So today was the day my Kinetic H1 HRM crapped out… thought to try a new battery but the red light remains off and it remains unseen by Zwift
At the time of purchase, about a year ago, it was only$40… I’ve been reasonably happy with it’s performance aside from the occasional (what I call) double reading it would give. 164 BPM before I’ve even started riding is complete nonsense but a quick remove/reinsert the battery and it would read normal
So, I’m not super competitive and the best I can ever see achieving is class C racing (although I’ll be overjoyed if I’m wrong) and not looking for anything top of the line
Just looking for cheap and cheerful, reliable and accurate… and lasts a long time
Any advice on what to look at from those of you with experience?
I will say $100 for something that lasts for 3 years is a better deal that $50 for 1 year
a good chest strap can probably last for a long time, but even so, i personally consider them disposable. the sensor itself should last forever, but the mechanism depends on the integrity of the strap, and straps wear and require maintenance
i like the optical HRMs now, currently i use a polar oh1+. the advantages are:
usb charge - no batteries
strap does not need to be looked after with any particular care, or replaced, as the accuracy of the sensor isn’t affected by sweat or poor contact on dry skin
the cons are that they can be a little slow to respond to short sharp efforts (but they will), and if you don’t have the strap firmly tight then the accuracy will be significantly off, though it’ll usually be pretty obvious if you don’t. if it’s secure, they’re generally about as accurate as a chest strap. the battery life is not particularly long either, maybe a week or two. but it’s a USB charge so whatever in my opinion
I was just venting at the being Canadian tax… I’m used to it but its frustrating
There are 3 scenarios we have to deal with
The company doesn’t ship to Canada… Which makes no sense. Especially when based in the US and will ship to the EU (as in a certain company we all know and love). Those are the planes at 34000 feet I can watch fly over my house
They have a Canadian branch such as Polar, Vibram and Adidas… You’ll normally find a crappy selection at an inflated price while locking you out of the main site
The best case scenario… Just ship the thing to Canada… I pay the shipping, tax and duty if need be and I get it
Done venting… Thanks for reading
Set myself for the 'first world problems" memes haven’t I?
Lucked out and found a NIB Wahoo trackr locally for $50 CAD… Bought it and brought it home, updated the firmware and tested… Works perfectly!
I have no idea how old the battery is so I put a fresh one in… This ‘fresh’ battery comes out of my ‘dead’ kinetic HRM
Wait a second… Now the Wahoo doesn’t work? What the hell?
Turns out that ‘fresh’ battery that came out of the package and into my dead kinetic was dead out of the box leading me to believe the kinetic was dead… I’ve never had dead battery out of the package before
I have run into bad batteries … I think they were all purchased off Amazon. The advice I read said never buy batteries from Amazon…never know how old they are…buy local.
I have had Wahoo, Tickr and now primarily a Polar H10. The polar is fine when battery is fresh but I am guessing if the voltage drops a bit, say after 50 hours or so, it does not want to connect. A royal PITA. Garmins start going flaky after a year. The Tickr just … sucks. Next one I purchase will be a Coospo or similar.
I might actually go this route. I had a Tickr, worked great for months, then it was just really inconsistent, I tried cleaning the strap daily, I tried new batteries, resetting it, more water on the sensors/contact points, everything just didn’t work. Got a new one from Wahoo (they were great about it), it also worked great for a while, but then the exact same thing happened. Now, it might be that the batteries I bought aren’t great, so replacing them wasn’t good enough, but they work for everything else I use them for, so why would these be so sensitive. That said, I’ve never had trouble pairing them, they just seem to get stuck on a low 120bpm-ish reading randomly in my rides.
If the oh1+ is reasonable it would reduce the battery variability issue (since it’s charged via USB), and I would not need to keep futzing with various ways to keep cleaning the strap, or the strap slowly wearing out. It ‘should’ just work as long as it’s tight. Seems like it might be worth trying.
i didn’t like the idea at first but i was getting so much crap from tickrs (went through two of them, and multiple straps for each) that i just did not want to think about HRMs anymore and i more or less don’t have to now. i’ve only had one case of what i think was a weird reading and that was because my dumb ass put the sensor into the clip inside out one day
also it helped that at the time, dunno if they still are, they were going for only £10 more than a tickr on polar’s UK website, about the same price as a H9
It costs 80 euros new in Austria, 50 euros used… But that doesn’t help you.