I'm not too happy with my heart rate monitor at the moment.

Last night's run was going superbly well, my split times were about the best they'd ever been and I was heading for a new personal best.

I got home and stopped the stopwatch. It beeped twice so I must have accidentally pressed the "stop" button twice.

After warming down I went inside and checked my time.... zero minutes, zero point zero seconds. Oh yeah, the "stop" button is also the "reset" button. Damn.

The watch is only a cheapie that I was given for xmas a couple of years ago and I had been thinking about an upgrade anyway, particularly as the heart-rate sensor annoys me. It keeps slipping down and tightening it makes it uncomfortable.

So if anyone has any suggestions for a good one, let me know. Ideally I'd love to be able to have GPS support so I can plot my routes on a map. Altitude would be nice too, so would temperature (I've always wanted that in a watch). But it needs to be easy to get the data out without expensive accessories. Bluetooth would be great. But I'm only prepared to spend so much

And the "stop" button must do nothing other than stop the bloody stopwatch no matter how many times I press it!

Well that seemed a bit too easy. Found a nice Polar RS800 on TardMe and managed to buy it with just a single bid. Not the current model, I think it's the previous one. I was expecting a bit of competition but I certainly won't complain. This is a very nice watch and I got a very good deal.

Early comments:

1. The screen is very difficult to read at night. The backlight is nowhere near as bright as it needs to be. Probably means I should get on with the running and worry about the numbers after I get home. Apparently you can zoom the screen so I'll look into that as it'll make things a bit clearer.
EDIT: Looks like it's a lot clearer if I just twist my wrist around a little further. But the backlight is still definitely much too dim.

2. The altitude measurement seems good. I was really liking the look of the Garmin 305 watch because its GPS features were very cool. Unfortunately they used GPS for altitude which ruled it out for me as it's nowhere near accurate enough.

3. This is nothing to do with the watch but I had to install the software on the Mrs' new Windows 7 laptop. I have WinXP in Virtualbox on my machine but the current release seems to be having major USB problems. I really f--king hate Windows 7. I even managed to blue-screen it somehow.
EDIT: I sorted out my Virtualbox problem so things are now working well on that front.

4. The software seems very good in what it can do but the interface could be a bit better. I'll need to RTFM a bit to get the hang of it. I'm looking forward to customising the watch screen if only I can decide what I want on it.
EDIT: It's quite straight forward to customise the displays but it's going to take me a while to figure out what I want shown where. It seems a bit strange that you get two different sets of screens depending on whether the stride sensor is connected or not, and they're accessed under different tabs in the options.
The planning features of the calendar look very good so I might start making more concrete plans for my training in future. I might even go so far as to try some intervals.

5. The buttons on the watch are a bit fiddly to use. I even found myself bumping the "start" button at one point so I should probably look at using the key lock as I don't plan to use the lap features.

The above might sound a bit like a whinge-fest but it really is a very good piece of kit. I think I'm going to get a lot out of it once I get the hang of its features and also find time to read the nutrition book I just bought.

I also need to calibrate the foot sensor at some point so I'll need to find a good accurate distance to run. I'm thinking laps of a track, as boring as it sounds, unless I can find an event coming up (assuming the course is accurate).
EDIT: I'm now thinking more along the lines of measuring something out on the bike then run it afterwards. Just need to double-check the calibration of the cycle computer.

I'll take it out for a decent hill run on Sunday if the weather holds out, maybe a flat half-marathon if not. Saturday may be out as I might have a vindaloo for lunch tomorrow
EDIT: Yep, I had the vindaloo. I used to be able to get through a "nuclear hot" one without much trouble but those days are over...

Took it for a decent run today, up Worsley and down the Harry Ell track. This watch is pretty darn good... the altitude was slightly out at the end as the barometric pressure had fallen during the session. Meh, at least it's better than GPS.

Still coming to grips with the software. It's amazing the detail to which you can plan your training and also examine the results. I just want to calibrate the foot pod now but I think it's pretty close as it is.

I think the best thing about this watch is the customisable screens and the zooming. I mostly had altitude, distance and HR shown while climbing (often zoomed to show altitude & HR only), and pace + HR on the descent.