• Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:

    • Join over 47,943+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
    • Participate in and browse from over 531,990+ posts.
    • Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
    • Post your own photos or view from 7,455+ user submitted images.
    • All this and much more...

    You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!

heart rate monitor

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 90 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.

GHOSTS

New Member
Feb 13, 2008
9
0
0
hey all im looking for a watch that is a freedive computer
as well has a heart rate monitor all in one. does any one know if theres
any on the market? thanks rick
 
If it had also an integrated oximeter, it would be even better. Unfortunately I do not think there is such thing available. I may be wrong, but did not hear about any such combined device. Suunto would be certainly in the best position to produce such watch - they produce both heart rate monitors and diving computers, but I am afraid you'll need to buy two separate products to have both functionalities in the same time.
 
The Uwatec Galileo Sol supposedly has a (Polar) HRM:
Uwatec Galileo Sol with Heart Rate Monitor & Air Transmitter - DiveLife - Scuba

Haven't seen much less tried one though...I guess it's not even out yet? And it's pretty expensive.

So in short - no such watch quite yet, but uwatec seems to be the first to try.

Surprisingly many regular HRMs don't work with water at all, so be sure to check that before buying.

The Suunto T6 does have an barometer that you can use as a depth cauge, if you do the calculations in your head :) But unfortunately the HRM part doesn't work under water in that one either...
 
Last edited:
The Uwatec Galileo Sol supposedly has a (Polar) HRM:
Uwatec Galileo Sol with Heart Rate Monitor & Air Transmitter - DiveLife - Scuba

Haven't seen much less tried one though...I guess it's not even out yet? And it's pretty expensive.

So in short - no such watch quite yet, but uwatec seems to be the first to try.

Surprisingly many regular HRMs don't work with water at all, so be sure to check that before buying.

The Suunto T6 does have an barometer that you can use as a depth cauge, if you do the calculations in your head :) But unfortunately the HRM part doesn't work under water in that one either...

I've been considering this problem, as a T6 user without a dive watch. As far as I'm aware, no combination product exists and as you say, the T6 and many others don't work in the water. The T6 barometer is pretty slow though, so you'd need to hang out on the bottom for a minute or so for it to stabilise :hmm

The best I can think of is one of these and the PC link. The problem is you won't know when exactly when the dive started, etc. It's a tough one, that's for sure.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I guess the memory belt would work ok for the pool...But it's not very water resistant, so I wouldn't take it deeper than that.

Suunto T1 and the older Polar modes work in pool situations ok. I guess the difference is in the technique used for transmitting the signal. The newer ones use a higher frequency radio signal that gets blocked in water. The T6 works for example if you can keep it dry under your wetsuit...I've tried this a couple of times...
 
Tried out a Galileo with some experimental freedive software in Dahab last year, unfortunately one of the transmitters was playing up and doubling my heart-rate but it was still interesting to look at the graph. Basically it followed the graph of the dive itself, dropping steadily from 5m onwards. I did an 80m dive with it and I think my HR dropped to about 40% or 50% of resting.

I remember Ant telling me about one of the polar HR monitors that worked well for freediving. He said you could download the HR profile and match it up with the graph from a dive computer to give a pretty good picture of HR vs depth. Don't remember which one it was though :(
 
Right, you have me curious now. I bought a Polar a couple of years ago and I took it down to 25m in the SETT tank, though I could read my heart rate fine in bright light at that depth I think from memory that the sample rate was too slow when I downloaded it to make any sense of it. The one drawback of my Polar is that although the watch is water resistant to 50m, the chest device is only rated to 30m. And going on from another old thread somewhere here, Jome said that these international water resistance ratings are quite arbitrary anyway, so 30m could translate to a useful depth of 2-4m or something similar.

Cheers,
Ben
 
Why would they bother to rate a watch to 6ATM air pressure? There is nowhere on earth even close to that. And how would air pressure ever damage a watch anyway - why not rate it to 1000ATM if they aren't talking about water?
 
My polar vantage NV HR monitor (an old model), was the most advanced available, and it could 'record every heart beat', allowing you to view arrythmias and so on.

It works in fresh water, but in salt water there is no signal at all.

It is rated for 20m but I have taken it to 30m many times.

I believe it was replaced with the Polar S810.

Murat has an HR monitor which works in salt water apparently.

However, in North America, HR monitors transmit analog signals which I think are less reliable underwater. In Europe you can get HR monitors with 'coded transmitters' which may work better, but they are illegal in North America.

If someone finds a North American HR monitor with download capacity that works in salt water, let me know!
 
The Polar s610i works fine in the salt water and Sebs used it quite deep. It comes with a coded transmiter so they dont talk to each other at the gym probably and its infrared so you can upload all the data youve recorded or just view it on the watch. I think they may be sketchy at low HRs and start counting 1 beat as 2. Has anyone had clear readings on low HRs?
 
Last edited:
"....And how would air pressure ever damage a watch anyway...."

No big thing but, the D3 has a caution about air pressure. There used to be stories about saturation divers having their expensive watches blow up during decompression. My guess is the seals are not reliable unless in water.
 
True, you might get gas coming through the seals then blowing the watch up once the external pressure drops, as they presumably aren't built to resist pressure in that direction... still seems a funny rating to have if you're not talking about water immersion though :)
 
I'll be picking up a memory belt some time soon, so I'll post my impressions when I do. I don't think its waterproof to very deep, but under a good wetsuit, I also don't expect it to experience the same problems as you'd get in a watch.
 
If it had also an integrated oximeter, it would be even better.
An oximeter would be so useful. I would like to know what my O2 level is when training, and also to prove to other people that holding my breath for 2min is not depriving my brain of oxygen!
 
DeeperBlue.com - The Worlds Largest Community Dedicated To Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing

ABOUT US

ISSN 1469-865X | Copyright © 1996 - 2026 DeeperBlue Global Media Limited.

DeeperBlue.com is an independent digital media platform dedicated to Scuba Diving, Freediving, Ocean Advocacy, and Dive Travel.

Since 1996, we’ve been informing, educating, and inspiring the global diving community through trusted news, features, and shared community experience.

ADVERT