The best heart-rate monitors for keeping better track of your workouts

The best heart rate monitors are an excellent wearable gadget to keep track of your heart health, which is vital if you’re looking to improve your cardiovascular ability. It’s simple really: clip it onto your chest or around your wrist, get stuck into a workout and measure your cardio workout, which will all be pulled into useful graphs and data to give you a clearer view of your overall fitness levels, and what targets to aim for.

You might be reading this and thinking, “Well, what can an optical heart rate monitor do that my smartwatch or fitness tracker doesn't?" It‘s a good question, as those kinds of devices will certainly offer you a few more features on top of just scoping out your heart health, but a chest strap will give you the most accurate heart rate readings in real-time, with the same level of quality data you‘d expect from an electrocardiogram (ECG) in the hospital. These accurate readings can keep track of everything from heart rate variability to in-depth running dynamics like ground contact time and cadence.

In other words, if you’re after a chest-worn optical heart rate sensor to enhance your Peloton and Zwift sessions, you’re in the right place. Before we dive into our full list of the best heart rate monitors though, there are a few things you might want to brush up on first. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to look at our list of the best fitness trackers either if you’re after a shiny new Garmin, Fitbit or Apple Watch Series 7. Though only if you want to.

What’s the best heart rate monitor 2023?

Garmin’s HRM Pro is a feature-packed heart rate monitor that combines reliable accuracy with extra tricks such as the ability to track running metrics. The best part? It can store data and sync up with your app of choice at a later date, meaning it’s the only bit of kit you need if you want to travel light.

The MZ-Switch is incredibly versatile, thanks to its ability to be worn on your chest, arm or wrist, depending on which option works best for you. Compatible with both iOS and Android apps, it offers six months' worth of use per charge too.

The H10 offers plenty of bang for your buck, including a comfortably soft strap, along with support for all sorts of devices and apps, with a 30-metre waterproof rating for swimming to boot.

What's the best way to use a heart-rate monitor?

The ability of a chest strap heart-rate monitor (or sometimes one worn on the wrist)to record how fast your heart is beating can be used for more than just determining how hard you're working or what your resting heart rate is, as it's also useful for ensuring you’re working in the right heart rate zone. Depending on whether you’re looking to burn fat or kick your heart rate into gear, you need to pay attention to these zones.

For starters, work out your maximum heart rate by taking your age away from 220. The higher your heart rate when exercising, the more carbohydrates are being used as fuel since fat can't metabolise fast enough. With all that in mind, you can use heart-rate zones to monitor your real-time progress, ensuring that you stay in your optimum sweet spot. Trying to do that without a heart-rate monitor would be an impressive feat, to say the least, and you can manage your vertical oscillation and true effort each time you exercise so it’s never a wasted session.

What heart-rate monitor will work with Strava and apps such as Peloton?

Most heart-rate monitors don’t include displays (or the other extras found in fitness trackers such as sleep tracking or running metrics), so if you want to see your data in real-time you’ll need to pair it with a companion app. On the plus side, these Bluetooth devices are built to wirelessly work with a range of other gym equipment, apps and devices such as watches and bike computers. The key is knowing what kind of connectivity method your model supports to make sure it works correctly.