Worked amazing!

Wanted it for my treadmill with ifit. Works well

I do have accurate optical heart rate monitors on my watches, but have found that there is no substitute for a proper HRM strap when running and cycling. They provide accurate results in real time. I have seen where the optical ones can be "behind" my current heart rate.What I like here is the nearly instant connection after applying the water to the strap (for good electrical contact with skin) and starting a workout on my watch. I have one other bluetooth strap that can take (sometimes) 10 seconds to be found before I can start my run. The strap is well adjustable so it sits on my chest where it should and doesn't move. My other strap begins to loosen over my run so it can actually move out of the proper position. Luckily, this one has the common CR2032 battery which I have plenty of. The transmitter separates from the strap so it can be cleaned / washed. All other straps I have used in the past have been safe to put in the washer on gentle (once transmitter has been removed, important). This one does not specifically say you can wash this in the machine, but suggests you remove the transmitter and run under clean water. I suspect I can wash this in the machine as I have my others. Running water isn't enough to clean the strap after some hard sweat days out running IMO.Good value and it performs equally to my other name brand monitors.

TLDR: For the money, if you're looking for your first heart rate tracker to pair with your phone, I don't now how this might be beat, but it's probably not going to impress you if you have a pretty good fitness tracking watch already.The Review:The KYTO heart rate monitor (HRM) is a great value for the price. First off, some basics: if you do get this, you won't get far with getting it connected until you've adequately wet the two spots on the band where the electrodes connect, on the side that touches skin. I went through the trouble of making sure I had ANT as an option on my Android phone, but I don't think that was necessary. As soon as I had the band moistened adequately, and clicked on heart rate in a Strava activity, it appeared in the settings asking for Bluetooth permissions. No problem connecting, and perhaps more importantly, once connected, I've had no connectivity issues so far once paired.On the battery issue, at first I was a little disappointed that this uses a coin-shaped battery, and is not rechargeable, but after considering that one battery will last for about 200 hours of use, I reckon I can cope with paying a buck or so every 6-8 months in compensation for not having to frequently plug in to maintain a tiny li-ion battery.The band is very adjustable, comfortable, and in five miles of running so far I have not needed to adjust it at all- it stays in place well.All right, now on to the nitty gritty. My tests for accuracy of readings included sitting still and comparing resting heart rate readings with minor movement to those on my smart watch, similar comparison with the watch during a series of 1-minute sets of jumping jacks with 1-minute rests between, and comparison with the watch during two short runs, one about 2 miles and another next day of a bit over 3 miles.What I discovered is that the KYTO HRM strap is much more responsive to changes, almost instantaneous. My watch, in comparison, lags behind, seemingly by 10-15 seconds or maybe even more. That's a great plus for KYTO. Unfortunately, as to accuracy, while my experience with it is pretty limited so far, my working theory is that this chest strap inflates upward changes in HR, with the result implying spikes higher than reality.The picture I've included is a photo overlay of two tracks of the same run, one clocked with my smart watch (Galaxy 7, and imported into Strava), and the other using the KYOTO HRM connected to my phone tracked directly via the Strava phone app. It's not a perfect overlay, because the reading with the strap required more room on the vertical axis, but I resized them to get it pretty darned close...The darker magenta area plots the recording from the KYOTO chest strap. The lighter pink is the recording from my watch. The more grayish, shadowed area is an underlay depicting the elevation change. The chest strap yielded an average heart rate of 174 bpm, and the watch pronounced an average of 158 bpm. That's a significant disparity, and I'm 100% sure my heart rate never got close to the 216 max tagged by the chest strap. I think the watch wins here for accuracy.It's worth also pointing out again, though, that the band was demonstrably better at detecting changes immediately. During the run, I intentionally stopped running exactly at the 2-mile mark, and walked for one-quarter mile before resuming the run, and then did the same again at just past the three-mile mark. The chest strap showed my heart rate starting to lower right at the 2-mi mark, whereas the watch's lag is discernible there. It's interesting with with heart rate drifting slowly down, the two devices appear almost exactly in synch, but when it's quickly going up, the chest strap seems to notice sooner (in real time) but also seems to overstate the increase.Conclusion: If you're just wanting to dabble into fitness heart rate monitoring, not really interested in wearing and/or using and/or buying an expensive smart watch or Garmin watch, then you're in your lane right now- buy this, connect it easily to your smartphone, and you're on your way... If, however, you've already got a mid-to-high-end smart watch with pretty good fitness capabilities, and you're wanting to verify or interrogate its accuracy, this might not be worth your while... unless maybe, just maybe, your interest is in doing intervals and you want to better examine your sprints and rests. Basically, my conclusion after admittedly limited testing is that (1) this tracks ups and down in real time much more precisely than my watch, (2) steady state heart rate aligns quite well with my watch after both settle, and (3) this overinflates my HR when it's going up (and my watch lags). I will keep using it and comparing, and if my thoughts change significantly, I'll come back to update.I've come back just to add my thinking on HRMs in general....I've had three different watches now and my partner has had two, and they're all a bit different with the numbers they tend to spit out, BUT I believe they're each pretty consistent. That is to say, much like a bathroom scale: it's not the number that should be of concern; it's the trend. Is the average going up or down? With HRMs, it doesn't matter much for most of us if the accuracy is off by 10 bpm, because it's going to be precise and consistent. If you take the time to do the same x-mile benchmark run every so often, and you notice that you're doing it faster at the same average heart rate, even if the heart rate monitor thinks that average is 300 bpm, then you're getting fitter! That's why I have no problem giving this bargain HRM 5 stars.

I usually use an arm heart rate monitor, but have never been convinced how accurate it is. I've been wanting a chest variation to see if the results and responsiveness is any better, so wanted to give this KYTO a try.First off...it has NO indicators or buttons of any kind. My arm monitor has a power button as well as an led which simply indicates activation and deactivation. This one has...nothing, leaving me to be uncertain if there might be a protective barrier installed between the battery during shipping (note: there is not one) or if it is even working.Following the instructions, I had to wet the contact area, something I also didn't need to do with the armband variation. I tried this, hooked everything up...and no connection in my app. Repeating everything, it finally connected, I did some cleanup....and discovered it has lost the connection. Once again, with no indicator of any kind, it's hard to troubleshoot! ANOTHER rewetting, and it finally connected and stabilized until I began the workout and produced enough moisture to apparently keep the connection going.Accuracy-wise, once working it seems a bit more accurate than my armband variation. That said, in subsequent workouts, I want to get to the workout, not sit and dink with the band for a while hoping it might connect if I hold it just right and wet it just enough.

Quality of the HRM is what you pay for