My collection of Garmin chest straps has finally run out and I want a replacement for R or B only - no need for swim. For convenience and price, I’ve recently looked at fb marketplace.
Q: are HRM straps from places like orange fitness, peloton, etc, that have ANT+, inferior in any way to classic Garmin or Polar straps?
Garmin straps SUCK. At least they have for me. Granted my Polar H10 is now giving me “issues”. I also tried a Wahoo Tickr, and it was no different. So, maybe its me? After 25 years of not having any issues ever with polar analog straps or my first Garmin HRM-TRI strap…I’ve had a long list of various Garmin, Wahoo, and Polar ant+ / BT straps that only last just a few months.
So, I dunno…
Consider the arm strap variety with the optical monitor offered by Coros, etc. I too got overly frustrated with the disposable qualities of both the chest straps and the pods and made the switch over a year ago - comfortable, unobtrusive, locks in to everything, rechargeable and accurate HR.
I’ve had great luck with the inexpensive XUXIN Heart Rate Monitor Soft Straps from Amazon. They’re sub $12 and last me 18+ months of daily use.
YMMV
Hugh
Just the strap or do they have a transmitter, too? What transmitter are you using?
I’ve had excellent luck with the Powr Labs Bluetooth and ANT+ Heart Rate Monitor Chest Strap. It’s worked perfectly for a couple of years of daily use and only cost $36. I actually still have the strap that came with it and am using one of the XUXIN straps that won’t seem to die.
Bring back the old Polar T47s. And by ‘bring back’ I mean just get out of the drawer as they are the cockroaches of the sportstech world and will still be working fine well after we all turn to dust.
But whilst I’d not get a pure HR strap from garmin, then I really do value the run metrics from the HRM-Run and further variants. And those I don’t think you do get with other brands.
I’ve had the HRM-RUN (3x), the HRM-TRI (3x), and the HRM-Pro (2x). I paid for two of those. The rest were warranty replacements from Garmin trying to get one to not fail. I never heard what they found wrong with them all. I eventually gave up being a guinea pig, and bought a Polar H10…it lasted 14 months.
I don’t know what the heck is going on…but, man its annoying to look at my watch and see my HR at 110 or 207 (150 being “normal”) while just on an easy run or something.
I even went all DC Rainmaker at one point, and was wearing two HRM straps, and two garmin watches…uploading both traces simultaneously to Garmin for the engineering staff to review.
Just get the coros arm hrm. Its better than all the straps.
I concede that 75% of the time optical is perfectly adequate. I revert to the embedded optical sensor in my Fenix 6 when the straps crap out. I do not have any issues with the embedded sensor.
However, electrical is always superior to optical…unless there is a medical reason that it can’t work (there are medical reasons that commercial straps may not work for someone). There are times when I care, but there aren’t very many.
The Coros arm strap just works really well. It’s really good, rarely I still get some early workout errant reads but it’s way better than any heart strap I’ve used in that regard, and the form factor is superior as well.
Optical on the wrist is near-useless for me. Yes, there are times I get lucky and it seems to correlate, but for the most part, it’s too inaccurate. The coros arm strap is not like that at all.
I’ve had the garmin ones die pretty reliably after a battery change and either the next time I sweat a lot, swim in it or wash it. Very low hit rate of getting the battery compartment to seal. And because of the rules on screw covers in AU then in NZ we get the same ‘old’ style straps.
But I’ve not found them to be unreliable when exercising. I must have a funny heart as the tests you can do at rest always fail, which is down to a (typically for here) atypically low HR.
In your case @Tom_hampton you may jsut need to get some crocodile clips on your nipples and solder some wire onto chest strap 
If only they’d left some wire sticking out of my chest after bypass surgery so I could just snap right onto those. 
Garmin have been terrible in my long experience.
I liked the Wahoo straps but have more recently migrated over to Polar straps and must say they have been like everyone else who uses them has told me, bulletproof.
Bought a 2-pack, for $19 +tax. Swapped my Polar H10 over. Did 400s and 800s at the track today. No drop-outs, spikes, or other goofy readings. Its only one day. But, I’d lost faith in the H10 due to too many goofy readings. So…its a start.
Thanks for the tip.
You’re very welcome. They really seem to be excellent bang for the buck. The one thing I have done is to use a safety pin to lock the adjustable loop so that it doesn’t slowly slacken over time. Electronically, they seem extremely robust.