Best Heart Rate Monitors for 2020

Steps once governed as a metric for fitness trackers, but heart rate monitoring and less extent GPS tracking has now become an essential feature. Even though original fitness heart rate monitors have been around for over 30 years, they have recently have become affordable, more reliable, and more practicable over the last few years.

All professional sports are now measuring all aspects of the fitness and performance of athletes with these portable heart rate monitors and GPS trackers. Coaches are tracking every aspect of the individual performance, from heart recovery distance covered, acceleration and body temperatures all to optimize the individual performance.

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The original fitness watches measured your steps. This was a great feature and was important. The fitness watch transition to Fitness heart rate monitors due to miniaturization and improved technology, improved battery life and better sensors,

Fitness heart rate monitors have gone to the next level. Notwithstanding these advances, the 10,000 steps is still a goal everyone should have to assess fitness.

Fitness heart rate monitors come in different configurations. There are three main styles, one that goes on your chest, the one on the wrists and the upper arms.

Armbands are sitting somewhere in between. They are optical heart rate monitors, as in fitness trackers, but by placing them on your forearm, or even around your thigh, you will get more reliable readings than on your wrist. They are easier to put on than on a chest, and they are usually as accurate, but you don’t wear them outside of workouts, so you won’t be able to take advantage of your resting heart rate or improved sleep tracking.

Of the three places you can wear on your body, the chest is your best for accuracy. Chest belt monitors are more reliable and recognize changes faster than those you get from trackers on your wrist and bandage. Chest bands are not accurate in many instances

Tracking your heart rate allows you to see how your fitness is progressing. Fitness heart rate monitors now have a range of applications that perform analysis from recovery times to Vo2 calculations. These applications really help track fitness and are a great motivational tool. The applications on these fitness heart rate monitors are improving every day.

These applications provide detailed analysis, to allow an individual to work out and train at the right level to get the maximum benefit. It gives information that will enable you, and your trainer keeps track of the time you spent in each heart rate zone. It also you know your recovery time as well as VO2 levels. One of the key benefits is it provides your resting heart rate. A few of them even record how well you sleep based on your heart rate.

Even though the portable chest fitness heart monitors are available, they tend to be more expensive and require computers or phones to review the information. They are not as practicable as the wrist fitness heart rate monitors. The wrist trackers are more convenient to use.

The wrist fitness heart rate monitors watches are now very stylish and can be worn at all times without being uncomfortable or intrusive. Many now are now a fashion accessory. By continuous wearing of these devices, it allows the device to collect information about your heart rate, number of steps, and heart rate at rest to receive information throughout the day.

This data provides useful data to enable you to see your general condition of the cardiovascular system – plus other information, including more detailed tracking of sleep.

With the advent of the new generation of these devices, being cheaper, smaller, lighter, and more accurate, they have become essential for the average person to use as a tool to help monitor and track fitness.

We have reviewed a number of these devices.

Fitbit Inspire HR

Almost all Fitbit fitness trackers now offer heart rate monitoring, but this is Fitbit Inspire HR, which, in our opinion, uses most Fitbit HR features at an affordable price.

The Inspire HR is noticeably thin and light on the wrist, while the black and white touch screen simplifies the task by using the left and right gestures to reveal your daily statistics. These include the number of steps and the number of calories burned, as well as the resting heart rate, which is a crucial indicator of overall health.

With a choice of over 15 training modes, this is the most fully-equipped Fitbit tracker available today. The Inspire HR is also waterproof for its budget price and can track swimming lengths.

Available Colors: Black, Lilac, White

Battery life: up to 5 days of battery for daily progress without constant charging

Price: $150.57

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Pro’s

Lightweight and stylish design.
Automatically track sleep, plus due to the heart rate feature, get more insights into your light, deep & REM sleep stages
Solid five-day battery life
Useful perks like swim-proofing and guided breathing

Con’s

The screen is pretty small.
Inspire HR do not track floors climbed
Thick bezel.

Apple Watch Series 5

The Series 4 Apple Watch proposed some important heart health features, which are all present and correct on the most advanced version of the watch too – and it has also been updated through the addition of an always-on screen.

