Oregon Scientific/Cateye HRM opinions and other options.

[nerdag]

I've had two HRMs in the last two years - an Oregon Scientific one, and a Cateye MSC-HR20 (which is basically an Oregon one in a Cateye body), and they've both failed on me within the year.

I'm going to send the Cateye one back for a warranty replacement, but I was wondering whether others have had the similarly poor experiences with either manufacturer's HRMs? Reason being, if it;s not just me being unlucky, then I might ask for my money back or an exchange for another manufacturer's HRM.

Problems specifically: I had an Oregon SE Vibralink 212 HRM, which refused to detect the transmitter belt after the first battery change (transmitter), which did not change irrespective of the number of new batteries I tried. Changing the batteries in the head unit did not change the problem.

The Cateye HR20 head unit is telling my that my resting HR is 130bpm, and that my average on my regular 40km stroll is 216-218bpm - hardly accurate. Again, all of these problems started after a battery change in the head unit.

If I'd known the Cateye was an oregon HRM in disguise, I would have stayed away, but alas, I was fooled.

Has anybody had experiences with Timex? Or Suunto? Are there other manufacturers?

I want to stay away from Polar - the premium they charge for the user-servicable transmitter is a total ripoff in IMHO, and I won't buy one on principle.

Many TIA,

n

 

[stilesiii]

Just bought a Sette Stellar F28 from pricepoint for 38 bucks. Have had it two weeks and love all the functions. I don't know how long it will last, but it appears to be very well made.

28 functions, including; AHR, MHR, %MHR, zone alarms, exercise timer, memory for MHR and MinHR, programmable zones, fitness level test, ect., ect.

The exercise timer records your AHR over time you set, this makes finding LT easy.

 

[kakman]

I've had two HRMs in the last two years - an Oregon Scientific one, and a Cateye MSC-HR20 (which is basically an Oregon one in a Cateye body), and they've both failed on me within the year.

FWIW, I bought my wife an Oregon HRM and it's never seemed right. Calorie count for a 1 hour 15 minute workout with a (tough) personal trainer was around 180 calories - I can do that watching TV. I wouldn't buy another Oregon.

I use a Polar F11 which has been great. I understand you don't want a Polar but I pretty much bought it on reputation and it's been fine. On (very) rare occasions I'll get an erroneous max HR value but I'm sure it's simply interference from which most other HRM's would also suffer. Not trying to sell you, just passing on my experience.

Having said that, my computer is a Cateye and it's been fine too - not sure if it's a badge engineered Oregon but it works great.


//k