Coros Heart Rate Monitor Review: Simple, Comfortable Tracking
- Simple to setup
- Accurate and consistent heart rate tracking
- Great battery life
- Comfortable to use
- Can't be used independently
- Charging cable is too short
Coros is a well-established authority in the fitness watch space that usually goes toe to toe with other fitness watches from Garmin, Apple, and smartwatches like the Pixel Watch. Their watches are often considered some of the best running watches available. While wrist-based wearables do many awesome things, they aren't usually in an ideal location to get precise heart rate data.
This may not be a big deal to many people, but if you take your fitness performance seriously, you may be looking to get the most accurate heart rate information to take your training to the next level. Heart rate-based training is a great training regimen but only works if you are getting an accurate heart rate. This is where dedicated heart sensors come into play. They are designed to do one thing and one thing only, to give you the most precise heart rate information available.
Coros sent their new Heart Rate Monitor for the purposes of this review.
Design
While most dedicated heart rate monitors get strapped to your chest, Coros has gone in a very different direction. Instead, Coros designed this device to be placed over your upper arm (above the elbow). As Coros explains it, your upper arm has an ample amount of deep tissue and blood flow, allowing their heart rate monitor to gather incredibly accurate heart rate data.
The Coros Heart Rate Monitor is a rather simple product. There are no buttons to mess with, making setting it up an absolute breeze. It's essentially a small rectangle attached to an elastic band that is held securely in place with Velcro. The Coros Heart Rate Monitor measures 42.5 x 28.4 x 9.9mm and weighs only 19g.
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The band is made from a combination of polyester fiber, nylon, and spandex. It has a minimum circumference of 7.09 inches and a maximum circumference of 12.6 inches.
Looking at the Coros Heart Rate Monitor itself, it looks exactly like the bottom of a standard fitness watch or smartwatch. Inside it has 5 LED lights and 4 photodetectors to track your blood flow. There is an LED indicator light along the left edge that lights up green when it's active.
The charging cable has a USB-A port on one side and a proprietary connector on the other side. At about eight inches, the charging cable itself is incredibly small. It's so small that depending on your situation, charging it can be slightly annoying.
Setup and pairing
The Coros Heart Rate Monitor can't be used as a standalone product with the Coros app, which is a bit of a bummer. The Coros Heart Rate Monitor must be paired with some kind of device like a smartwatch, fitness tracker, bike, or gym equipment for it to track your heart rate.*
*Update/clarification: The Coros device will track your heart rate regardless of if it is paired to another device, so long as it's powered on. Because it does not have a display, the Coros Heart Rate Monitor can only transmit the data it's gathered to you via a paired device like your smartphone.
You can install the Coros app and pair the Heart Rate Monitor within the app, but it won't let you track any workouts. At least pairing was simple with the included QR code. Instead, you have to pair it via Bluetooth to one of the previously mentioned devices. There is no ANT+ support as the Bluetooth chip used in the Coros Heart Rate Monitor doesn't support it.
Pairing it with a Polar Ignite 3 was a relatively simple process. All you have to do is plug the Heart Rate Monitor into its charging cable and head to the settings menu of the Ignite 3. You then pair it via Bluetooth in the "pair sensor menu" and that's it. As soon as a workout was enabled, the Coros Heart Rate Monitor would turn on and the Ignite 3 would use it during the workout.
Obviously, the complexity of this connection is going to be dependent on the device that you use. If your device can connect to another Heart Rate Monitor and has Bluetooth, then odds are it will work with the Coros heart rate monitor. It supports up to three simultaneous Bluetooth connections.
Performance
The Coros Heart Rate Monitor performed admirably during testing. It didn't matter if it was a simple jog around town, or sprinting around the track, the data acquired from the Coros Heart Rate Monitor was accurate and more importantly, consistent. One thing is clear after having the luxury of using a variety of smartwatches and fitness watches over the years, those optical sensors can really struggle to get consistent data when placed on a wrist.
Depending on the algorithm used, some watches can get consistent and accurate results, but those watches are usually quite expensive. Even then, smartwatches like the Galaxy Watch 5 are terrible at accurately showing your heart rate information. Adding something like the Corros Heart Rate Monitor is a low-cost, no-frills way to fix their shortcomings.
Wearing the band itself is quite comfortable once you get the size dialed in correctly. Once adjusted to the proper size, you shouldn't have to mess with it again, unless of course, the size of your arm changes.
The Coros Heart Rate Monitor has excellent battery life. After taking it on a few different workouts, only a few percent of the battery had been drained. This is in line with Coros' claim of 38 hours of tracking time and 80 days of standby time. Charging the Heart Rate Monitor takes about two hours.
Final Verdict
Coros took a shot at designing a different kind of heart rate monitor. It made a sort of hybrid device by fusing the optical sensor tech found in fitness trackers and attaching it to an armband to create a new take on the heart rate sensor category.
Thankfully, Coros was able to pull it off and create an alternative for those who hate the idea of placing a strap around their chest. The Coros Heart Rate Monitor is a simple, but effective tool for accurately measuring your heart rate during workouts. It doesn't matter if it's biking, a gym workout, a HIIT session, or just a simple jog, the Coros Heart Rate monitor is going to be accurate, consistent, and comfortable to wear. It's just too bad that it can't be used independently of a smartwatch.
The Coros Heart Rate Monitor can be found in Coros' online store as of July 27, 2023, in the U.S. and China for $79. There will be a global launch in September 2023.