Customer Reviews

Sports Instruments PRO 9 Heart Rate Monitor

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Sports Instruments (SI) was a Utah based company with 3-4 employees that was sold to Bell Sports in 2004 (and Bell Sports was later sold to Easton Sports in 2006). SI's activities had slowed, and it is reasonable to believe that Sports Instruments Pro, Fit and ECG Heart Rate Wristwatches were last produced in 2003 or earlier. Products were made in Asia by a reputable factory.

Designer and competitive masters athlete Bill Corliss created products with an intelligently designed user interface that was easy to use. The Pro 7 and Pro 9 Hear Rate Wristwatches provided detailed and valuable data for the serious athlete. The Fit and the earlier ECG Fitness Heart Rate Wristwatches had fewer advanced features. The chest transmitter should work with most fitness equipment designed to work with the Polar standard.

If you buy an SI watch, you should know that the original batteries are at the end of their shelf life. Unless the seller has recently replaced batteries, you will quickly or immediately face the burden and cost of dealing with battery issues.

Replacing the watch batteries is too difficult for most consumers. Even a professional repair person must use care to maker certain that the parts are precisely returned to the original positions to maintain water resistance. Expect to pay $9-20 to have the watch battery replaced, and tell your repair person you want the product to keep its water resistance. The battery on the wireless chest transmitter may be less drained than the watch's and is user replaceable, a nice feature. The chest transmitter's CR2032 3-volt lithium battery should be available for under $4. Total outlay for 2 batteries: $13-24.

The Sports Instruments Pro, Fit and ECG products are closeouts with manufacturing dates of 2003 or earlier. If you are willing to deal with battery replacement issues, make certain that you get a good enough price to justify the added repair burdens ... and that you get good information about how to obtain warranty service from a brand that is no longer produced.

Performance is average, but not terrible. Sometimes with wrist movement you loose signal, sometimes nonsensical maximum reading are recorded that destroy data integrity. The performance is similar to Timex watches of the 2003 era, since SI and Timex watches were built in the same factory and use the same chest sensor. However, I am a great fan of the sensible user interface.

Sports Instruments Pro 9 Heart Rate Monitor
The Sports Instruments Pro 9 is a wireless heart monitor with chest strap. It has many features and functions, and the basic functions are easy to use. Beyond that, you will need to study the manual. In addition to working wirelessly, it will communicate with gym equipment set up for a wireless heart monitor, including the Precor C-842 exercise bike.

The Pro 9 is attractive, and tracks your workout using five individual training zones, based on your lactate threshold or maximum heart rate. Lactate threshold requires medical tests or an educated guess, so I am using maximum heart rate.

The Pro 9 allows you to choose a variety of display modes. My two favorites are heart rate and zone, or the zone and percentage of maximum heart rate. The display is as easy to read as it appears to be in the photograph. And I am over 50, so I can't deal with tiny numbers.

The Pro 9 is a step up from the Pro 7, and stores a record of time spent in all 5 training zones, percentage of time in each zone, workload index for each workout and average/maximum/ending heart rate for each lap and split for the last 5 workouts. (The Pro 7 records only one workout/set of data).

The Pro 9 has dual interval timers which can be linked to the lap chronograph to create on/off intervals. In addition to the heart rate monitor and timer features, it has a clock, so you can ride without your regular watch and still know the time (and date). And if you're out longer than planned, it has a backlight, so it can be read when it's dark outside.

The Pro 9 does NOT do calorie counting or cycling functions, so it does not replace a cyclocomputer. (I like the Cateye Astrale 8). I wouldn't ordinarily wear a digital watch, but for cycling, the Pro 9 is great looking, and a valuable asset to any workout. Knowing your heart rate enables you to maximize the results of your workout.

Finally, the Pro 9 is waterproof, so you can get off the bike and head to the shower while still monitoring your heart recovery rate.

One Negative: The plastic frame is not very sturdy. One of the tabs which hold the strap pin has broken off, rendering mine useless. Hence 3 stars, rather than 5.

My first order arrived DOA (dead battery I think).

