Sounds simple but looking for a very basic HR monitor watch with the built in optical HR monitor (so no chest strap) that will beep at me if I go over a certain HR bpm.

Thought the garim virosmart HR would have done it and be great as I use garmin connect with my edge 800 but looking at the manual it only vibrates and doesn't beep.

Not fussed about the actual watch facilities as I'll only wear it while on the bike.

Any help?

Hi,

You should be able to configure your Edge 800 to give a beep alert with your HR goes over a certain level - go to menu / training / alerts. That means you can use any HR monitor with it that you like.

I've only tried one wrist monitor; the MIO Link. I found that it was highly position sensitive, had to be worn very tightly on the arm and it didn't play well with arm warmers. So I switched back to the old chest strap.

Have a look at the Polar website.
https://www.polar.com/uk-en

I have the mio link as I wanted to get away from a chest strap for MAF method work. It's good as it flashes a different colour for each zone you set, but no noise.

The thing I worry about is drain on my phone battery life with Bluetooth use, so wouldn't use it on more than a day trip.

Have a bottom end polar with chest strap too, flashes, but no noise.

I'd probably not hear a beep alarm on/off road with wind noise etc. anyway...

I also MAF train, have a forerunner 235 but despite the positive dc rainmaker review the optical HR is hopeless for running or turbo training as it constantly locks onto cadence instead (despite it knowing cadence independently). Off road the HR number is just random data. If you must do without a chest strap I suggest one of the Schosche units you can wear on the upper arm.

Andrew

akak wrote:I also MAF train, have a forerunner 235 but despite the positive dc rainmaker review the optical HR is hopeless for running or turbo training as it constantly locks onto cadence instead (despite it knowing cadence independently). Off road the HR number is just random data. If you must do without a chest strap I suggest one of the Schosche units you can wear on the upper arm.

Andrew

are you running the latest firmware? my 235 has got a lot more stable recently with a lot less HR spikes. its running 5.4

I'm looking at the TomTom ones on Sports pursuit that seem to get good reviews?

jam bo wrote:are you running the latest firmware? my 235 has got a lot more stable recently with a lot less HR spikes. its running 5.4

Yes, since it updates itself, but as Garmin make no effort to communicate the changes I didn't know any significant fix had been made so thanks for that!

I still do love the watch in general especially how it works with my phone, but maybe that is more than the OP wants.