Gadgetory

the EKG which is what we're recording with electrodes shows the electrical activity in the heart so that's an electrical sensing technology so these chest straps essentially have an EKG lead right over the chest so it's the same technology so we would generally expect that to work very well where as an optical sensor is not near your heart and it's not sensing the electrical activity within your within your heart it's sensing the flow of blood through your capillaries one pulse per each heartbeat in the beginning when these wristbands came out they were essentially glorified pedometers now we're seeing them incorporate heart rate monitoring I should be able to get a continuous heart rate from this guy so far resting this seems to be pretty accurate but we should see how it does when I get my heart rate up how was your so right now my chest strap is sending signals to the vivofit and it's reading 175 wow that's spot on that's pretty dead-on for this one it comes in a clip and an armband so you would have it on your waist then you would take out the pulse okay so there's the heart now I have to place my finger over this optical sensor here so the pulse o 2 is telling me I'm at 93 beats per minute our EKG is about 50 points above that at 146 so we know that's not only not accurate it's way off our next contender is the bassist carbon steel and this one liked a lot of the wearable heartrate monitors is an on-demand heart rate monitor so you'll have to cue it up to let you know what your heart rate is I'm trying to get the heart rate right now but it's not working and I wonder if it just can't tolerate any movement whatsoever okay we should stop and see if maybe it's because I'm moving around too much so I'm still trying to get my heart rate it's all the way up to 170 and it's still not getting it yeah it's about 130 by the old fashioned pulse rate - and you do have a perfectly strong wrist ball so okay so sure what the problem is doc says 130 carbon steel says 86 that's a no-go for us here we've got the Samsung gear fit and this one has an optical sensor so when I enable the heart rate monitor a light will illuminate my capillaries and then a sensor will see how often the blood is pumping is that right Dawg okay so here we go I'm gonna put it on first get my resting heart rate okay I've got 110 the EKG says well at the time it said 117 right now we're going to simulate what it would be like to exercise and then pause to get your heart rate because this one won't let you measure while you're in action let's see how it performs when my heart rate is really up so it's still unable to measure a couple minutes have passed since I stopped exercising when my heart rate was up at 180 now it's down to about 128 so we'll see if that helps the fit measure my heart rate the gear fit says 104 it finally got my reading but the EKG says 141 so that's way too far off our last contender is the Galaxy s5 and this one has a built-in heart rate monitor right here on the back it's an optical sensor it's kind of a wild card lots of people think it's a gimmick but now we can actually put it to the test and see if maybe it's accurate I launched the app I'll hit start and the light illuminates my finger so it's measuring right now it's asking me to keep still and be quiet so I won't talk anymore 150 EKG says 147 that's that's not bad at all right away all right I'll get my app out start my finger can you see the red light there all right 190 over there 193 excellent so far that's the fastest and the most accurate and it's on the phone now that's really inconvenient if you're exercising the last thing you want to do is carry around a phone this large that's really the point of these wearable devices but if you want a pretty accurate reading that's pretty dead-on