weight and sex into the calculation. Some monitors also estimate a percentage of fat calories burnt. Five First Steps Roughly estimate your maximum heart rate (MHR) by subtracting your age from 220 (or a little more accurately, 214-(0.8 x age) for men

When Runner's World readers were asked to list their essential kit last year, heart-rate monitors came out on top. Unfortunately for the female runner, using a heart-rate monitor is usually an uncomfortable experience, requiring 10 minutes before

zone, 50 lap memory, 2 interval timers RW Says This is a good-looking and intuitive heart-rate monitor, with a comfortable chest strap. The instructions and initial set-up are simple, and it includes all the features you need for basic heart-rate

from total time, lap time, HR or time of day.Contact: 0800 056 1640; www.nike.comReebok Precision Trainer £129.99Displays both HR in beats per minute and as a percentage of maximum HR.Press a single button while running and watch scans through maximum

Heart-rate monitors vary hugely in price and functionality. For less than £20 you can pick up an HRM that simply measures your pulse, while parting with £150+ will give you a monitor that will set training zones for you, tell you how many calories

what you should be looking for in the first place.Well, not any more. We sent four RW members (former competition winners, and some of our very best gear critics) a selection of the latest heart-rate monitors (ranging from £40 - £149) and asked them

’s still packed with all the features that made the 305 great: it monitors your time spent running, distance, pace, calories and heart rate, and your runs can be stored in the memory, so you can review and analyse the data and the routes you’ve taken later

11 heart rate monitorPantsAnts, for his excellent assessment of his Polar 625x speed & distance monitorCMR, for his love-hate review of his Garmin Forerunner 201David Howard, for his review of his Navman R300And, as we also promised a 205 or 305 to a

watches on test is its heart rate monitoring functions. There's just the one hear-rate zone compared with the Polar's five, and there are no features like Polar's OwnIndex V02 test.Contact www.nike.com; 0870 700 0988Suunto T6 - £310 (£250 without the foot

(with a battery-life reading in hours), a PC interface to download data (with free Garmin software) and the GPS lock, once established, is reliable. Contact www.garmin.com; 0870 850 1241Timex Speed and Distance Monitor – £180Timex’s arm-mounted receiver