I recently purchased
and returned a Polar A5 and Cardiosport Heartsafe TZ.
The A5 is too confusing to use and I deleted some of my ride information before I could review it by pressing the wrong button. Another time I pressed the wrong button and stopped recording half way through my ride.
AND the chest transmitter battery on all Polar models can't be changed by the user. It must be returned to Polar.
The Cardiosport is more user friendly but doesn't have average heartrate.
For the price of the Polar M or S series you could buy two heart rate monitors and a cyclocomputer that has cadence.
The HRM that I am keeping is the
Sports Instruments ECG5.
It has average HR for the ride, average HR for each lap, ride time, lap time, calories used, time in zone, time above zone, time below zone, day, date, time, stopwatch, and timer. It is very easy to use.
It "looks" like a nicer unit than the Polar or Cardiosport too! And the batteries are user changeable.
I thought the lap feature was something I wouldn't use since I don't race or do "laps". But here is what I decided to do with the laps feature.
My Saturday and Sunday rides are generally from home to Stone Mountain Park ("lap" 1), a couple of loops around the mountian (a "lap" for each loop), and then back home (another "lap"). Duuhhhh!!!
According to the authors of some of the HRM books (Sally Edwards, etc), most people don't need an expensive or complicated HRM. The features needed are average HR, timer, and time in zone.