Stylish...

This unit is great looking! Designed in the USA--one might think at the Art Center in Pasadena--and made in Hong Kong. It's sleek, sporty lines and curves conjure the sex appeal of sporty foreign cars, while the ample buttons lend cuteness and contemporary accessibility. Nice change from my staid, institutional-gray Polar Accurex Plus--designed and manufactured in Finland, where, once form and function melded high art & industrial design. Or was that Denmark? Anyway, even my girlfriend was taken with the design, "Ooh, I'd wear that", she swooned. Fortunately, the charcoal band, metallic face-plate and the caution-yellow buttons and detailing clashed with this week's nail polish color: Hey Vito! Is my car ready? I was free to continue my test drive.

Responsive...

The contoured watch band grips my wrist with a light yet secure feel. Big numbers flash the essentials clearly, even at a glance. The Zone Trainer Pro's illumination feature--which lights the numbers rather than the whole display, reminiscent of an auto's digital speedometer--delivers great visibility at high noon or midnight. Ovalized buttons bubble out conspicuously from the edges and watch-face inviting function changes from a finger or thumb. They respond instantly to touch, calling forth fairly intuitive monitor features. The chest strap transmitter fits snugly and stays put--running or cycling. Anything not immediately apparent from just noodling around is handled clearly in the users' guide.

The Zone Trainer's manual is a diminutive, 23 page for this function, just do this... overview, unless you're septa-lingual. Then it's 161 pages. Flip to nearly any page, and regardless of language you'll be able to figure out how to use this thing. Some heartrate monitors' instructions read like a foreign tongue, despite being printed in English. Not here. Sequential illustrations with blue or red highlighted buttons demonstrate correct operation.

Other features of note...

Package Additions include a Heartrate Training Easy Reference Card, a detailed training guide from cardio maven, Sally Edwards, and a special offer for Buh-Bump, a HR monitor electrode cream (which, as they say, "works and smells better than spit"). Sports Instruments gives you a bike mount, too. Big deal, you say? Hey, some companies charge separately for this item. It's pretty dense rubber, I figure about 90 grams (much too weighty for my bike) so, the watch stays on my wrist.

The Usual: Most good HR monitors now have time of day, a calendar, and alarm, at least one programmable training zone with an audible above and below zone indicator. The ECG5 is no different.

Heart Rate Training Zone Memory is important because when recording your workouts--you are keeping a log, aren't you?--this reveals whether or not you're hitting your target. Many of us train too hard on our easy days, and too easy on our hard days. What are you doing?

Lap Stopwatch w/ Average Heart Rate per Lap is accurate to a tenth of a second. After scrolling through your time-above, time-below, time-in and average HR for the session you can view each lap individually with it's corresponding average heartrate. All of a sudden your split times take on new meaning. What's your body telling you as you post that 6 minute mile? Are you maxed-out or do you have some heart beats left to go sub-six? You can get by solely on RPE (rating of perceived exertion), but why guesstimate when a simple biofeedback device can add so much more depth to your understanding of your training and racing? You do want to improve, right?

Caloric Expenditure estimates the energy you've spent during your exercise session, based on weight. Did you know that a three hour brick is equivalent to a plate of nachos and a couple of margueritas? (Kidding.)

20 Hour Countdown Timer is great for cooking that perfect pot of brown rice--tonite at 7pm or tomorrow at 3pm.

Lose your manual? SI has included, as part of their online support the whole of their flashcard-sized ECG5 users' booklet. It looks as though they've taken their original Quark file, complete with crop marks and printing data and "printed" it as a .pdf file, then posted it to their site. Their site by the way is as stylish as their watch, although I'd like it if the text were as large and easy to read as the Zone Trainer Pro's display.

Simple Training Guidelines Online SI also provides Heartrate Training Easy Reference on their site as well.

So, this monitor looks great, and is easily readable and usable, so it's a good choice, right? Wrong. Since you're reading this on slowtwitch.com, I take for granted you're a competitive athlete. You have special needs and are better served by a more comprehensive stream of information from your vessel's engine room.

For us, special needs are really basics...

Average heartrate by itself doesn't cut it. As an athlete and a coach, I believe training detail is necessary for progress and avoiding over-trained/ under-recovered conditions. Show me the entire exercise session on a timeline, and corresponding physical responses--at least, minute by minute. Allow me download this to a computer so I know precisely how long I spend in each of the various training zones, and can quickly log / chart that data. Beyond training detail, give me room to store multiple files so that starting a new record doesn't dispatch my last into the ether. Make sure that my monitor's reception isn't easily confused by others' monitors, or treadmills, garage door openers, cell phones, etc. And, finally, I can do without novelty features cluttering my display--calorie counter and countdown timer. You might feel the same way.

Buy the ECG5, Zone Trainer Pro for your sister-in-law who's thinking about beginning an exercise program--she'll love it--but not for yourself. If you're in the market for a new HRM, stay tuned. I suspect Polar's new offerings alone will be worth the wait.

Additional reports to follow.

As for this Zone Trainer Pro in particular: I found its readings erratic, easily affected by other electrical devices. It read "0" while I was on a recumbent bike with my arms by my side. It read accurately (although it didn't always concur with the bike's estimation of my heartrate) when I brought the watch to chest level. I'm wearing it now and it zeros out when near my computer monitor. It takes several seconds to begin responding again after moving 4 feet away. My Accurex Plus is less prone to interference (I suppose) due to its coded signal transmission, though it's not perfect, either.

Swimming with it gave me similar results. At the end of an interval it read "0" for a moment and then registered a heartbeat. Was it recording the whole time or just after I stopped swimming? Better than fingers-to-the-neck-counting, anyway. My Polar monitor works great in the water. Of course, neither unit's chest strap stays in place when pushing off from the wall.

Running, the ECG5 worked well. Also, I used it with one of my athletes, at the track and on two different occasions the watch reset itself near the end of the workout. Thinking possible driver error, I wasn't concerned with the product until I experienced the same phenomenon, myself, in the pool. Perhaps the Mode and Stop / Start buttons are especially sensitive, but I was unable to duplicate another accidental Mode shift.

Reviewing the exercise file was easy enough. One button gets you to your file and two others either advance or back up within the exercise session. Just keep pencil and paper nearby to log your data following your training session because the ECG5 stores only one file.

Oh, the Lap and Lap Time alternately swap places on the display, which I found annoying. Polar's Accurex allows for Lap, Lap Time and Total Time (or Time of Day) to show concurrently.