I've been trying to do some research on the best type of smart watch for heart rate monitoring that isn't an apple watch.
I have a old xiaomi mi 4 watch and that was so wildly inaccurate.
I wanted to buy the Samsung 5 watch that's now on sale but the fact you have to basically charge it daily is seriously off putting.
I also have a tiny wrist, some models of watches that i've seen at the stores are massive.
I'm seeing a lot of people recommend Garmin?
Would Ozb agree?
apple watch
What do you mean best? Most of the fitness watches can easily check your pulse rate.
Yeah, most can check but it doesn't mean that most of them are accurate. I need it to be accurate for medical reasons.
No one will know what watch will be accurate unless you always double check the result with ECG machine. Or do manual checking if you know how.
I have a Huawei Watch GT3 smartwatch. Got it on promo special on Amazon for $198 (after $100 amazon gift card that came with deal) . I use it to monitor my heart rate 24/7 for both medical and fitness reasons and it has been fantastic. I have compared it to medical grade monitors and its spot on. Battery life is awesome and it lasts average 7-9 days with constant use, fitness tracking, sleep tracking, messages ( whatsapp, text etc). I swim with it often in pool and ocean, never a problem. Its an awesome watch, great looking and very high quality, other than some people having a reticence about Huawei products I am thoroughly happy with it and totally recommend it.
Thank you!
There is an analysis video comparing the accuracy of heart rate sensors across 50 different watches
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEM1m7OdlyY
The conclusion of the video was that the Apple watch was by far the most accurate for Apple users and the Huawei Watch GT Runner the best for the Android users.
This video was published last year so some watches don't appear in the showdown, e.g the Galaxy Watch5.
Something the video doesn't mention either is that all the Huawei watches need an app to be sideloaded to your android device because Huawei is under embargo. There is also little integration with Google's services — no Google Wallet, no Google Fit and no Strava data sharing. The upside is that Huawei's watches do have much longer battery life since their real time OS is pretty simple.
That's really helpful, thank you
I think I saw somewhere that you can get strava etc. free if you make a singapore account (check youtube)
have you done your own research? Google search or YouTube is a good start
If it 'needs' to be accurate then you 'need' a chest monitor. A watch can be all over the place - even the most accurate ones will be inaccurate under certain conditions
The watch that i'll buy will be in addition to my other medical devices that I use.
The simpler UI and dot-matrix screen from the Fitbit/Garmin/Polar/Suunto watches will give you a much different smart watch experience, most garmins will provide 7 days battery with some models providing up to 14 days, which make it ideal for tracking HR during the day as well as during sleep.
A good place to start feature/pricewise would be the Garmin Forerunner 245 or 255 music which has plenty of smart features (phoneless music, wireless pay).
Have a look at the withings range of watches that offer ecg on the watch. Any watch offering ecg has to be tested to more strict standards than optical type heart rate watches. This applies to apple and samsung ecg watches as well.
Bit more of a pain to take an ecg but accurate.
Thank you!
I'm happy with my fitbit sense.
That's interesting about the accuracy of the Apple watch. I thought that optical monitors had not reached the same accuracy as chest strap monitors. So all I need now is an iPhone and an Apple watch and I'm good to go. How much will set me back - $2000? I think I might stick to the chest strap for now.
The best heart rate monitor I ever had was the first heart rate monitor I ever had, a Polar chest strap transmitter with a watch receiver. Beautifully simple. Basically all it showed was heart rate nice and big so you could easily see it. You set your training zone, upper and lower limit, then every ten minutes you were in that zone it would beep once and another segment of a horizontal bar graph would fill in. That's all it did - wunderbar.
I wonder what’s the reason for “not Apple Watch”? Because it’s the best. You want the second best?
I have a Samsung phone.
Never had issues with my Garmin Tactix (which is basically a Fenix).