As well as tracking your heart rate during the day, the Apple Watch can identify an abnormally high or low heart rate. If you are generally experiencing incomprehensible highs or lows, you can take this information to the doctor to check that it’s not a symptom of an underlying situation. The Watch is also capable of exerting an electrocardiogram measurement, which you can do manually or set the Watch to do regularly. The test looks for signs of atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat), a condition which should also prompt a visit to your GP to get a proper diagnosis.

Your ticker is also tracked during exercise, and once you finish your workout, the Apple Watch will measure how quickly you recover, providing details on how fast your heart rate returns to a normal level. A fast return to your normal rate is a sign that you are in good shape. The Apple Watch also measures your resting heart rate across time, and you can add a graph of your heart rate over the past few hours to the main watch face.

Available Colors: silver, dark grey, gold, black

Battery life: All-day battery life is based on 18 hours with the following use: 90-time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours.

Price:$414

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Pro’s

You can always see the time and watch face with its always-on retina display
It uses an ECG app to monitor your heart rate
Noise app alerts when there is a rise in the level
You can download other apps from app store

Con’s

Expensive. Expensive.
No built-in sleep tracking.
Battery life remains the same.

Polar Ignite

EDITOR’S CHOICE

The Polar Ignite slim design of Ignite means it’s easy to fit snugly against your wrist, which leads to accurate tracking of your heart rate even during intense exercise, but just what Polar does with this data highlights Ignite.

It starts with the workout plans offered on the Polar Flow website and app designed to improve your fitness and speed. Workouts based on synchronizing your heart rate with a device for you to follow.

However, this is the night when Ignite truly takes over. It uses his heart rate monitor to track your heart rate and heart rate variability, which is a useful indicator of your body’s physical stress to determine how well you really recovered during sleep. The next morning you will be given an assessment of how well you slept and how well your autonomic nervous system has recovered, which leads to training recommendations based on your actual willingness to train that day.

Even beyond these features, Ignite is a durable, versatile sports watch that is among the very best for less than $ 250. If you are interested in understanding how you can use your heart rate for training, this is undoubtedly your best bet.

Available Colors: Black, Pink rose, White, Yellow, Black Copper

Battery Life: up to 17 hours of tracked workouts with GPS and heart rate. That should also get you up to 5 days in watch mode with continuous heart rate tracking.

Price: $222

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Pro’s

Covers the bases for a fitness watch. Covers the bases for a fitness watch.
Competitive pricing Great screen Impressive adaptive training feature encompassing many activity types
Generally, good optical HR results.
Good sleep insights

Con’s

GPS accuracy not great, though Polar should improve it
Touchscreen sometimes fantastic (even when wet)…sometimes less so.
Other users report shorter-than-claimed battery life
Lacks the super smarts like music, payments, and an app store but does have the basics like notifications.

Garmin Forerunner 245 GPS Running Smartwatch

In comparison to the almost doubly expensive sister model Forerunner 945, Foreruner 245 very little is missing from a purely training perspective.

This is primarily a runner watch.

Running, biking, swimming in a pool, and a reasonable number of indoor activities are included in the watch. Along with simpler navigation (without a map)

At the same time, you have the entire data range virtually (except altitude) outside the exercise bit, with steps, pulse, sleep, stress, recovery, and more.

The Foreruner 245 watch itself is also very tidy and suitable for smaller wrists without feeling too big.

Available Colors: Black, White, Aqua, Gray, Berry

Battery life: Up to 7 days in smartwatch mode; Upto 6 hours in GPS mode

Price: $349.9

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Pro’s

Neat format, good music player with Spotify, lots of exercise types
Garmin features to show other people where you are and if you’ve had an accident.
A free training program for beginner runners, and also the exercise part really feels complete.
The inclusion of music on a slightly cheaper Garmin watch.

Con’s

Mediocre battery life when playing music
There is no altitude meter or tracking for open water swimming, but it supports swimming in a pool.
It does not have an easy way to switch between sports, such as triathlon quickly.
You also don’t get the most advanced data that the most expensive models can collect

Garmin Forerunner 945 GPS Premium Multi-Sport Watch

The Garmin Forerunner 945 comes in exactly the same shell as its predecessor. The only difference is some detail colors that have changed (unfortunately for the worse). For starters, the clock feels pretty boring, but it certainly grows on you.

