Mark of Fitness MF-180 Exercise/Heart Rate Monitor
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Product Reviews of Mark of Fitness MF-180 Exercise/Heart Rate Monitor
Product Review: Comfortable, and less complicated than chest strap with watch combination
Summary: 4 Stars
LOVE it. Comfortable, barely restricting, takes seconds to put on. I use it mostly for running, and it causes no problems. Also seems very accurate. Target zone alarm works well. Only real negative is that it's not particularly intuitive how to get between functions or how to change a setting. Explained well in manual, but not easy to remember on the fly. Overall thrilled with it. Product Review: Love It
Summary: 5 Stars
I think this is a great item. It took some time to get used to all the features, but I really only use the monitor and calories burned. I use it for running and it works great. However, after I got better at running, it would have trouble picking up my signal when I would first put it on. I put in a new battery this may have helped. But I now use one of those hand squeezers to get the blood flowing to my finger before I put it on and it seems to work as great as it always did.Product Review: Inconsistently accurate, with occasional spurious readings and some wear discomfort.,
Summary: 2 Stars
This unit was purchased with the hope that it would give continuous and reliable readings. It often does, but inaccuracies are not uncommon; e.g., when removed it sometimes continues to report a heart rate, and during use it occasionally reports erroneously higher readings, compared to baton and direct pulse measurements.
Others with different hand and blood vessel geometry may obtain different results, but with the anatomical dimensions of my hand I found the unit too inaccurate to consistently rely on.
Wearing the unit is not without comfort issues for me. The velcro fastening material is placed along the full width of the finger mount. This results in the unit sometimes becoming uncomfortable to wear. Also, the width of the finger mount means the index finger cannot be easily flexed when the unit is worn.
Although settings are not intuitive, the instruction manual is clearly written, and the unit provides a number of useful additional functions, i.e., clock, alarm, stopwatch, under and over heart rate alarms, and calories burned.
However, my primary aim was to get a consistently accurate heart rate monitor. For that purpose, this unit has proved less than fully satisfactory.
Product Review: Works well but controls are a bit cumbersome
Summary: 4 Stars
After reading other reviews, I'm wondering if the manufacturer has improved their sensor because I almost always get a good reading and it is very close to or exactly the same as other heart monitors I compare it with around the gym (the kind on the machines where you have to grab 2 electrodes). I've had it now for about 3 months and I'm pretty happy with it. The only time I don't get a good reading is when I haven't positioned the sensor properly. The trick is that you have to have the sensor over one of the arteries in your index finger, which is off center, NOT in the middle. You also don't want it too tight -- certainly less tight than the manual says. Just make it snug and you should get a good reading. I use the "cross-country skiing" orbital trainer machine most often and it works perfectly with those kind of movements. The only time I've seen it get confused is if you intentionally wildly swing your hand around to try to confuse it. That kind of movement never happens during workouts, though, so the criticisms about it being inaccurate unless you're not moving are not the case at all in my experience. I would have to assume that the user didn't have the sensor positioned correctly. I've been quite active with it and it has always kept up just fine. I also haven't had to have a perfectly straight finger to get a good reading. Just don't try to get a reading while you're grabbing a chinup bar or curling or anything like that. You shouldn't be looking at your heart rate while lifting weights anyway, you should be paying attention to what you're doing.
I do think they could improve the glove, but it fits my hand pretty well. I'm a male with a medium-sized hand. Someone with a large hand would probably find the glove uncomfortable, and someone with a small hand would probably find it just fine. It just seems like cheap material next to the rather well-made readout and sensor. I felt that the controls were cumbersome because, as someone only interested in cardio workouts (which is the reason to have a heart monitor in the first place), the modes I need to use are several clicks away from each other. If you want to monitor recovery time, you have to click the top button 4 times to cycle through a bunch of other modes before you get from heart monitoring, to recovery time values. Definitely could have been better thought out, but all the necessary things are there, and even some fancy things I haven't taken the time to learn yet. The big advantage is, of course, that you don't have to wear a chest strap which I have found extremely appealing. I would have given 5 stars if they would have made a better glove and would have thought out the sequence of functions with the buttons more realistically. All things considered, though, knowing what I know now, I would still buy it over any other monitor.
Product Review: Comfortable to use
Summary: 4 Stars
I've only recently started using this product to monitor my heart rate and am still in the learning process of how to use the produce efficiently. It has so many things that it can keep track of. I find it to be rather comfortable to use. It monitors my heart rate in % which helps me to stay within my range. I would recommend this product to anyone who is looking to get away from those chest strap monitors.