A lot of people are dismissing wrist based heart as being unreliable and inaccurate. This morning I wanted to put it to a test and did a 13km run with my Garmin 735xt (Wrist HR) and Suunto Ambit (Chest HR) I ran a hill or two to see how fast each responded to input as well. From the pics you can see that the Suunto went all haywire the first 7 minutes, and I did wet the belt. The Garmin responded perfect from the start. On the hills both heart rates responded more or less the same, but the chest heart rate recorded the recovery a little faster, about a 5 second delay from the wrist. Through out most of the run the heart rates corresponded almost 100%. Taking comfort into consideration the Garmin won hands out, and I consider it to be more accurate because of the start of the chest HR. Interesting the Suunto lost 10m for every 1km on the Garmin, thats huge. It also recorded my average pace 4s slower.
