Impact Sports ePulse Strapless Heart Rate Monitor Watch and Calorimeter
Posted on Sep 21, 2011 with Comments 2
Impact Sports ePulse Strapless Heart Rate Monitor Watch and Calorimeter
- Chest-strap-free heart rate monitor and calorimeter that wears around the forearm
- Delivers the benefits of heart rate monitoring without uncomfortable chest strap
- Shows current heart rate, maximum and minimum heart rates, and average heart rate
- Calculates calories burned based on personal profile and heart rate
- Includes fat burning and cardio target zones; powered by AAA batteries
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Filed Under: Heart Monitors
E-Pulse – a promising device but not there yet!,
After reading the mostly positive reviews of the ePulse on Amazon, I decided to purchase the device about one month ago. I work out quite hard and pushed this device to its limits. Here are my general thoughts on the ePulse.
If all you are looking for is a device that gives you a real-time measurement of your heart rate, this device works fine. However, other functionality does not deliver as promised. The minimum heart rate is set to 0. The watch seems to take awhile to average out that 0 heart rate when calculating average heart rate for the entire workout. If you are working out for several hours, this shouldn’t be a problem, but the average heart rate will report several beats too low if you are doing a shorter workout (such as 30 minutes).
Also, if you attempt to view other data screens such as maximum heart rate while working out and then go back to current heart rate, it will read way too low. It takes approximately 30 seconds to re-adjust back to your actual heart rate.
At high heart rates (such as 160-170 beats per minute (bpm)), the watch will occasionally stop adding calories burned to the device. For example, during a tempo run where my heart rate was near 170 bpm for ten minutes, it told me that I burned a total of 15 calories over the ten-minute period. When I went back to a lower heart rate in the 145-150 bpm range, the watch started calculating calories burned much more accurately.
I have spoken with the designers of the ePulse, and they told me that they were able to replicate these problems. They intend to fix them for their new model release.
So, if you are looking for a device to simply give you a measurement of your current heart rate and don’t care about any other bells and whistles, this device is fine. However, if you want to know an accurate idea of how many calories you burn and what your average heart rate is, I would wait the 6-12 months for the next release.
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|New State of the Art,
I put my new ePulse monitor through some tough paces this weekend. I started on Friday with an intense 40-minute workout with my personal trainer, mainly lower body and aerobics, and found the device to be very accurate and reliable. Over the weekend I played two rounds of golf in the heat using my cart but with a lot of walking and climbing around the rocks and roughs, places where one is not supposed to venture during golf. I wore the unit the whole time, both days, and had inputted my personal information to the device. Here are my observations:
1. Golf day one: 4 hr 55 min, temperature range 92-104 F, total caloric burn 833 cal, range of pulse rate was between 59 and 105
Golf day two: 5 hr 1 min, temperature range 90-99 F, total caloric burn of 842 cal, range of pulse rate was between 56 and 102
(Note: I kept the unit on continuous monitor so I could watch the data)
2. The armband is non-intrusive. Once it’s on a few minutes you don’t even think about it, while on first inspection it looks “bulky” it’s actually light and unobtrusive. I actually put it on pretty light and only once did is slip during a wild drive swing.
3. It was hot and I got pretty sweaty. No problems were encountered with the sweat or the armband staying put. Except when I looked at the readout it was out of sight and out of mine.
4. The unit was really easy to read except in bright, direct sunlight. In direct sun and wearing sunglasses one needs to shield the screen with ones hand. Still, it was very readable.
5. I never once noticed a missed beat or had to reset or maneuver the unit to get continuous readings. Seems very stable and accurate. In my case anyway, precise location of the sensor was not required.
6. Battery consumption was about 50% with new energizer batteries each day (again using continuous monitoring not the on-daman feature). Although, it was still running well even after the screen told me to replace the batteries.
My conclusions are that the ePulse has set a new state of the art in fitness monitoring, is an excellent exercise and health tool and is totally usable for anyone wanting pulse rate and caloric burn info. The other functions likewise will be very valuable to many users. Battery life is a bit short but when the unit is used in the “on-demand” mode this becomes a non-issue. The direct sun impact on the readout is not a huge problem when compared to the ease of use and performance. All of this good stuff and NO CHEST STRAP required!
A VERY HAPPY ePulse user.
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