Polar F4 Heart Rate Monitor – A Favorite Of Women Exercisers
The Polar F4 heart rate monitor is a stylish and comfortable heart rate monitor (HRM) specifically designed for women. In terms of features, it is neither too basic nor too advanced and offers continuous heart rate (HR) monitoring, target heart rate zone, average heart rate of session, and stop watch. It has been one of the best selling heart rate monitors for women for quite some time now. This article explores why.
Based on various customer reviews, the following are the main points that the users are happy about:
Contemporary design: It looks modern and is compact in size. It is usable as an ordinary watch. Furthermore you can choose which color you want when you buy the monitor.
Size and comfort: The size of the wrist band is made to fit a woman’s generally smaller wrist. The chest strap is also comfortable to wear.
Interface with treadmills: Treadmills and elliptical machines often are able to receive information coming from your chest strap and display your heart rate on their panel. This means you don’t need to bring the wrist watch receiver to the gym. You are also not required to hold the handlebars on the equipment.
Easy instructions: It is easy to set up and there are no pages after pages of instructions to read.
Two button operation: That simplifies life further. Some heart rate monitors have 5 or more buttons, which means navigating to a particular display or setting can be quite cumbersome or may even require reading up the instruction booklet. Not so with the Polar F4.
Accurate heart rate measurement: Heart rate measurement is ECG (electrocardiogram) accurate, as the chest strap measures electrical activities coming from the heart.
HR display: You can choose to show your heart rate as beats per minute or as percentage of maximum HR. It is sometimes more convenient to show the HR percentage.
Graphical display: A visual pointer moves between your heart rate limits, graphically showing you what your heart rate currently is. Fitness bullets display the time you have spent training in your heart rate zone.
Accurate calorie counter: The calorie reading from Polar F4 has been compared with that from Apex Body Bug which is extremely accurate. They are found to show similar results. The Polar F4 certainly provides much more reliable estimates than those from most pedometers or gym equipments.
Multisport use: It has been used in many different types of sporting and exercise activities: treadmills, elliptical machines, running, walking, spinning etc.
Reliability: Most customers have very positive user experiences with the F4 and have not encountered any problems despite having used it for months and years.
Two line display: More information can be viewed at a glance when you have 2 lines of display. By repeatedly pressing a single button you can view various information such as calories, HR, target zone limits, exercise duration, fitness bullets and time of day.
Target setting: It is helpful to set some kind of goal for your exercise, such as a calorie goal or a time goal. The wrist watch receiver then shows how your goal progresses as you exercise. It is a great feeling when you have achieved your objectives at the end of your session.
Session summary: You can view statistics like duration, average heart rate and calories burnt. You can also go over some cumulative statistics such as weekly total calories.
Training reminder: If you have not exercised for 3 days, you get an hourly text reminder on your wrist watch.
However, there are some weak points that are mentioned in the customer reviews:
No backlight: It is difficult, if not impossible, to read the display when running in the dark or training in a dimly-lit room.
Time consuming to change settings: It can take quite a long time to change time or adjust weight as the number can be changed only upwards. If you make a mistake and overshoot, you have to keep adjusting until the number reaches the top of the range. The number will then loop around and move up from zero again.
No pause: You can start or stop an exercise session, but you can’t pause and then resume a session. This may affect the calculation of exercise duration, if you take a lot of breaks during a session.
Conclusion
The Polar F4 is a heart rate monitor very well received by women. It has a lot of strengths whereas its weaknesses are few and relatively minor. So if you are looking for a stylish, comfortable, accurate, reliable and easy-to-use heart rate monitor, keep the Polar F4 on your short list. There are many good reasons for its continuing popularity!
By: H. Y. Wong
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
For more information on the Polar F4 heart rate monitor and other Polar heart rate monitor models, visit Heart Rate Monitor Watches.
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Posted under Polar Heart Monitors
This post was written by admin on January 26, 2009
