Polar H7 Heart Rate Monitor Review
Best Bluetooth Heart Rate Sensor for Your Phone

Get Heart Smart Without Dongles or Annoying Wires

I feel like going to the gym requires a whole lot more equipment then it used to. There was a time when you went to the gym and worked out. Your options were to listen to the music they had on at the gym or bring a cumbersome Walkman with a tape with you. Actually, there was a time when the Walkman wasn’t even an option.

Now, to leave the house for the gym, I have to bring my phone so I can listen to music and earphones for my phone or so I can plug in to watch the televisions in front of the machine. I have to download all kinds of music to my phone to make sure that I have ample entertainment, and the gym has to be in a place with signal so I can get more if I need it.

Now, with the new wave of data that we can keep in our pockets, fitness trackers have added a whole different element to amount of stuff I have to take with me.

Gotta Listen To Your Heart

The more I looked in to all the gadgets that we seem to need, the one item that kept coming up as valuable was a heart rate monitor. While it’s not great to track steps or distance, if you’re working out hard or you have a medical condition, your heart rate is really good to know. It’s especially important if you’re trying to lose weight. It’s not possible to get an accurate read of calories burned if you aren’t tracking your heart rate.

Polar H7
See it at Amazon

As I continued my research, however, it became readily apparent that the heart rate monitor is lacking on most of the devices that offer them. They really need to be chest mounted to get an accurate reading, so the ones that sit on the wrist, for the most part, aren’t too helpful.

Just For Heart Rate But Also With Fanciness

The Polar H7 Bluetooth Smart Heart Rate Sensor is just that. It’s a heart rate sensor. It attaches to your chest with a strap that goes beneath the area that could house, uh, soft tissue for women, and it stays there.

So why does this matter? Because the Polar H7 actually keeps track of everything you need it to without a separate monitor or watch that hooks to your wrist and then syncs to the phone. Nope. This one device does all of that for you and lets you check the info in real time. Using Bluetooth, Polar H7 sends information to your phone as you’re getting your workout on. It even sends notifications when you’ve burned as many calories as you want for the day.

Heart Information Gets To All Your Devices. No Wires Needed.

And using all of the Bluetooth fanciness means that Polar H7 can sync seamlessly with a whole bunch of different apps that will track your heart rate and your exercise. More than that, it can even sync with machines at the gym so the read outs on those screens are correct too. You don’t have to plug anything in to it to get it to talk to other devices. It just does it. Even though this kind of gives me an image of Terminator robots taking over the world, I’m totally cool with it.

One of the best parts, I think, is that if you’re using Bluetooth, you don’t have to be THAT close to the phone for it to send the information over. If you’re playing sports or doing an activity that could damage the phone, you can leave it in a bag within a reasonable radius and check it later. No need to risk dropping your expensive phone so you can track your heart rate.

Heart Rate Without Charging

The battery in the heart rate monitor is user replaceable which means NO PLUGGING IN. Happiness! However, you want to make sure that you’re turning off Bluetooth and taking apart the transmitter when you’re done using it so you don’t kill the battery too quickly.

Android Users Must Be Patient

The only real downside that I could find to the Polar H7 is that it doesn’t work as well with Android phones as it does with iPhones. The syncing between iPhone apps is basically seamless, and Polar has a app specifically for the device. It’s not quite so easy with the Android phone, and it can be harder to find apps that work with it.

That being said, if this is the biggest problem I can find with a device, that’s a pretty big deal. Usually there is a huge contingency of people who happen to hate a device despite the die hard fans. In this case, aside from an occasional bad unit, it looks like people are pretty happy.

Get Hooked Up And Listening

So, the next step is getting one of these babies and seeing how much I enjoy taking the fitness dongle out of my life. Yeah, I have to use the transmitter and physically attach it to my body, but I don’t have to carry about a bunch of devices that only kind of work to get all of the functionality I want. If heart rate is what I’m after, it’s all right here.

If you’re ready to get pumping with Polar H7 Bluetooth Smart Heart Rate Sensor, jump on over to Amazon and it’ll be at your door in no time. Happy heart beats!