Nike Heart Rate Monitor Watch

You can't go wrong with Nike Heart Rate Monitors...

These days we tend to think that more is better, and whatever we buy we use this approach. Whether it be something as small as a cell phone or as large as a car, we often make purchases that come with many additional features that we don't really need. This includes choosing and buying a heart rate monitor (HRM). Inevitably we end up not making use of those expensive extras. Why complicate your life and spend extra money getting a complex and difficult-to-use heart monitor whose features you probably won't need?

For those of you who genuinely do not wish to have any bells and whistles, there are some extremely basic heart monitors around. These monitors are so basic that just about the only thing they do is to measure your heart rate (HR). They are the Ekho E-10, the Nike C3, the Sigma Sport PC 3 and the Polar A1. Let's look at their lists of features in a little more detail.

Ekho E-10: This monitor can only measure HR and tell the time.

Nike C3 / Sigma Sport PC 3: These two monitors can measure HR, tell the time and record exercise duration.

Polar A1: This monitor can measure HR, record exercise session duration and calculate the average heart rate of a session. It cannot even tell what time it is, making the Polar A1 probably the only HRM not to do so.

That's all there is to them in terms of features. All of these monitors do not have:

date nor alarm settings,
heart rate zone limits,
backlight,
maximum HR of session,
average HR of session (the Polar A1 being the exception), and
calorie counter.

Even these missing features are generally considered as fairly basic. You see, these monitors have almost nothing extra.

The operations of these units are very simple. Once you have put on the chest strap and the wrist watch, it is a one button operation to start and stop the HR measurement. It really can't be easier.

Out of this group, the Nike C3 and the Polar A1 have very favorable customer reviews. In particular the Nike C3 is, according to its users, accurate, easy to use, comfortable and well-designed.

These very basic HRMs are perfect for people who:

have no wish to read complicated instruction manuals,
prefer not to be distracted by unnecessary extras,
believe that simplicity is beauty, and
simply want to know what the current heart rate is during exercise and nothing else.

There is one more advantage to using a very simple HRM. Having less features means having less opportunities for things to go wrong.