Is there a better reference device as the Polar H10 to study the accuracy of ECG and PPG heart rate monitors during rest and exercise?

Last Updated on July 19, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

A Polar H10 chest strap costs 90 USD, medical and research grade heart rate monitor devices cost between 1’165 USD and 47’500 USD:

90.02 Research & medical grade ECG devices which some of those were used to study the accuracy of consumer grade HRMs in different papers

Is there no device among those expensive devices which beats the Polar H10 as far as accuracy is concerned? And has the Polar H10 really the “best heart rate”, as Rob ter Horst claims:

If we look at the paper of the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports in Magglingen about the Polar H10:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004219/

which uses ECG data of the Polar H10, we doubt that the ECG data of the Polar H10 are ECG motion artifact-free. Does not only Polars heart rate analysis software make the signal free from ECG motion artifacts? But Polars heart rate monitor software is not available for scientific studies and not open for further analysis.

A low hanging fruit, something which could be tested easily to have more options as reference devices to study the accuracy of sports sensors, is the Adinstruments Equivital Sensor belt with the Adinstruments LabChart software, which is sold as ECG motion artifact-free.

https://www.adinstruments.com/partners/equivital

A set of Adinstruments Equivital and Adinstruments LabChart software costs more than 10 000 USD. Should a device which costs that much and is sold as ECG motion artifact-free not have this feature in a convincing way? And if not, is this device worth the money at all?

Someone who could test this without to have to spend too much money for it is the Montclair State University public research university in Montclair, New Jersey, which already has the Adinstruments software:

The heart rate monitors Rob ter Horst did not test – why not?

Is this not a Service public the Montclair State University should offer to the general public, if the university already has the expensive software? The Equvital sensor belt only costs a view thousand dollars extra.

A US Army technical report has already tested the Equivital sensor belt and has compared it to the Polar H10 chest strap:

US Army Paper About the Equivital: The Device is Accurate and has Enhanced Programming Options

• But the US Army did not use the Adinstruments LabChart software. The Adinstruments LabChart software is required for the Equivital sensor belt to be ECG noise and motion artefact free.

The Adinstruments Equivital is not a 3 lead ECG device which is gold standard for HR measurements, but only a 2 lead ECG device with two channels of ECG data. But the Polar H10 has only one channel ECG. The Adinstruments Equivital with LabChart software is currently the only commercially available “research grade” ECG device which we know that it has noise and motion artifact free ECG.

• research grade devices usually offer at least 16 bit A/D conversion. the anolog to digital conversion of the Adinstruments Equivital for ECG is only 10 bit:

90.02 Research & medical grade ECG devices which some of those were used to study the accuracy of consumer grade HRMs in different papers

• An alternative are OpenBCI Cyton modules, which have 24 bit A/D conversion and 8 channels to make out of it for instance a 3 lead ECG device,. But we do not kow of any manufacturer who offers noise and motion artifact ECG software for OpenBCI modules.
• Another issue of the Adinstruments Equivital sensor belt is the short warranty time.