I bought this watch to replace a hand me down Polar S210. Let me just say that I can set up a vcr, but I could never properly set up the polar. I wanted a hrm that told me my heart rate and yelled at me when I was out of my zone. That's it. I know what my heart rate zone should be, I didn't want to go through the endless options of the Polar to setup a single stupid heart rate range.
This Timex is not complicated. It does not have the advance features of the Polar. I know my way around the plain Timex Ironman and when I got this watch it took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to manually set the heart rate zones and to arm the alarm. There's also a dedicated button to simply turn on the heart rate. The manual's there and it's complicated, but it doesn't need to be read.
The Heart rate is a little goofy every now and then when jogging but that's usually because I'm not sweating enough. The watch is probably half the volume of my old Polar and not nearly as fugly. The watch face is appx 3cm high by 2.5cm wide... just a little larger than a plain Ironman Timex. The watch band's max accommodation is just over a 8 inch circumference. If you're a bigger guy, I'd go for the other model the T5H9xx
There's probably other features of this Timex that I'll never use. 4 out 5 stars because I'm pretty sure the watch amazon sent was a previously returned item. Timex T5H881 Zone Trainer Digital Heart Rate Monitor
This is my second Timex heart rate monitor and I would never buy anything else. I've experimented with Polars and was highly disappointed. This watch fits nicely and I recommend the black color so that dirt doesn't change the color. I wear it all day and then throw on the chest strap when exercising. I love checking how many calories I have burned and its easy to use. I highly recommend this heart rate monitor!!
This watch makes it easy to do zone training - exercising so that your heart is in one particular "zone" (a percentage of your maximum heart rate). For example - if you are exercising in Zone 3 (70-80% of maximum heart rate) you will get 3 points for every minute exercised and the idea is to accumulate a certain number of points per week. The watch tells you how much total time you exercised, and how much time you spent in your target zone. It doesn't tell you how much time you spent in any other zone or for that matter, points accumulated per exercise - two data points that would have made it much easier to follow the zone training suggested in the manual provided with the watch. Given all the data the watch provides, it would have been trivial to provide these data points as well and it's really beyond me why Timex didn't bother. Seriously guys - time to hire product managers with a functional brain. The heart sensor is, as far as I can tell, pretty accurate and the watch is easy to read. The heart monitor strap can be uncomfortable - being a guy I have all of a sudden, newfound sympathy to women who decide to burn their bras.
I weigh 190lbs with a 34 in waist and the chest strap just fits. I have a small frame (albeit somewhat overweight) so I can see how larger men would have a problem with the chest strap. But, it fits me so I went ahead and gave the watch five stars.
The more I use this thing the more I like it. I wear reading glasses or bifocals at 2.0x power. I can still read the time (the instructions were a different story) without my glasses. In the chronometer function the HR range is displayed above your elapsed time. Your current HR is a little black cursor above the HR range. You can see this in the product picture. This is cool because (even without my glasses) I can see if I am starting to get out of range as the cursor approaches either the high or low end of the range (while still being able to see the chronometer). If you would rather just watch your HR you can switch to make that the dominant display with the chronometer in a small font above it.
You can set an alarm tone to sound when you get out of your HR zone, too.
It will calculate your HR recovery over a 1 min or 2 min period. And, when the recovery period ends the watch is smart enough to stop sounding the HR TOO LOW alarm. However, if your HR goes out of range during recovery the alarm tone keeps sounding. The watch also starts the recovery period as soon as you press stop on the chronometer.
There is a review function so that you can see AVG HR, peak HR, min HR, etc. If you enter your weight in the setup then it will estimate calories burned, too. It just keeps the stats on one session.
After you put in your values for low and high HR for your HR range, you also select your fitness "zone" by selecting if you want to loose weight or work on aerobic fitness, etc. The watch then uses a different percent of max HR to calculate your target HR range depending on the zone you have selected. This "zone" is in the setup so if you want to switch your workout goals everyday then it might be a pain to switch that every day... but at least you wouldn't need to enter values for HR or figure the percent of max that you want to use for that day.
Ok, I found an annoyance with this watch. I set the alarm tone to notify me when I am above or below my HR range. When you stop working out the watch doesn't know when to quit. You can stop the Chronometer, reset it... you can even take off the chest strap, and the watch keeps beeping. The only way that I have found to turn off the alarm is to separate the two (like my kids) so that the watch can't receive the RF signal from the chest strap.
I read alot of reviews on heart rate monitors. upon recieving the item I took it out of the box and followed the directions. It was easy and simple. It comes with the chest strap. As the instructions suggest I ran my finger under tap water. With my finger (after it was wet) rubbed it on the monitor and put on the strap. It worked withing 30 seconds and conitinued to monitor my heart rate in real time. Works like a champ. - Heart Monitor Watch - Fitness - Exercise - Heart Rate'
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