Amazon sent out a replacement, which died (again, battery, I think) during my first workout. Amazon then refused to send out a replacement for the replacement---issuing me a refund. I'm not happy about this, because, in the meantime, Amazon's price has tripled.

Based on my reading of the manual, and very limited use, this is a great HRT for us beancounters of our workouts; it keeps track of a lot of information (no PC download, though).

Amazon needs to get a batch with good batteries (which are not user-replaceable, BTW).

I purchased this watch for $21 through amazon from performance bike. Contrary to others, it arrived in fine working order no problems with dead batteries. In fact this watch only searches for a heart rate signal when you tell it to rather than constant searching as other watches do. This means you have to hit a button when you want it to start searching for your hr signal but also means the batteries should last longer.

At the price I paid, the watch simply can't be beaten. I think anywhere up to $50 or so it is a solid buy and just assume you need to replace the batteries.

One particularly nice aspect is that you can define your own hr zones and display hr as a number, % of max hr or % of AT hr that you can enter yourself. The % of at hr is a very nice feature if you are into these things.

There is also a workload calculation that gives a comparison of one workout to the next so you can tell if today's long easy run was more stress for your heart than yesterday's short hard intervals.

Another nice feature is the time in zones readout with several different levels available. This makes it particularly valuable for use with trainingpeaks.com, sport tracks software or other similar workout tracking software.

Initially, I purchased this product from my local bike shop for $120. After getting it home and opening the package, I realized that the watch/monitor was totally dead. I contacted the manufacturer who stated the battery was dead and that it needed to be replaced. The manufacturer wanted me to send them the unit and they would replace the battery for free. But, since I already paid $120 for the unit, I did not want to incur the cost of shipping the unit on top of that.

I returned the unit and found it at Amazon for $75. After reading other reviews about the product, it seems that all of these units were made in 2003 and the batteries are pretty much guaranteed to be dead. I ordered the product from Amazon realizing that I would have to replace the battery. Once I got the unit, the battery was indeed dead. I found the replacement battery at Wal-mart for < $10. I did replace the battery myself (this is not recommended by the manufacturer), but a jeweler or any place that changes general watch batteries can perform the battery change.

Overall, I am very happy with the unit since having the battery replaced. It has quite a few nice features and the Amazon price was far less than the local bike shop price (even including the cost of the battery replacement).

I was delighted with my PRO 9 HRM for several years. The functionality is superb and the controls are very easy to navigate (it did take a few iterations before I understood the instruction booklet).

When the battery died, I took it to the local battery store franchise. The guy easily took off the back and replaced the battery, but he took about ten minutes to get it back together. Most of that time was putting the band back on. He didn't charge me anything except the cost of the battery. Didn't affect the waterproofing at all.

HOWEVER, when the band finally wore out and broke, I called Sports Instruments to obtain a replacement band. After several phone calls to different companies, I ended up leaving a few messages with the guy who supposedly could help. He never returned my calls.

Too bad this good product line was bought by people who don't care about it. Now I have to go through the whole HRM decision process again. ARGHH!

I agree with the person who has the band that wore out. After multiple emails where I was told to call a number each time and each time I called that number I got a voice mail and no return call.

I have had the monitor for a about 2 years. I too had a dead battery at the start and once that was changed the watch has worked well for me. I agree that it is heavy but I am hard on watches and have not had any scratches due to having glass instead of plastic face. My only complaint is the total lack of service.

Having heard rumor that the company has not made this device in some time, I contacted tech. support. They confirmed that was the case , but stated that over the last six months they had been replacing batteries in thousands of units and anything on the market should be ok. Guess what? Mine came with a dead battery. This was replaced at no charge.

I purchased this product since it looked like it had good capabilities for a very attractive price. After reading the manual and trying to set it up for 20 minutes, I gave up in frustration. I'm returning it and looking for a Polar, which has many user recommendations.

it also fails because of the case breaking off the little 'ears' that hold the band on

i;ve broken about 8 of them now

ridiculous

at least [...] takes them back every time

i finally got a pro 9 metal from them

wle.