My wife gave me an ambit 3 for my birthday, my primary exercise is swimming, and I wanted to find out if I could get one of these new optical HR devices to work in the pool.
I tried a miolink first. It worked about 50% of the time. I found that I spent a lot of time on the wall fiddling with it. I had a lot of frustration with displayed heart rates in the 130s when I would come into the wall, panting, and then see the measured heart rate come up into the 140-150s as I was resting.
I tried the miolink on both wrists, upside down, backwards, in front and behind the ambit 3. I tried it with the monitor out of it's own strap and under the ambit 3 strap. I tried it under a short segment of wetsuit sleeve, thinking the darkness and less turbulence would help it.
The only thing that worked was fastening it so tight that my little and ring fingers would go numb.
I returned the miolink and got a scosche rhythm+.
This has actually worked quite well, giving me believable readings throughout my workout. I have not had to tighten it as much as the miolink. The velcro ends of the strap do not appear to be curling up in the water, although that is something that bears watching.
In the end, I don't think I gain anything by using the ambit and scosche in the pool (I like perceived exertion) but I wanted to share my experience with these. I wasn't able to find much on the internet besides people noting that the miolink and rhythm+ would "work" underwater, in terms of bluetooth transmission to a watch.
ETA June 1 2015: So, a week later I am sending the scosche back to Amazon. It started giving me low heart rates during hard intervals and rising at the wall just like the miolink, and the strap came off two days in a row. I could spend some time searching for the perfect strap solution but it is not worth it to me. I think the scosche has more potential if someone really wanted to make this a project. I'm done.
I tried a miolink first. It worked about 50% of the time. I found that I spent a lot of time on the wall fiddling with it. I had a lot of frustration with displayed heart rates in the 130s when I would come into the wall, panting, and then see the measured heart rate come up into the 140-150s as I was resting.
I tried the miolink on both wrists, upside down, backwards, in front and behind the ambit 3. I tried it with the monitor out of it's own strap and under the ambit 3 strap. I tried it under a short segment of wetsuit sleeve, thinking the darkness and less turbulence would help it.
The only thing that worked was fastening it so tight that my little and ring fingers would go numb.
I returned the miolink and got a scosche rhythm+.
This has actually worked quite well, giving me believable readings throughout my workout. I have not had to tighten it as much as the miolink. The velcro ends of the strap do not appear to be curling up in the water, although that is something that bears watching.
In the end, I don't think I gain anything by using the ambit and scosche in the pool (I like perceived exertion) but I wanted to share my experience with these. I wasn't able to find much on the internet besides people noting that the miolink and rhythm+ would "work" underwater, in terms of bluetooth transmission to a watch.
ETA June 1 2015: So, a week later I am sending the scosche back to Amazon. It started giving me low heart rates during hard intervals and rising at the wall just like the miolink, and the strap came off two days in a row. I could spend some time searching for the perfect strap solution but it is not worth it to me. I think the scosche has more potential if someone really wanted to make this a project. I'm done.