Not bad for the price
When my last heart rate monitor died in September, I was in a rush to get another. I happened to pass a Big 5 so I stopped in and this was one of two watches they had for under $100. So I picked up the Polar FT4 with the chest strap and went on my merry way.
Now about 7 months in, it's generally pretty good. It's easy to set up with your information to get your heart rate zones. It's also nice to be able to access your previous logs to see your work out ranges and calorie burn. Unfortunately, there's no view to see both your heart rate and your time at once so you have to scroll from one screen to another if you want to check while you're working out.
The last two weeks, there have been three occasions were my watch has beeped horribly saying to check my chest strap because my heart rate could not be detected. In these cases, wetting the chest strap a bit more and repositioning it has helped a little bit but 2 out of those 3 times, I got so fed up with the constant "check strap" alert, that I just took the whole thing off. I haven't tried changing the battery yet in the chest strap which I plan on doing soon. But the other benefit of the Polar set up is that they offer replacement straps. So that's my other back up plan.
As long as this unit makes it a whole year, I'll be happy.
