#Heart monitor watch series#

That was before I activated a Walking workout on both devices. I set out on a walk wearing the Polar H10 chest strap and the Forerunner on my wrist, and I noticed the Forerunner's heart rate jumping from the 140s down to 120s and then to the 90s, where the H10 steadily reported a walking heart rate in the high 90s. I found Garmin devices, including the Forerunner 35 and the Fenix 5, accurately tracked my heart rate during workouts, but were all over the map when resting or walking outside of a workout. The Ionic delivered a more accurate average when I ran, likely due to the longer period (35 minutes versus 10 minutes) that it had to measure my heart rate and come up with an average. The Fitbit Ionic doesn't fit me that well, which contributed to an inaccurate walking workout heart-rate average. The averages evened out, but that's important to pay attention to. I looked down at my wrist mid-run and the Versa showed my heart rate as 111, while the Polar Beat app gave me a reading of 103. However, Fitbit's Versa smartwatch wasn't quite as responsive.

#Heart monitor watch series#

Newer devices, including the Apple Watch Series 4 and Samsung's Galaxy Watch, took just seconds to catch up to the chest strap. I also noted the variation between BPMs on the wrist-worn device compared with the Polar's readings in the Polar Beat app while exercising. I noticed that there was often more variation in heart-rate averages in the shorter walks, because the BPM reported on the wrist-worn trackers often lagged behind the chest strap as I ramped up my walk, and then took longer to come back down as I ended. However, the wrist-worn trackers often lagged behind the chest strap as I ramped up or slowed down my heart rate.

In general, the average heart rate as recorded by the fitness trackers and the Polar chest trap were within a few beats of each other.