Last Updated on July 17, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
Rob ter Horst claims that the Polar H10 chest strap is more accurate than a Holter ECG device:
Rob’s statements are based on a paper of the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports in Magglingen:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004219/
But if we look at how detailed ECG peak analysis can be done with an ECG toolbox, as shown for instance in the example of the iWorx ECG toolbox:
Where every single ECG peak can be analyzed in great detail. Sophisticated ECG toolboxes like the one shown in the example rises the question:
Is the 90 USD Polar H10 chest strap really more accurate than research or medical grade ECG devices, which costs between 1700 USD (Schiller Medilog Holter ECG) and 40 000 USD (Vintus ECG):
How can this be explained?
A paper of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio used an expensive Quinton Standard 3-leads ECG device to test the accuracy of several heart rate monitors::
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732081/
They found, that the Polar H7 chest strap is nearest to the Quinton Standard 3-leads ECG devices, as far as accuracy is concerned, followed by the Apple watch 3 at speeds up to 15 km/h on a treadmill.
Rob ter Horst says the Polar H10 chest strap is an ECG chest strap. But the Polar H10 chest strap is only a single lead or single channel ECG device. The Holter ECG device Rob ter Horst reviewed has 3 leads or 3 channels, which are amplified seperately,. With ECG toolboxes as for instance the iWorx toolbox, the accuracy can be further be increased.
At higher speeds, problems with ECG motion artifacts arrise in devices as the Holter ECG device, but not in the Polar H10 chest strap. Polar seems to have solved this problem. But the problem of ECG motion artifacts has not yet been solved in medical and research grade ECG devices. This does not mean that it cannot be solved, this only means that nobody has done it to this date.
see also the discussion in our journal and our review: