- Morning, trainiacs.
If you happen to be somebody that's constantly like,
oh baby, mind if I take this chest strap off,
it's chafing me, well, you might be in luck.
Because this is the Wahoo TICKR FIT forearm
heart rate monitor.
That's a lot.
We're gonna talk about it today.
(fast techno music)
So in today's daily triathlon goodness,
we're talking about this.
This is the Wahoo TICKR FIT forearm strap.
As opposed to the TICKR chest strap,
this goes on your forearm.
Just like the TICKR chest strap,
this also pairs by Bluetooth and ANT+.
It's also the same price as the TICKR X chest strap
at $79.99 US, and it's the same IPX7 waterproof resistance,
so it claims that it's waterproof up to five feet.
However, that's not really enough
to make me want to be confident about swimming with it.
Another difference is that the chest strap
has a standard coin size battery,
whereas the TICKR FIT has a rechargeable
by a USB, 30 hour battery.
The heart rate readings on the chest strap
are actually reading the electrical impulses
that are coming from your body,
whereas the FIT, it's using
the new optical sensor technology
that isn't quite as accurate.
In addition to that, you also don't get running analytics
like you do on a TICKR X, you don't have treadmill mode
like you do here, you don't get indoor cycling cadence,
you don't have a memory, and you don't have rep counting.
The reason for this existing
is that it literally just came down to preference.
I asked my contact at Wahoo,
thank you Zach for sending this out, why this should exist
when this is doing a perfectly good job?
What he said was, they were getting a number of requests
from people who find a chest strap to be very constrictive
and not comfortable, to do something for the arm.
However, going over to something measuring on the arm
forces them to not actually take the same readings
that are the actual electrical pulses coming from your body,
that generates the nice, consistent, accurate heart rate
the chest strap does.
So the big question is, how accurate is the TICKR FIT?
Let's see.
Last weekend I ended up doing both the bike
and a run workout simultaneously wearing the chest strap
and the new TICKR FIT.
And what we've got here is an overlay of the heart rate data
between the two.
The red data here is the chest strap
and the blue is the TICKR FIT.
And let's zoom in here.
You can basically see in a general sort of sense
that the TICKR FIT kept up almost point for point
with the chest strap, even though
it's the optical heart rate sensor
as opposed to the electrical pulse sensor.
I would say that point for point,
it kept up almost the entire way
and anywhere that it's wildly off, like you can see
as the workout goes on, it's off a fair bit.
I think that's just me not quite matching up the graphs
very right because it ends up evening out towards the end.
Now there's one thing here
that I think is sort of apparent,
is that there's a little bit more smoothing going on,
as in it's taking more average readings as it's going.
And that's why you don't see
nearly as many jagged spots here
and the really short bursts that I did at the end
didn't quite have the same peaks and the same lows.
So I haven't found any documentation to say
that there's more average data collection going on
with the TICKR FIT, that as I was looking at the screen
as I was constantly checking my watch,
as I was looking between all the devices,
basically every single second that I looked,
if it's said 139 on my watch, it said 139 on the screen.
If anything, it was off by one beat at most.
But it seems like the data collection might be a little bit
more averaged out here with the TICKR FIT.
Let's go to the run, and we see that same sort of thing.
Even though I set the smoothing in training peaks here
to take the most amount of data possible on both,
you can see that the blue line is just smoothed out
a fair bit more when it gets uploaded.
So is it accurate?
Yes.
Is it accurate for the scientific testing
that my buddy Darrell Hurdy might need?
Maybe not.
And the reviews that are on the Wahoo website itself
actually kind of tell the tale.
It's actually ranked highest of all the heart rate monitors
that they've got.
I think it's ranked highest in ease of use, makes sense.
Like all Wahoo products, they're set up
to be very user friendly.
It's comfortable, I didn't have any issues with it
even though I set it up here on my bicep.
You know, normally you'd think that that would chafe,
didn't chafe whatsoever.
You've got two sizes of forearm strap,
going from like my wispy little pipe cleaner arms,
all the way up to probably,
I don't know, like Popeye forearms.
But it got dinged a little bit on the value,
coming in at the same $80.00 as the TICKR X does,
but losing bunch of the running and metrics that you get
with that chest rate, heart rate, chest strap.
I think rightfully so that what you give up
in those metrics, you get in comfort if you are somebody
that prefers to have a heart rate monitor on your forearm
as opposed to your chest.
So if you are somebody that doesn't like a chest strap,
check it out.
And if you are somebody that isn't yet subscribed,
hit that subscribe button below.
And if you are subscribed, thank you for watching
and share this with your favorite training partner,
who has the stinkiest, oldest strap in the world.