Polar H10 Scientific Review: Best for Heart Rate (99.6% Accurate)
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Paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004...
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:14 Study Background and Design
03:00 Choice of Sports
03:36 How to Check Heart Rate Accuracy
05:22 Results: Heart Rate Test
07:13 Results: Interpretation
08:10 Conclusions
08:45 What about other ECG Chest Straps?
Intro: In this video we will discuss the accuracy of the Polar H10 for measuring your heart rate during sports, and see if you can rely on its results to get good heart rate readings. We will also compare it to a multi-lead ambulatory ECG device commonly used in research and the clinic. All of this is based on this study right here from 2019, where researchers wanted to find out how you can reliably detect each heartbeat during exercise. And before that paper came out, they say there wasn’t really any consensus of what were good ways of measuring each heart beat during moderate to heavy exercise. Now, classically, detecting heart beats is done using electrocardiography or ECG in short, which records the electrical impulses of the heart. One established reference method for portable ECG measurements is called an ECG Holter monitor, which is basically a wearable device that records the heart's electrical signals using several electrodes. One example of how electrodes could be positioned is shown here in the first figure of the paper. However, these Holter monitors are generally still quite bulky devices that take quite a bit of time to apply, as you can see in this image search right here.
Conclusions: It means that you can probably be pretty confident that if you use the Polar H10 to track your heart rate during any type of exercise, that this will be relatively accurate. Second, it means I am personally very happy with my choice of ECG device for all the testing I’ve done, and I now have even more confidence in the results I shared over the last years when it comes to heart rate testing. I’ve previously confirmed myself that two Polar H10’s worn at the same time give almost identical results, but the study presented here is an even better validation of the Polar H10. In the study they conclude that during moderate to intense exercise an advanced ECG chest strap like the Polar H10 is recommended over a Holter monitor. Furthermore, for tracking heart rate and heart rate variability, the Polar H10 is likely also as good as the Holter monitor in settings with little or no movement. However, in the clinical setting where abnormalities in ECG signals need to be detected, a Holter monitor is still recommended, since it has more electrodes and records more details. Still, for tracking heart rate and heart rate variability at home, you are good to go with the Polar H10 ECG chest strap. Then, the final question that remains is: are all chest straps as good as the Polar H10? In the study they conclude that other “advanced chest belts” will likely perform very well too. I am personally not sure we can state that universally, since a lot depends on the algorithms used by the companies as well. So, ideally this would be investigated on a case-by-case basis.
