STRAP-AVERSE OPTION
COROS Heart Rate Monitor
$ budget-friendly within watches & tech
An optical armband you wear on your upper arm, where the sensor gets a far better signal than it does on a bouncing wrist. Not quite chest-strap accurate at maximal efforts, but close, and much easier to forget you are wearing. The middle path for people who find chest straps clammy and joyless.
Best for: better heart rate without the chest strap
See price & details on Amazon.ca →Current price, sizes, flavours and full specs live on the Amazon listing.
Worth knowing about watches & tech
- Buy last year's model. GPS did not get meaningfully better in twelve months, but the price got meaningfully lower.
- If your heart rate data looks insane, the fix is a chest strap, not a more expensive watch.
- Do not chase your VO2max estimate. It is an algorithm's guess, and it dips every time you run in the heat.
- Tighten the watch one notch above your wrist bone before hard workouts; loose optical sensors read cadence as heart rate.
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