So much so, in fact, that we have no problem naming the Garmin Forerunner 945, the best premium choice for its huge range of useful features. Navigation exists, and if you don’t have your phone with you, it’s a really useful feature.

Because it is a multi-sport watch, you have support for all the sports you can imagine. What’s new this time is that Garmin has also added support to measure your pulse directly from the watch when you’re swimming. Other manufacturers have had this, but now Garmin has introduced it in their watches, it seems that the measurement is a little more stable. And of course, we didn’t run into any issues when it comes to GPS accuracy, etc. as we would expect from Garmin.

Unlike the Fenix series, the Garmin Forerunner 945 has a significantly more sporty design, which means it may not fit every lifestyle.

Available Colors: Black

Battery life: Up to 2 weeks in smartwatch mode, 10 hours in GPS mode

Price: $599.9

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But at the same time, it is relatively small and neat to contain as many functions as it does. Of course, the slightly smaller format means you don’t have all the battery life in the world, especially if you have music playing. But without music, you certainly have enough battery power to run one or even two marathons.

In addition to standard features such as mobile notifications, step counting, sleep measurement, etc., the watch also includes better features for measuring stress and how much your sleep and exercise affect your energy levels ( This is what Garmin calls Body Battery.)

It’s not as detailed as what Polar has done with its Ignite watch, but it agrees extremely well with how testers feel and are perfectly sufficient from an everyday perspective.

The Garmin Forerunner 945 may not suit everyone due to its design, and there are watches with better battery life.

Pro’s

Neat, small and sporty design
All the exercise functions you need really good activity tracking good music player measures pulse during swimming too
It is a combination of functions and sizes for the same price. And this makes this watch a worthy winner of the award.

Con’s

The music transfer is a bit slow.
Music playback takes a lot of battery
Navigation is not exactly the most detailed, predictable, or user-friendly on a watch.

Skagen Falster 3

Sometimes you just want a smartwatch to look like … a watch. Simple design, excellent quality strap.

One of the main advantages of the Falster 3 is its three-button layout, which includes a rotating head that helps scroll Wear OS without having to touch the screen – a huge advantage as soon as you start using it.

You will also get a beautiful stainless steel case, well-designed leather, metal or silicone straps of various colours and all the necessary functions such as water resistance, GPS, heart rate monitor, NFC, and more.

The Falster 3 is the 2020 update for the Skagen smartwatch line, which is improved in every way. In essence, you get more RAM for smoother operation, a speaker for making and receiving calls, and significantly improved battery life thanks to the new enhanced Skagen battery modes.

Available Colors: Black, Blue, Silver, Brown, gunmatel

Battery life: charge up to 80% in under an hour

Price: $295

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Pro’s

Attractive, classic design
The fantastic 3 button layout
GPS, NFC, speaker, waterproof and heart rate tracking
Superior display quality
Built-in GPS and NFC

Con’s

Expensive
22 mm strip not compatible with previous Falster watches

TicWatch Pro 4G / LTE

If you prefer big things in large packages, you will appreciate what TicWatch Pro 4G / LTE offers. This gigantic smartwatch features a dual-layer display that helps extend battery life.

You can expect it to last 2 to 5 days in smart mode, depending on usage. You will also love the built-in GPS, activity tracking, heart rate monitoring, and Google Pay. Of course, the most important feature here is the ability to connect LTE.

You never have to worry about leaving your phone with this watch on your wrist. Receive calls, send texts, and use data anywhere with Verizon NumberShare.

Until you mind spending a lot of cents on a smartwatch with LTE, you won’t find too many problems with the TicWatch Pro 4G / LTE. With a thickness of just over 45 mm, it is large enough to feel bulky on small wrists. It also runs on the old Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor so that you can expect some performance lag.

The good news is that you get 1 GB of RAM and 4 GB of internal memory, which should help a bit.

Available Colors: Black

Battery life: Smart Mode will get you 2 days battery life, up to 5 days if Auto Switch to Essential Mode

Price: $299