GEOID HS500 Heart Rate Monitor Chest Strap

The GEOID HS500 is a chest-strap heart rate monitor at £21.99, eighth in this guide. It clips to a strap around your chest, runs on a replaceable CR2032 battery with no charging involved, and connects over ANT+ and Bluetooth 4.2 to phones, tablets, watches, bike computers and treadmills. The listing gives it 4.1 out of 5 from 1,369 ratings, an IP67 waterproof rating, a wake-up time of under one second and a one-year manufacturer warranty. It also lasts, according to the listing, 800 hours on a single battery.

Two numbers in that same listing are worth reading twice. The spec table gives a Display Size of 0.96 inches, but there is no screen on this device — the only thing that lights up is the flashing LED described in the first bullet, and a chest strap has nowhere to put a 0.96-inch display. The table then lists an Item Weight of 59 g while the third bullet says "Weight with packaging: 56g", so the packaged product is given as lighter than the item inside it. The battery figures have the same problem: 800 hours, and in the same bullet "1 hour a day, 4 times a week, 2.5 years working time". At four hours a week, 800 hours works out at about 3.8 years, so those two figures cannot both be right. One thing does close: the rating breakdown adds up to 100 and averages out at 4.1, exactly the score shown. On sensor type the GEOID is at least honest — it says "Heart Rate Sensor", which is what a chest strap is. Everything on this page comes from the Amazon listing, not from any testing we carried out.