Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

When Budget Gadgets asked me if I was willing to review their Calorie Heart Pulse Watch, I didn’t have high expectations. I have loved my Nike Imara Heart Rate Monitor for over three years now and I doubted that anything could be good enough to take its place.

I was impressed with how good it looked. It’s hard to make a digital watch attractive, but the Calorie Heart Pulse Watch meets the bare minimum. It shows the date and time on the face of the watch, so that’s a plus.

The pulse is taken with a sensor on the right of the watch. You don’t need to wear a strap around your chest to get a reading.

This is good because you don’t have to worry about two pieces of equipment, but it is bad because your heart rate isn’t constantly monitored. You can only check your heart rate when you go to that mode.

Modes

The Mode button toggles between the Time/Date, Alarm, Chronograph, Exercise, and Pulse modes. The Up button in the Time/Date mode toggles between standard time and 24-hour time.

Setting Time/Date

In the Time/Date mode, hold down the Set button for two seconds. The year will flash on the screen. Use the Up button to change the year. When you get to the correct year, push the Set button once to get to the next item. Do the same for Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Birth Year, Birth Month, Birth Day, Sex, and Weight. In the weight section, the Reset button will toggle between Pounds and Kilos.

Unfortunately, there is only one direction when setting this watch, so if you miss your weight, you’ll have to scroll all the way up to 500 pounds before it wraps around to the beginning again. I’m glad they are accommodating for all sizes of humans, but I wish they had programmed a Down button in addition to an Up button.

Alarm

Set the Alarm just like you set the time and date. In Alarm mode, the Up button turns the alarm on and off. The reset button turns the hourly chime on and off.

Chronograph

Chronograph mode is a standard stopwatch. Press the Up button to start and stop it. Press the Reset button to bring it back to zero. If you change modes while the Chronograph is running, the timer will stop. You have to keep the watch in Chronograph mode the entire time you’re using the stopwatch feature. There is no lap feature on the Chronograph.

Exercise

Exercise mode is the mode you want to use if you want to know how many calories you burned during your workout. It works like a normal chronograph. To start it, press the Up button. To stop it, press the Up button again.

If you change modes while the Exercise clock is running, it will continue to keep timing your activity. It doesn’t stop itself like the Chronograph mode does. This allows you to go to the Pulse mode and check your heart rate in the middle of your workout.

The calorie calculation is an estimate of your caloric burn based on a single snapshot of your workout. It is NOT a running total like the Nike Imara keeps. To find out how many calories you’ve burned in your workout, you must press the Up button to stop the watch. Then you press the Set button once. You will see a heart on the screen. Press and hold the Set button for two seconds and it will ask to take your Pulse. Based on your heart rate, it will calculate the number of calories burned.

When I took a calorie reading right after a spurt of running, it gave me a HUGE number of calories burned that didn’t match my treadmill or my Nike Imara readings. When I took my heart rate after my cooldown, however, it was VERY close to the treadmill readings.

You can also estimate how hard you worked and use the watch to calculate your calories based on that. For instance, if you were unable to get the pulse meter to read, but you KNOW you ran as hard as you could run, then you can use the watch to estimate based on perceived effort. To do that, press the Up button to stop the watch. Then press the Set button. You’ll see a heart, when you press it again, it will show one intensity level, press again and it will show two intensity levels. You can choose your intensity from one to five. Once you’ve chosen your perceived level, then hold the Set button for two seconds and it will calculate your calories burned.

Pulse

The Pulse mode is a convenient way to take your pulse during your workout. Hold down the Set button for two seconds until it says, “Touch Sensor.” Then place your finger on the sensor on the right of the watch.

A LIGHT touch is all that is needed. If you press too hard, the watch won’t be able to get a reading. I was able to check my pulse while I was walking and during a light run, but it’s impossible to get a reading during a hard run. I would have to stop running and grab a pulse reading right after my sprints to get an accurate heart rate. I checked it against the readings on my Nike Imara and it was spot on 90% of the time.

The readings that you take in Pulse mode do not affect the calorie calculations in Exercise mode. You must stop the Exercise stopwatch and take a pulse reading within Exercise mode to get a calorie calculation.

Is It Worth It?

I’ll be honest. Learning to use this watch was HARD. The directions given with the watch were cryptic and written by a non-English speaker. I’m pretty good with watches, so I was able to figure out almost everything, but I would have never learned how to calculate calories without the sales staff from Budget Gadgets. Fortunately for you, I’ve done all the hard work for you, so all you need to do is read this review to learn how to use the watch.

Is it as good as my Nike Imara? No, it’s not, but it only costs $10.56 with free shipping. Compared to the 120 bucks I spent on the Nike, it’s a freakin’ bargain. It does 90% of what the Nike Imara does at 10% of the price. If you are looking for an inexpensive watch to time your workouts and tell you how many calories you burned, I haven’t seen a better watch.

Budget Gadgets gave me the watch for free to test out, but if I had to choose all over again, I would go for this watch instead of the Nike Imara. With the hundred bucks, I would have saved, I could buy a lot of different toys.

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Update: 04-06-09: The folks over at Budget Gadgets have given me a discount code for the readers of Starling Fitness. If you make an order, use the coupon code LM5OFF2 and get a 5% discount on your order! Isn’t that awesome!