Male and Female Smart watch - Rowing and beyond

[oldskooladdict]

Hey everyone,

We've had our concept2 rowing machine for a few months now and I'm delighted to say both my wife and I are getting daily use out of it.

My wife has requested a 'fitness tracker' for Christmas, so geeky as I am I was doing research early!

Are there popular smart watches used by people on this forum? My research so far has led me to the following conclusions:

* Garmin are probably best to play nice with the rowing machine
* Only certain Garmin watches work with the Garmin plugin
* Garmin Lilly, ideal for my wife, doesn't look to be one of them
* Fitbit doesn't look to work too well eith rowing machines

Obviously this is all just theory based, what's the in the field version of the above?

I appreciate this forum isn't for Christmas present product selection but hopefully you guys can help!

Oh and looking into this for my wife has made me think I could do with getting one too - hence the male and female thread title.

Thanks in advance!

[Tsnor]

For rowing BELTS work great. For 24 hour health tracking WATCHES work great and belts are bad. For HRV tracking only a few devices work well, polar h10 belt is the gold standard.

The ecosystem for smart watches is critical. Look at the tools the watch maker provides. The concept2 log integrates into garmin, fitbit, apple etc. Pick your smart watch based on ecosystem and device reviews. Focus on the other things you do (biking? hiking? walking? sleeping?) where the smartwatch can help and the belt is useless.

I am very happy with polar H10 belt for rowing and HRV (using eliteHRV ap). I use fitbit watch for other tracking, it works fine. If I was getting a smart watch now it would be polar based to put more information into the polar ecosystem and drop the Fitbit ecosystem. If I were an iphone user I'd likely go apple. Since google bought fitbit we might see major changes in analytics that would make fitbit more (or less) desirable depending on how much data insight you want and how much you want google to know about you.

You and your wife could share the same belt, but it gets sweaty, need washing between use, etc, so I'd get two belts. My h10 belt goes through the washer 5 times/week without noticeable wear. When the belt dies I'll get another ($35).

If I could only have 1 (vs both a belt and a watch) I'd get the belt.

[winniewinser]

I use a Garmin Forerunner 245 for general tracking but as Tsnor mentions fitness watches are not the best for accurate HR tracking on the Erg. So I pair my watch to a Polar H10 chest belt and then use the Indoor Rowing function on the watch to record the session....including the accurate HR data from the strap. Not a seamless process but it works OK for me.

I tried a Polar watch and the HR tracking was hopeless and the battery life worse. I had a fitbit before that which was OK for day to day stuff but not the best during exercise for HR accuracy....hence the H10 belt purchase. I moved to Garmin mainly for the battery life and stability.

If you're reading reviews.....good luck there are so many contradictions it will drive you mad.

In summary, belt to connect to the erg....watch for general metrics (steps etc)

[oldskooladdict]

Thank you both, I had come to the conclusion I'd need a belt to get a decent reading on the rowing front - Garmin support sent me a link to an interesting article on it.

I saw on some Dark Horse video the Polar H10 is basically the easy decision - £70 here in the UK. So this connects to the c2 fairly easily and displays a heart rate on the screen of the c2, and I guess also an app on the smart phone? (Were Android users).

Sounds like a watch is essentially useless for rowing really? I see Garmin have an indoor rowing app, but it seems people don't rate it too highly?

My partner does workouts with kettle bells, dumbells and general airobics type stuff (all at home) and we both walk (and try to sleep, our son tries to prevent this lol). I on the other hand pretty much just row for exercise, or do some push ups if I'm feeling inspired on an off day!

It seems getting the H10 to talk to another ecosystem, be that Garmin, Fitbit or whatever is a bit of hoop jumping?

Thankfully the belts seem like a simple done deal, H10 unless you can't afford, end of. Watches, well, blimey, too much choice!

[oldskooladdict]

And yeah, contradictions are a plenty!

I do like some of the features on the Garmin, like the body something one that's supposed to tell you the best time to exercise etc!

[winniewinser]

Thank you both, I had come to the conclusion I'd need a belt to get a decent reading on the rowing front - Garmin support sent me a link to an interesting article on it.

I saw on some Dark Horse video the Polar H10 is basically the easy decision - £70 here in the UK. So this connects to the c2 fairly easily and displays a heart rate on the screen of the c2, and I guess also an app on the smart phone? (Were Android users).

Sounds like a watch is essentially useless for rowing really? I see Garmin have an indoor rowing app, but it seems people don't rate it too highly?

My partner does workouts with kettle bells, dumbells and general airobics type stuff (all at home) and we both walk (and try to sleep, our son tries to prevent this lol). I on the other hand pretty much just row for exercise, or do some push ups if I'm feeling inspired on an off day!

