The Accuracy Of Smartphone Heart Rate Monitor Apps

It seems that heart rate monitor apps are everywhere. They’re on our phones, our smartwatches, and they do look pretty accurate. The popularity of these apps makes them necessary in modern times. These apps are quite handy for those who love to work out. But the question always exists as to how accurate are these apps.

In this article, we will go over that and hopefully give you a pretty good idea. So with all that said, let’s start.

What Are Heart Rate Monitor Apps?

A brief mention is necessary if we are going to explain how accurate heart rate monitor apps are. In short, they’re apps build by developers that perform a very useful function. The core purpose of these apps is to track your heart rate.

As one can imagine, this comes useful when exercising or going for a run. These apps go hand in hand with both professional and amateur athletes. But as mentioned previously, not everyone knows how exactly these apps measure your heart rate. We do know that they do that, but how?

How Do Heart Rate Monitor Apps Work?

It does seem like these apps are a mystery. But once you dive a bit deeper into it, you’ll quickly find out that these apps work very simply.

Since every smartphone has one, developers have figured out ways for the app to measure your heart rate through the smartphone. To do that, the apps use the camera and the light sensor to track your heart rate. Since blood constantly flows through our veins, the apps detect a change in color every time our blood flows through our skin. The phone’s camera can detect the change in light that happens with every heartbeat.

Now that we know that, how accurate are they? We all know of popular brands like Samsung and Huawei and they build apps with their smartphones.

But there are also third-party apps that you can download from the App Store or Google Play Stores. Now that we know how they work, let’s look at how accurate heart rate monitor apps are.

How Accurate Are Heart Rate Monitor Apps?

The general public doesn’t necessarily understand how these apps work. While we did explain that in the previous point, there are those who believe they are 100% accurate, and those who don’t believe are accurate at all.

So which side is right? Neither, it seems. These apps can be very accurate and very inaccurate. It all depends on the app you’re using. There have been many studies where professionals examine the accurate of Samsung heart rate monitor apps, and their results vary. Some apps miss anywhere between one and twenty beats.

The case is even more damning when looking at the accuracy of these apps while exercising. Since the whole point of accurate heart rate monitor apps are to be used while exercising, they have to be accurate otherwise they’re useless. Missing as much as twenty beats per second isn’t really optimal.

But like always, you have good and you have bad apps. For example, the Welltory HRV App is a very accurate smartphone application that can also be downloaded on your smartwatch. Head over to Welltory for more information about their product.

How Do You Benefit From These Apps?

Despite some being inaccurate, we still benefit from these apps in many ways. Technology has a way of transforming our lives. Out smartphones can be used for a whole host of things, such as tracking your heart rate. The addition of this feature to our smartphone is a very handy one. But we benefit from these apps in more than one way.

• Enhance Your Training

We know what these apps do and where they come in handy. We also know that both athletes and workout enthusiasts love them. So the first benefit of using an accurate heart rate monitor app is that it enhances your training.

Athletes look at ways to receive feedback when training. A good application can not only track your heart rate, but it can also track other things such as calories burned and more. What this gives you is access to first-hand feedback necessary for improving your training.

• Know the Intensity

Through the use of these applications, athletes also know how much they’re working out. If you feel that you can go more, then these apps are absolutely vital.

We know that different age groups can reach different heartbeats. For people in their 30s, the max BPM should be around 187. This tells you how much you can go. By looking at what the feedback from the app says, we can get a better sense of how much intensity to put in our training sessions.

• It’s Your Personal Coach

Everyone loves to have a personal coach when working out. While not everyone has one, everyone can have one with an accurate heart rate monitor app.

By looking at the feedback from the app, we know more about how much work we put in. We can then use this data to make an accurate assumption of how our exercise is going. You can do one session and put in more effort, and put in less effort in the next. You can then compare both sessions to make an accurate assumption as to how effective both sessions are.

In short terms, an accurate heart rate monitor app is like a personal coach that guides you as you work out. It gives you valuable feedback and tells you when to work more and when to stop.

Conclusion

While the latter part of this article focuses on something else entirely, we have to mention the fact that heart rate monitor apps can be very accurate or very inaccurate.

Cheap knock-offs of popular applications aren’t that uncommon. There is a whole market for cheap knock-off applications. But even if they’re free, don’t fall for them as they can miss as much as twenty beats per second.

With all that said, there are amazing and very accurate heart rate monitor apps that also come free. We mentioned one so make sure to use it.