Polar H10 Heart Rate Monitor Chest Strap – ANT + Bluetooth, Waterproof HR Sensor for Men and Women

This thing works as a great replacement to my Garmin HRM dual
Bought this to replace a crappy Garmin chest strap. So far this thing beats it every single way possible. I’ll give a little bit of a comparison below as to how it stacks up to the Garmin HRM dual.The strap.I’m a big boy at 275 pounds so I bought the larger strap to go with the unit. The garmin strap was trash. Too thin and soft and so it just rolled up with movement. The Polar strap is a little firmer though so it can better stay flat without rolling up. This is huge when it comes to comfort as when the strap rolls up it will dig into your skin a little more. The Polar strap I could probably wear all day long without issue.The unit itself – Big win for Polar.The Garmin unit at first wouldn’t detect my heart rate. Tried all the tricks from submerging it in water, licking the pads, getting all sweaty and then trying it. Nothing. Only way I was able to get it to work was buying conductive gel and using that on the pads. Next problem was once I started working out I had about 20-30 minutes before it quit working. What sucks is you wouldn’t know it though as it doesn’t display 0. Instead, it just keeps displaying the same heart rate that it was able to detect. This kind of sucks though as your heart rate could be very different, but you would never know.what makes it even worse is once the unit quits working, that’s it for the next couple hours. It WILL NOT WORK no matter what you do. Dry the strap out, clean the strap and pads, apply more gel, apply less gel, dunk the strap, dry it out again. NOTHING!Had this happen during Full Frontal 4DP test by The Sufferfest by Wahoo. Figured it was just a fluke and I’ll try again. Once again half way through the test it just quits and will not work for the next couple hours. That’s a pretty crappy deal to get half way through that test and then just have the heart rate quit working invalidating the whole test.Figured ok maybe it’s just too much. maybe I’m sweating too much, maybe my heart rate is going wonky. Who knows. Lets just do a normal training run instead that’s hopefully not quite as intensive. Again 20-30 minutes in it would just quit. This happened EVERY SINGLE TIME for any type of ride I did. This is kind of worthless. You get through any warm up, and just starting on the actual workout at which point the unit bricks itself and won’t work for the next couple hours.The Polar unit on the other hand worked right from the start. I have never used the conductive gel with unit. Hell I don’t even have to wet the strap down or anything. I just put it on and start riding.Don’t think I have had it actually drop out during an exercise. I have tested it though to see what would happen if it does quit detecting my heart rate by lifting up one side of the pads of my chest. This is another huge win in that if it does quit detecting your heart rate this will show 0. Very much unlike the garmin still displaying the last heart rate detected which is incorrect. Even if that heart rate was from 10 minutes ago.The polar unit also has the ability to be used through third party apps to detect your heart rate variability and such. You can even download apps so you can actually see the electrical signal from your heart if you really wanted to though I have no way to confirm how accurate that is. It’s just the fact that Polar opens this up for use like that unlike the garmin is a huge win.Overall I wouldn’t bother with the Garmin unit. If you are unsure which to buy, just guy the polar H10. Much better unit over all in every way.

Worst customer service
The chest strap is only warrantied for six months and fell apart after about eight. (I was unsnapping the pod to wash the strap, as the instructed by the manual, and the backing of the snap pulled out.) Polar customer service consists of a form that generates an auto-reply email that they are too overwhelmed to answer your message. After weeks, I finally received an email saying that the strap was out of warranty and that I could buy a new strap at a discount. I held my nose and did this. (Remember the sunk cost fallacy you learned about in Econ 101? Apparently I skipped class that day.) The new strap finally arrived but doesn’t work — I can’t pair the pod with any devices using this strap. I submitted a new customer service form, received the same auto-reply, sent follow ups, finally received a reply only after posting a query on the Polar sub-Reddit asking if anyone knew of a customer service phone number or some way to reach a human. Even a human in Bangalore. I can return the strap for repair or refund but not the pod (which does not function w/o the strap). Then I received a random email from UPS with a link to get a shipping label. It looks like a phishing scheme, and I almost deleted it but went to the UPS web site to see if the tracking number was legit. Write back to customer service to request instructions for returning and finally receive a link to register the return. (At present, am waiting *again* for how to find the required serial number for the strap, since it appears nowhere on the strap, and the website only gives instructions to find the serial number for the pod. A query to “customer service” yielded only a screen shot of how to find the serial number on the pod.) Meanwhile, it has been several months that this HRM has been unusable.Now that I have that off my chest, a few notes about functionality. The only other HRM I’ve ever used is Garmin’s, and I wanted to switch because (until Garmin came out w this pretty pricey rechargeable HRM), the design for the battery case involved these microscopic screws that are pretty easy to strip out. The Polar H10 works about as well as the Garmin in terms of providing accurate (or at least credible) heart rates during various kinds of workouts. Sometimes I would get something really wacko, but it mostly worked. More often than I would have expected (maybe once every couple of weeks), I would have to reset the pod. It’s not complicated — involves removing the battery and holding down the contacts for 30 seconds or so — but kind of a hassle when you want to get on with your workout. And the battery cover comes off with a coin or a flat-head screwdriver rather than the neurosurgery required for the Garmin battery cover.I’d probably give this four stars if it weren’t for the customer service issues. But now I just have a non-functioning HRM sitting in the drawer while I wait around for another email from the bot.

Good quality product, comfortable fit, usually connects to devices quickly and works reliably.

mega! Idealnie pasuje do zegarka Suunto. Bardzo precyzyjne wskazania, łatwość połączenia. Nawet łączy się z bieżnią mechaniczną na siłowni 🙂

I use this with Welltory and EliteHRV. Very useful to track recovery and morning readiness. I thought the strap would be uncomfortable but can’t really feel it. One issue is certain yoga poses will be uncomfortable with the device strapped across the chest.