Triplethreat

I have the 610 which down loads etc but doesn't have the bike computer functions the 700's have. I figured I had a bike computer why did I need to dupulicate these functions and besides it would have really confused this old fellow. It is easy to down load and then all your information is there stored in your computer. things you get length of workout, avg and max hr splits with avg max hr time and there are ways to manipulate the data for even more information. A computer jocky like yourself should have no trouble mastering the tecnology and then informing the world. the 610 is cheaper than the 700,s cheaper being a relative term. later

I've been using the 510 for about 2 years, along with the PC Coach Light(read:comes free with HRM) and I find it indispensable. the 510 does comes with bike functions, which downloads nicely. The cool thing about using the bike function of the HRM instead of your bike computer is that it will chart your speed, along with your heartrate, on a single chart. Note that for both swim and run, you have to keep track of your mileage/yardage and input it when you download data. PC Coach will then calculate your pace.

For the swim, I use the HRM as a timer only. It's darned near impossible to keep the chest strap on in the water. Unless you buy the shoulder straps for it, it comes off every time you kick off the wall(this is not a problem for races, where your wetsuit holds it in place, and it works fine.)

For the run, The HRM works great. If it is cold(sub 40), it's hard to keep the electrodes wet until you start sweating, but I bought some HRM goo from performance and that fixed it.

For the bike, it works great. As I said before, it tracks your HR and your speed, and stores your incremental speed along with HR, so you know how fast you were going at any given point. One weird thing: The HRM will show you both your average speed and your max speed, but only your average speed is shown when you download the workout. That's pretty minor.

For triathlons, I absolutely love this thing. I can't overstate that fact. As long as you hit the lap button at the beginning of the race and going into and coming out of transition, it will calculate your splits and speeds for everything. You just enter the swim and run distance when you download the workout, and it does everything else for you. This is particularly useful since for many races they roll your transitions into the bike.

Don't let the model numbers confuse you. The x20 series is the newer, more expensive version of the same HRM. Beyond slight color changes, the 520 looks identical to the 510, but costs a little more. In any case, I got the 510 from Performancebike for $199 when it was listing elsewhere for up to $259.99. One of the reasons I bought the 510 instead of the 710 is that it uses SonicLink, rather than IR. While all computers have mic inputs, if your computer doesn't have an IR port, you have to spend $40 on one to download your HRM data with it models that use IR.

A word to any Polar R & D people out there: For God's sake, come out with a version of the 520 or 720 that has GPS built in! Do you want Timex to own the whole market?

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I have been using a S710i for a couple years now and think it is nearly as indispensable as my Computrainer. While you might have a bike computer for bike functions, but you can't download it. The S710i has HR, speed, distance, altitude, temperature, and optional power. The S710i also has a lot of memory so you can set it for 5 sec. sampling. When you get done, you can download it all and get a graph of your HR, speed/distance, and altitude. You can see your HR on that big hill, and how well you recovered on the way down the backside. It'll tell you the total climbing for a particular ride/run. The Polar Precision Performance software that came with it is really good. I use it as my training log. It doesn't have any coaching functions, but does allow you to enter additional information like weight, resting HR, how your felt etc. Personally, I feel the S710i/S720i, with it's added bike functions, although redundant while riding are great for logging and analysis, and added memory for finer granularity and/or storing more workouts between download is worth the extra money.

Looking at the HRM's ... I'll likely go 410. I've got 8 more races to pay for, a wetsuit, cycling shorts, jammers, and some shoes for racing.

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-- Every morning brings opportunity;
Each evening offers judgement. --

i think your questions have been answered pretty well so far. A few notes. Some polars do come with the PC coach light edition and all models S210 and above with Polar Precision software. The software is actually free off the Polar website. The coach is like a special bonus add on so you have to check first before buying. Hell, if you get lucky you might find free pc coach AND free polar socks! Lately the S210s that have been coming in have had the coach software and the rest the standard Polar precision. I love my Polar Precision software though, although the coach has some extra features. The S710 is now the S710i, they just fixed some software glitches and enabled it to work directly with a computer IR port versus needed the add on Polar IR reader. I'd buy the S720, looks cooler... BTW, I might be wrong, but I don't think you can download workouts with the PC coach software, check me on that one though.