29
Good, inexpensive fitness trackers?
(beehaw.org)
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
I would question wether "good" and "inexpensive" are possible at all on a wrist tracker. Measuring your heart rate from the wrist is technically difficult - it's just too far from your heart and requires expensive sensors, a large battery, and even then a massive R&D budget (as in hundreds of millions) to get the software algorithm right.
Get yourself a chest strap - those are technically much easier to implement. You'll need to look at your phone to view your heart rate, but it should be accurate unlike most wrist trackers.
Even thousand dollar wrist fitness trackers (like the high end Apple Watch models) are often paired to a cheap chest tracker and those watches generally will trust your chest tracker over their own measurements - because even with billions spent on the best wrist tracker possible they still can't be as good as a $30 chest strap.
Look for one that supports the "ANT" standard. They will allow you to view your heart rate in real time on a variety of other devices (phone, watch, gym equipment, etc). ANT trackers just use bluetooth, so they won't send anything to the cloud (unless you pair them to a phone app that does that).