It seems getting the H10 to talk to another ecosystem, be that Garmin, Fitbit or whatever is a bit of hoop jumping?

Thankfully the belts seem like a simple done deal, H10 unless you can't afford, end of. Watches, well, blimey, too much choice!

The Polar Beat app is decent for the H10 belt. You can set it to record lots of different activities too. I used that before I got the Garmin FR245.

Connecting the belt to the Garmin is pretty straightforward TBH. I use the Garmin Indoor Rowing feature to record the rows and then they sync to Strava via my C2 Logbook account. That way I am capturing all the HR data and row data.

Good luck with everything.

[oldskooladdict]

Thanks. It's a bit ironic, I went down this route as my partner wanted a fitness watch, now I've ended up getting well into this whole area, and will probably get way more from a belt than a watch!

I'm torn now between Garmin and Fitbit. Everywhere I read suggests if you're new to this, and want a balance of everything, and good sleep sfuff, choose Fitbit, if you're sport mad, Garmin. Which would put us both in the Fitbit camp me thinks. But, this, would mean essentially writing off a fitness watch for the main fitness I do, which seems a bit odd!

[winniewinser]

Thanks. It's a bit ironic, I went down this route as my partner wanted a fitness watch, now I've ended up getting well into this whole area, and will probably get way more from a belt than a watch!

I'm torn now between Garmin and Fitbit. Everywhere I read suggests if you're new to this, and want a balance of everything, and good sleep sfuff, choose Fitbit, if you're sport mad, Garmin. Which would put us both in the Fitbit camp me thinks. But, this, would mean essentially writing off a fitness watch for the main fitness I do, which seems a bit odd!

Personally I wasn't bothered with the sleep tracking.....cos I'm asleep anyway .....If I wake up tired I probably slept badly etc etc.
Garmin has a body battery measure which I find more useful.

[Tsnor]

Thanks. It's a bit ironic, I went down this route as my partner wanted a fitness watch, now I've ended up getting well into this whole area, and will probably get way more from a belt than a watch!

I'm torn now between Garmin and Fitbit. Everywhere I read suggests if you're new to this, and want a balance of everything, and good sleep sfuff, choose Fitbit, if you're sport mad, Garmin. Which would put us both in the Fitbit camp me thinks. But, this, would mean essentially writing off a fitness watch for the main fitness I do, which seems a bit odd!

Do look into fitbit reliability. Work gave them free annually (thank you work !!!) so for a while I got one a year for the family. I ended up with 2 X charge, 2 X charge 2, 1 X charge 3 from work and a charge 2 and charge 3 I actually purchased. Two original Charges were replaced under warrantee for display fail, 1 charge 2 arrived DOA, replaced. 1 charge 3 died after 3 weeks, replaced. Several bands failed and were replaced after warrantee expired, no questions asked (support said they like how many watches + aria scale we had). I don't know if quality/life has improved, work stopped providing them a few years ago.

Also make sure you can read the display outside in daylight. None of the charges (1, 2 or 3) displays can be seen in daylight, they wash out. (Crazy stuff). Think the newer models do not have this problem.

Aside: re: "essentially writing off a fitness watch for the main fitness I do". The watches can help you. Resting heart rate is very useful. Heart Rate Variance may turn out to be useful, so far it is more a toy for me than anything useful.

Fitbit will give you both resting heart rate and "heart rate variance HRV" if you wear it overnight. The resting heart rate will be 5-8 beats higher than if you just measure your heart rate (using the fitbit) when you get up. No idea why, but it's consistent. The trend is good though so you can use resting heart rate from fitbit as early warning of overtraining or you getting sick. Just don't compare fitbit resting heart rate with other rowers or they may laugh.

The HRV reported by fitbit is not the same metric used by most apps. So if you get your HRV and then look at a table of what's normal for your age / fitness level you will freak out. I used eliteHRV and the polar h10 strap and the reported number is 3X the fitbit number. But if you look at the details in eliteHRV one of the metrics is RMSSD (root mean square of successive differences) which is the number fitbit is reporting, and the eliteHRV number and the Fitbit number are close.

[oldskooladdict]

Thanks, that's really helpful. Continuing in my flip flopping, I'm currently more in favour of Garmin, primarily because of the problems you mention regarding how frequently Fitbit stop working! Which is a bit rubbish.

As this is us dipping our toes into this I think I might get a pair of (different colour), Venu Sq watches. They seem a very capable intro, and if we do end up hitting their limits then great, we're obviously getting good use from them!

Oh and the H10 is a given