Weekly Daily Giz Wiz, week of May 30th, 2011, Netcast 1316

A piece of Bowflex equipment you wear on your wrist.

It's the BowFlex Pro Plus watch. If you’re looking for a strapless heart rate monitor watch that’s pretty inexpensive, the BowFlex Pro Plus is one to check out. It features things like Quick Touch Technology and CHR. CHR stands for continued Heart Rate display and it’s a good feature. It holds your last heart rate in memory for a few seconds after you remove your fingers. I like bargains, and I like watches, so when I saw a list price of $99.99 and a sale price of $14.99, I jumped. With shipping it came to under $20, which is my ceiling price for ordering something I don’t know much about. Now some of the stuff written in ads about this watch are a little much, like this: “With the Pro Plus Strapless Heart Rate Monitor Watch you'll be able to stick to your exercise regimen. You can reach your previously unattainable fitness goals as you watch and measure how your body is slimming down fat-wise and beefing up muscle-wise.” Really? All from a watch? Well you do get your heart rate by pushing and holding the lower left button until the watch face turns to three dashes & a heart icon appears. Then you put your thumb and 1^st finger on the sensors at the top and bottom of the display. In a few seconds your heart rate is displayed. I checked the heart rate on the watch against the heart rate monitor on the treadmill at the gym and there was just 4 to 8 heartbeats difference. I think that was pretty good. The watch also features day and date display and a 24-hour countdown timer, hi/low target zone alarm, calorie counter and backlight display. I think this is a discontinued model, but for $20 I thought it was pretty good! The place I bought it at has sold out, but I found it here for $20, including shipping.

http://bensbargains.net/deal/198008/ 

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