shfoley

The Polar S725 Manual I downloaded says this about the heart rate alarm - "Note that you can not use the alarm when Bicycle functions are on."

Does this really mean what it says? If I am using this HRM as a bike computer I can not have it alarm when my HR is out of the zone? This seems too crazy to be true? When else would I want to use the alarm on a HRM designed for riding a bike?

If anyone actually has one of these, and can fill me in before I shell out $300 or so that would be great.

Thanks.

supcom

You are correct. When you select one of the two bikes to use the HRM with the speed sensor, the audible alarms are not available. The HRM still gives you a visual alarm by flashing the HR reading if you are out of the target limits.

Although this may seem like a bad thing, the HRM beeper is really not loud enough to hear most of time when riding outdoors. And personally, I would turn it off anyway like I did with my old Timex HRM because it's annoying anyway.

Worse than the alarm restriction, the S725 DOES NOT support autostart. The S710 and S720 can be set to begin recording data once you enable HR measurement and then start riding. The recording stops when you stop riding (sort of like how ride time works on a cycle computer). Polar eliminated this option in the S725 for some inexplicable reason. With the S725 you must start and stop recording manually.

shfoley

I Currently have a Polar M61 which is OK even though very basic. Unfortunately it interferes with the cateye double wireless computer I just bought. All the functions on the 725 look nice so I was thinking I could replace the current cateye and polar with 1 unit. But I really like the audible alarm on the M61. Maybe I will just keep the M61 and get a wired (Astrale 8?) cyclecomputer.