Find YOUR Wearable Device
The answer to this question – Which Fits You? – is that it depends. Heart rate monitors measure and monitor the quality of your activity. Activity trackers measure and monitor the quantity of your activity. The two are quite different. Heart rate monitors are measuring the load or the stress on your body. Activity trackers are when stripped to their basic, an electronic step counter pedometer. Both are most useful if you use them as a management tool not as gauge of activity.
The quality of your activity – whether you are sleeping or you are sprinting – is one if not the most valuable metric that there is.
But the activity monitor or another name is the “electronic activity tracker” has hit a sweet spot with consumers. They are easy. They don’t take a transmitter belt (except for the Mio and a few other strapless pulse monitors). They are simple. They allege but they don’t really measure sleep though the allege to – they just measure how much you move when you are in sleep-mode and then guess that you are restless or in REM sleep. They are used for challenges and ramifications, for social media sharing, for cred in the fitness world
What the two share is that they are wearable technologies – which is hot right now. They both use mobile apps for smartphones. They estimate caloric expenditure but there’s a huge error factor and they are so inaccurate you shouldn’t use this feature. Some integrate data with built-in accelerometers, GPS, skin temperature, and altitude sensors.
Several mobile devices now marry the activity tracker with the heart rate monitor the Polar Loop and from Within Pulse. More data. What does it mean – how does one use it to solve their fitness challenges? And, is there a way to marry the data to truly be meaningful?
There are literally dozens of manufactures of activity trackers: Misfit Shine, LG Lifeband Touch, Fit Bit, Jawbone, Nike Fuel, BodyMedia Fit Link, Basis Band, Adidas miCoach, Droid and iPhone apps for smartphones. And, there are dozens of manufacturers of heart rate monitor – too long to list here.
Here – we love the Blink heart watch. Tells the time. Flashes the color that matches your effort zone, your heart zone, affordable for most, and in 3 steps you have a fitness program. Go to ZONING to learn about the easy 3-Step program and blink your way to health.
Sally Edwards, the Head Heart, Heart Zones USA