New Heart Rate Monitor - Suunto M4

I hope everyone's weekend is off to a great start!  I was excited to go to Eastern Mountain Sports yesterday after work to pick up a new heart rate monitor.  After an hour or two of online research prior to my purchase, I ultimately decided on the Suunto M4 ($149) over the Polar brand (like my last heart rate monitor).  I previously had the Polar F4, bought in 2008 or 2009 for around $50, I believe.  

Suunto M4 Women's Heart Rate Monitor Watch ($149), Turquoise 

I must admit that I didn't use that one much mostly due to an inferior chest strap which was a hard, inflexible plastic that often failed to register my heart rate either because it got too dry or the rigid shape made it tough to conform to my chest during activity.

Suunto M4 Chest Strap

Anyways!  I decided yesterday to start using a heart rate monitor again to track how many calories I burn when I lift because I think it's impossible to estimate on your own.  I went to pull out my old Polar F4 to find it had finally died, and since I didn't like it much anyways I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try out something new :D.  

Enter: Suunto M4.  This watch is much more attractive than most bulky, chunky heart rate monitors out there (yes, I am that shallow).  The chest strap is soft and flexible, and mostly fabric.  The first time I used it I didn't have to wet the strap because I was already sweating slightly, and my heart rate was picked up instantly by the watch.  I used the watch for an elliptical interval workout I did last night, and it worked great!    The elliptical picked up my heart rate from my chest strap, which I thought was super high-tech and awesome.

I use the Precor elliptical that looks like this...the one you have to push with orange accents

As I feared, the Precor elliptical machine I was using was overestimating my calories burned by about 100 calories in my 40 minute workout.  One interesting tidbit is that the "distance" option on the elliptical exactly matched my calories burned (distance *100 = calories).  So, for those of you who don't trust the amount of calories your cardio machines are telling you that you burned, I think this is a great alternative.