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Good, inexpensive fitness trackers? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I’m looking for a watch that can track my heart rate, stay on my tiny wrist, and that doesn’t cost a lot only to break frequently. Fitbit is….no longer meeting that criteria and was honestly out of my budget to begin with, but i am nervous about spending money again on something random that could also break just as quickly.

Any recommendations ? I have heard about pinetime, but I don’t have a computer or many technical skills - I couldn’t tell from the website if that device requires setup or tinkering to work? I basically just want to be able to look at my wrist and see my heart rate and what time it is. Nothing fancy, I don’t even really need it to sync to my phone, a long as it works for a few years and isn’t $90.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would question wether "good" and "inexpensive" are possible at all on a wrist tracker. Measuring your heart rate from the wrist is technically difficult - it's just too far from your heart and requires expensive sensors, a large battery, and even then a massive R&D budget (as in hundreds of millions) to get the software algorithm right.

Get yourself a chest strap - those are technically much easier to implement. You'll need to look at your phone to view your heart rate, but it should be accurate unlike most wrist trackers.

Even thousand dollar wrist fitness trackers (like the high end Apple Watch models) are often paired to a cheap chest tracker and those watches generally will trust your chest tracker over their own measurements - because even with billions spent on the best wrist tracker possible they still can't be as good as a $30 chest strap.

Look for one that supports the "ANT" standard. They will allow you to view your heart rate in real time on a variety of other devices (phone, watch, gym equipment, etc). ANT trackers just use bluetooth, so they won't send anything to the cloud (unless you pair them to a phone app that does that).