Customer Reviews

Heart Rate Chest Belt with Radio

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I bought this after buying my wife the Oregon Scientific wrist vibrating heart rate monitor. She is happy with hers so I figured this would be pretty cool for me. I had a heart rate monitor many years ago but it was inaccurate and hard to read. Oregon scientific has some radical ideas that make sense. The vibrating one that my wife got is cool because you don't have to stop what you are doing to look at it. And that was my thinking with this talking version. I really wanted an MP3 player with a talking heart rate monitor, but I was too cheap to drop the $300 on a Swirl or the Yamaha one that isn't out yet. Anyway, this thing takes a while to program and since its all voice prompts it is a little tedious. I think the heart rate monitor portion of mine was off a little bit because it said my heart rate was sitting about 175 during my long run and I run a lot. There's no way I could actually keep my heart rate up there for over an hour but that's what it said I did. Once I got the verbal alarm set to where it would allow me to run without continuously griping at me to slow down, it worked pretty well, for about 3 weeks anyway. Then around week three I was doing my normal run, about 8 miles, and about 5 miles into it the thing started blasting this horrendous screeching into my ears. No big deal, I thought, the batteries must be dead. Fortunately the radio still worked after I unplugged it from the chest belt. Well I changed the batteries and it would not come back on. So I sent the thing back to the seller and they sent me a replacement. Fortunately the thing died within the retailers 30 day window, otherwise I would have had to send it back to Oregon Scientific for a replacement. I haven't had a chance to run with the second one yet so I don't know if I'll have problems. But again for $44 with free shipping the thing is pretty cool. My main complaint about it (other than the fact that the first one had a very short life span) is that it doesn't use rechargeable batteries. Its not just the cost of the watch batteries that both the chest belt and the radio use, but also the damage to the environment. I'm really surprised that they haven't found some way to use a rechargeables. The headset it really good and I hardly notice it is there. Fortunately it uses a pleasant female voice for the alerts and not some computer generated Stephen Hawking voice. Again, I wish it had mp3 instead of radio. The radio is a separate piece and I'm really surprised that they haven't teamed up with someone to offer an mp3 version. If my next one dies I'll probably bite the bullet and get a Swirl. That's what I really wanted but come on, $300 and then a monthly fee? The thing should run FOR ME for that price. Hope this helps.

I love my Polar HRM, but in the night time, I can't see the reading because of the lack of light, and also I don't run with my reading glasses on. So the talking HRM seemed like a great idea. And it is!! Found a good price, and purchased it. It was not intuitive on set up, but I got over that, figuring that if I use it enough, I would get used to the technology. I tried using it and it kept on giving me readings that were WAY off. Example: I'd be slow jogging and it would consistently tell me to slow down because my heart rate was 230!! At my age, I think a heart rate of 230 would mean death! I checked the battery, and it found that it was all corroded inside the battery compartment. I thought that is what might be causing the problem. So I let the Amazon know, and they sent me a new one. (fantastic!! Good service!!) I got the new HRM, and it did the same thing. To me, this item is useless. Sometimes I wear it just as a radio. That is kind of nice. But the heart rate monitor is useless. I get emails from this company all the time now, and I instantly delete them. If my HRM was useless, I figure the rest of what they sell probably is too.

I bought this heart rate monitor for my husband. During the first use, it worked great then started giving low battery signals. We opened the battery case and found it full of sweat and the battery was rusty. After changing the battery, the rust returned after the first use.

My husband contacted the technical department at Oregon Scientific to see if a gasket was missing. Their only advice was to send it back to the dealer for replacement. Future attempts to contact the technical department were ignored.

If there is no gasket to keep the battery case waterproof, we believe that a replacement would do the same. This unit will not give satisfactory performance unless the battery case is waterproof. We don't want a replacement if it is like the first unit.

My husband enjoyed the radio that came with the unit.