1. Sportline Duo 1060 Speed and Distance Heart Rate Monitor
Courtesy of Pricegrabber
This pedometer watch features a pulse monitor, plus comes with a chest strap heart rate monitor. It's a full-featured sports watch and heart rate monitor. I found the pedometer feature to work well for dedicated walking workouts. It estimates distance and calories. It has a 7-workout memory. The watch allows you to set upper and lower heart rate limits and shows you time in zone, above zone and below zone. You get a continuous display of your heart rate and the percentage of maximum. The sports watch features a backlight, chronometer and interval timer. Plus, you can just wear it as a watch with day, date, and alarm.
2. Nike+ FuelBand
Wendy Bumgardner © 2012
3. Silva Tech 4 O Accelerator Watch
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The Silva Tech 4 O comes in several versions, including men's and women's styles -- one of them is pink! They all work the same and only vary in appearance. This watch allows you to set up to six daily on/off times for recording your total daily steps, or you can use it to manually record a specific walking/running workout. The accelerometer estimates speed, distance and calories burned. The sports watch functions include a 50-lap chronograph, countdown timer and daily alarm. Some users found the pedometer turning itself off during inactivity, but you can delay turn-off for as much as 30 minutes of inactivity. Sensitivity can also be set to reduce junk steps. It saves seven days or ten weeks of data.
4. Sportline Pedometer Heart Rate Watch 960
Courtesy of Pricegrabber
The Sportline 960 aims to do it all as a sports watch, pedometer and heart rate monitor. The pedometer function can be automatically set to time specific portions of the day or activated when you start a dedicated walking workout. In this way, you could use it to track all daily steps or use it just for your workouts. It saves seven daily and ten weekly totals in memory. Through a finger pad, you read your heart rate. I have always had poor luck with finger pads, so be sure to check its accuracy with a manual count or a chest-strap heart rate monitor. You can set your desired heart rate zone. The watch has a back light along with every kind of sports function: chronograph, lap timer, countdown timer and five daily alarms.
5. Polar AW200 Activity Watch
Courtesy of Pricegrabber
The price is the biggest drawback to this watch. For almost $200, it should also have a heart rate function and download to your computer -- it doesn't do either. It is designed for counting steps, activity time and estimating your activity zone to show you how hard you are exercising. It isn't designed for total daily steps, but rather to be started and stopped during dedicated exercise times. There are nifty functions, though: An altimeter shows your elevation changes and even displays them as a graph. It has a barometer and temperature reading, so you can know the weather. Unfortunately, it only stores nine files, so if you take three daily walks, you have already exhausted the files in three days. I just can't justify the cost.
