My apartment building decided to renovate our small gym a few months ago, and installed all new fitness equipment. They are all by Bodyguard Fitness, and have a set of handles that you can hold onto while exercising and the machine somehow detects your heart rate through contact with your palms.

So I'm wondering how accurate these HRM are... Anyone have any experience with machines that offer this? Sometimes it lists me at 140+ when it feels like my hr should be a lot lower. And for some reason I'm dubious about a pulse rate detected through my palms, LOL. But if it's an accurate read, it'd save me the cost of buying an actual HRM.

The exercise physiologist at the gym I was going to told me to buy the monitor. I have an irregular heartbeat that I have to moniter while exercising, and he said that those machines give a baseline (depending on the quality of the machine and how a person is holding it, how hard what angle etc..) that can be off anywhere from 10-50 bpm.

It seems as though they are pretty accurate. The trouble is that when your hands get sweaty, the readings get all messed up--I can't get a real reading at all once I get into my target zone and become irremediably sweaty.

But I love my HRM!!

My elliptical has a chest strap so it is pretty accurate. I have heard that the palm readings are notoriously innacurate. If you want to know your exact pulse, I would recommend a heart rate monitor or you could do it the old fashioned way

Please take note that the contact heart rate handles are there to monitor you heart rate at any given time. If you are walking at 3.0 MPH and holding on to the grip, you generate muscle movement which results in creating extra pulses that the system must filter out. That will create innacurate readings.

The next time you're on that unit, try standing on the foot rails and grab on the contact heart rate bar. I'm pretty sure that the reading will be accurate. It takes between 5 - 8 seconds before it puts out a reading.

Actually, during these 5 - 8 seconds, it records pulses and filters out the highest peaks (your HR) and display it on the screen.

BGtech