DC Rainmaker

The Band isn't "useless", but it's more of an activity/lifestyle level fitness tracker. I don't know why anything would have convinced you otherwise.

Of the continuous HR tracking general-purpose devices, Band v1 was better than the competition at the time [1], but things have progressed significantly in the past year (everyone's building their own PPG stacks w/ multi-wavelength LEDs now).

If you need ANT+ and more advanced tracking of course you'll need a more specialized device. You won't get powermeter support on a Garmin watch until you get into their triathalon range, like the $450 Forerunner 920XT. The tradeoff there is that there's no optical HR/continuous HR support. For Garmin, optical HR is only on the newest FR235, which doesn't have powermeter support either - that doesn't make it "a fun gadget for a teenager" - power meters are specialized, expensive (is there any <$800?) devices for a single activity. If you know that you need support for it, you should know what you need to look for, but don't expect the majority of people to care about it, especially since it's obviously not the Band's target market.

I will say the thing that's a real shame is that there's no of the "pro" fitness device manufacturers (Polar, Garmin, Suunto, TomTom) that has 1) built anywhere near a decent API/platform for consolidating fitness data (something that MS, Fitbit, Jawbone, etc have done a much better job at) or 2) at the very least, allow multiple of their own devices to work…

I think sports chest straps get overlooked even talking about this space.

DCraimaker is a very active and does deep statistical analysis and recording for comparing many types of chest straps and wrist straps. Worth checking out. [3]

The polar H10 has been compared to medical grade heart rate monitors and has is as good if not better. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004219/ shows an evaluation for EKG. Polar also has sdk to develop apps.

It's the "gold standard" but there have been more and more advances in the space. But the polar h10 has stood the test of time.

If you're into fitness, and happen to have a polar H10 you can get tons of data from just wearing the strap overnight. Via this recommended android app. It supports mqtt as well. You can see live or you can record to file. There's no cloud involved and you can export directly from app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.j_ware.polarsensorlogger [1]

My tried and true app I have been using for workouts that's also gives me a Pulseometer RR. It doesn't do EKG but I have recording of over 18 hours no problem. Its a little out of date, in terms of not getting updates. But it is solid. It also does hrv and again local exports to csv.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beetlesoft.pulsometer [2]

Chest strap = EKG, wrist! = ekg as it's optical

*excluding the apple watch, however chest/electrodes will always be accurate than wrist/optical sensory not to mention battery life.

[1]…

I was really tempted by Whoop but then I saw this: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/05/whoop-3-platform-review.html

There are also some good points raised in the comments. In particular, I like this comment:

> I’m probably biased because I’ve used Polar for 20 years and Whoop for over 4 years now. I like where Polar has got to on their new Vantage products in terms of activity load, sleep, recovery etc. I started using Whoop because I was frustrated with how far behind the curve that Polar were on the V800 and I liked what Whoop were trying to do.

> Fast forward 4 years and Polar results correlate the closest with how I feel and perform and also with other recovery measurements I use e.g. HRV4Training and Elite HRV. I find Whoop the least reliable in terms of accuracy of data and also correlation with how I actually feel. I like the way Whoop presents data but I have little faith in it due to the accuracy of the sensor etc. YMMV.

That said, I like wearing a mechanical watch, and I'm not a huge fan of wearing a smartwatch, so I'd much rather wear something like the Whoop than a Polar Vantage watch or an Apple Watch. So if someone here wants to defend the Whoop and convince me the data is decent enough, I'd love that :)

I'd also take the results of that study with a pinch of salt - even if it is "the best" among the very small number of watches tested, most athlete focused reviews of the Apple Watch's HR performance show it being noticeably worse than a dedicated Bluetooth or ANT+ chest strap monitor, like the kind many cyclists and runners use. Speaking from my own experiences, the collection of ANT+ HR straps I've amassed over the years all work better than my Apple Watch's optical system does - way less odd outlier values etc. This seems to be true of most wrist worn optical heart rate measurement systems. If you are really keen to use heart rate as a training tool, the Apple Watch arguably shouldn't be your first choice.

"What’s notable to start with is that it took almost 2 minutes after pressing the start button for the Apple Watch to decide on a heart rate. At which point that heart rate was incorrect by 40 beats. It wasn’t until 7 minutes into the run that it agreed with everyone else."

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/02/apple-watch-series2-nike-edition-review.html#optical-hr-gps-accuracy

Yes, Strava's main mistake IMO was not differentiating enough between free and premium versions. I am a long time subscriber because I like the social aspects of Strava but I almost never use the premium features. The basic free plan does almost all of what I need.

The most annoying part of Strava's changes this year was removing access to segment leaderboards from their API (https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/05/strava-cuts-off-leaderboard-for-free-users-reduces-3rd-party-apps-for-all-and-more.html). This broke a bunch of 3rd party apps, including some that seem completely innocuous. For instance, I used an app that displayed a list of segments for mountain passes in the Alps and the number of times each had been crossed so far this year. The goal of this was to help people figure out when it was possible to cross a pass (which might be well before the road is officially open), but now that's broken.

Yes, there are so much incredible bike-software out there. TrainerRoad is fantastic (and check out their podcast!), Zwift is fun (races, group rides), also Sufferfest, Rouvy and others. However, since the resistance of the bike isn't readable or controllable by other software, the Peloton is just for all other usage than the Peloton app just a dumb spinning bike. Instead I'm using a Kickr Core and my normal bike, no lock in there, and much cheaper.

Someone has also now made a physical device to adjust the resistance, so it can be used with other software [0]. I think Peloton really should use ANT+ and open up, would make the bikes usable for many more people. Of course, maybe it's the subscription Peloton wants to make money on, not the bikes?

[0]: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/12/shift-smart-trainer-first-project-to-make-a-peloton-bike-zwift-accessory.html