Review on Pyle Sports Fitness Tracker Watch - Heart Rate Monitor Healthy Wristband Pedometer Activity Tracker Steps Counter Stop Watch Alarm Water Resistant Calorie Counter Target Zones - Silver (PHRM38SL) by Angela Simmons

My gym advertised a chest strap that would 'motivate and monitor' our progress and effort. I love the idea of quantifying my efforts to encourage hard work. But I didn't like the idea that I wouldn't have a screen (like in this gym) to keep track of my heart rate and calorie burn. I also didn't want to pay $75 for a chest strap, which I found pretty much useless unless I'm wearing running shoes. So I looked at other chest monitors that can be worn with a watch and used for bikram, waking up at work, playing tennis or whatever. Yes, the directions were a bit awkward, but not insurmountable with patience. The watch is a typical stopwatch/alarm/heart rate monitor/timer. It's big and bulky, but I never intended to wear it outside of training, so I can't deduct points for that. The strap is comfortable, adjustable and mine works great. I use at least four times a week for one hour plus long interval training with a personal fitness guide. My only real issue is that I'm not sure I'm getting accurate calorie burn data and it's really a copper tax for me. My goal is zero gravity, so I have to rate my workout by the number of calories burned. With a trainer and hard work, I got readings of 650-815 kcal/hour. It didn't alert me to any suspicious readings. On the contrary, I was delighted. But today I ran for an hour at a fast pace (3-4 mph for me) on a flat trail. Calories burned does not exceed 600. Considering my age and weight, the device should be pretty accurate in terms of calorie burn during cardio. Maybe I'm overly skeptical, but looking at the charts on the internet, it seems to me that for my weight and length of time, the total calories burned would be closer to 300-350. In short, I care, but I don't. I don't care enough to go back and buy a polar explorer based on a hunch. It might be a bit of a placebo effect, but the device actually motivates me to work harder to keep my heart rate up during workouts, and I love the excitement I get from checking my calories burned during workouts. It offers an incentive and some recent data to encourage me to work a little harder. So far this has been my experience and assessment of what it's worth. Let's see if the satisfaction stays now that I don't trust the results that much. I'm just not sure if I can burn calories better with any other device as I trust this strap to measure my heart rate accurately.