that my Apple Watch is pretty good at rest when compared to the pulse measurement done when I have doctors appointments. But that is just sitting. |
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3Ball |
decent accuracy of wrist monitors |
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andym |
quote 3Ball: "Another study: Unfortunately the news article doesn't state what sort of exercise levels were involved. |
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andym |
The subjects sat, walked, ran, and cycled but all in a lab setting on a treadmill or exercycle. Those are activities that are reported in other studies to be among the better ones for those devices. They also seem to have spent little time at high exertion levels and the report says that the accuracy declined at the higher levels. So, I think the results are reasonable. The devices are ok at moderate levels of exercise but the accuracy declines at higher levels. You can also see the faster decline of the heartrate monitored by EKG in the graphs. That is important to me but the faster update may not be important to everyone. Whether they are good enough just depends on what you are doing and how accurate you want things to be. For me, I'm still wearing a chest strap during intense exercise. |
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ObiWenonahKenobi |
Thought I would check with the collective wisdom here. Is there a particular make/model that is more suited to paddle sports. Obviously some measure of waterproofness would be desired. I would also want heart rate info. |
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3Ball |
They just have not been reliable. The GPS works for somethings but does not work for others. I do a lot of nordic skiing and the reports just are not accurate. They are accurate for biking or for hiking. I contacted customer service and they agreed and replaced it, but the second one doesn't work in the same way that the first one doesn't work. The Surge also is not as water resistant as the other models. The surge is much larger, which is a pain sometimes. I do like the software. I really like the heart rate monitor (which is also available on non-gps units). l learned a lot about being active etc through looking at workouts. I also like the records so that I can look back at last year at this time. I have not found the "notifications" of texts or calls to be that useful. I know that others use it a lot though, so maybe its just me. I was going to change to Garmin, but got some reports that they too had some problems, so I have kept using the Surge. I do like most aspects of it but don't like the large size or that it doesn't work as accurately as described. |
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TominMpls |
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homers |
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boonie |
It's good when I'm sitting in the chair at cardiac rehab or walking moderately on the treadmill holding on. It's not so god out hill walking or trail walking with my arms swinging and my heart pumping. In the past when I ran with a HRM with chest strap, I never had those problems. |
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ObiWenonahKenobi |
Gave me total strokes, average strokes per minute, distance, calories burned. And synced my gps route to my farming connect iPhone app. Looks to be exactly what I was looking for. I double checked the measurements with my Garmin Inreach Explorer+ and they seemed pretty accurate. |
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stinger2x |
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