I work out at least 4 times a week. I am not a trained athlete by any means but do enjoy working up a good sweat & knowing that I’m doing a good thing for my body, heart and mind. I didn’t always have such a positive attitude about exercise, but over the years I have come to appreciate all the great benefits of a good workout & now find I push myself in my workouts pretty hard. There are so many great reasons to exercise but my primary goal has been weight-loss. Aerobically I participate mostly in step aerobics & spinning classes.

I bought my Polar M52 heart rate monitor in January ’01 after doing a bit of research on all the monitors available. I decided I wanted to buy from a name I could trust & Polar fit the bill. They have been making heart rate monitors for a long time now & have built a good reputation for themselves.

Once I decided on the Polar brand I then had to choose the features I was interested in. Heart rate monitors come with all sorts of bells & whistles. Some are basic models that only measure your heart rate; those tend to not be EKG-accurate. Some go so far as to be able to download your readings into a computer program so the user can track their workouts & progress. I wanted something in between those extremes. Since my main goal is weight-loss I also wanted a monitor that would measure my calories burned during each workout. And I was willing to pay between $100 & about $160. That’s how I wound up with the Polar M52. (I bought mine on ebay & got it at a great price.)

The M52 is a great heart rate monitor & the following is a list of some of its features:

-Claims to be EKG-ACCURATE to one heartbeat. If you’re buying a heart rate monitor you might as well get one that measures your true heart rate!

-Keeps a record for 2 SEPARATE USERS. It’s like having 2 monitors for the price of one. At first I thought this was a great feature but now that I’ve used the monitor for several months I realize that, although my husband only works out every now & then, it’s usually at the same time as my workouts. Therefore I don’t think it’s all that feasible for the M52 to be used by more than one user.

-CALCULATES CALORIES BURNED for each workout as well as cumulative calories burned over a period of time. This is based on your heart rate, amount of workout time, & preprogrammed age, sex, height, & weight.

-Displays the percentage of CALORIES BURNED FROM FAT (versus carbohydrates) after each workout. This is so important for those wanting to lose weight. If you find you are burning fewer fat calories than carbohydrate calories you know you need to slow down in your workouts to bring your heart rate down. This is where the M52 comes in handy for me. Since I had always pushed myself quite hard in my workouts I wasn’t burning off as much fat as I was carbs. Now I can glance down at my monitor to see where my rate is in order to either bring my rate up or, more likely, bring it down.

-Has an audible or flashing ALARM telling you when you are outside of your target heart range. You can either manually set your target range, let the monitor use your age to set your range, or use the OwnZone (discussed later) feature to set your heart rate range.

-Calculates your AVERAGE HEART RATE in a workout session. This isn’t so helpful to me but for those working on endurance it would be more useful. It also keeps track of the TOTAL EXERCISE TIME as well as how much time was spent in your target zone.

-The M52 monitor is WATER RESISTANT to 100 feet. They do state in the manual, however, that getting accurate EKG readings while swimming is difficult.

-This monitor has a BACKLIGHT for use in dark situations. The easiest way to turn it on for a few seconds is by holding the wrist monitor up to the center of your chest. This is very handy for me since I do a lot of spinning, which takes place in a dark room. Of course the more you use this feature the shorter the life of the battery so use it sparingly.

The next two features I have little experience with but thought they were worth mentioning:

-OWNINDEX – You can take a fitness test with this monitor that allegedly measures your aerobic fitness. All you do is press a few buttons on the receiver, find a quiet spot, & lie still for a few minutes. Somehow the M52 measures the variability in your heart rate to come up with a fitness level for you. Then, after exercising over a period of time (month, weeks, etc), you are supposed to be able to retake the test & compare levels. Sounds good but I’ve only used it once.

-OWNZONE – This is even more confusing to me & I find it hard to understand myself let alone explain it to you. Its purpose is to find the user’s training heart rate zone (OwnZone). Polar states in their manual that “for most adults, OwnZone corresponds to 65-85% of the max heart rate” & “is suitable for cardiovascular training either for health-related or fitness improvement purposes.” Basically, the assumption is that our target heart range varies every day due to fatigue, health, etc. The monitor will evaluate your heart rate & its variances during a 10-minute warm-up period to come up with an appropriate heart rate range for you for that workout session. OwnZone doesn’t need to be used. As I said before, you can manually set your range each time you use the M52 or just allow the monitor to use your age to come up with your settings. Since I can’t control the length of time of my warm-ups (I do fitness classes & can’t exactly tell the instructor to hold on a minute before ending the warm-up because my monitor’s not ready!) I find I’d rather just use settings based on my age.


The Polar M52 transmitter (the part you wear around your chest) battery is expected to last 2500 hours of use. Once the battery expires the transmitter needs to be replaced. I don’t know how much a new transmitter costs. The average battery life inside the wrist monitor is about 1 year, they say. They consider this to be “average” use: 2 hours a day 7 days a week. I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t use my monitor that much so I’m hoping mine will last for a couple years. Once the battery loses “juice” they suggest it be replaced at a Polar Service Center. I haven’t run into this situation yet but I can imagine it might be a hassle. First of all, you’re left without a heart rate monitor. I wonder how long it takes for this service? Then I wonder how much this might cost?


All in all I really enjoy having my Polar M52 heart rate monitor. I like knowing where my heart rate is during a workout & whether I should kick it up a notch or bring it back down. I like knowing approximately how many calories I’ve burned & how long I exercised in my target heart zone. I have found the Polar M52 to be just what I was looking for in a heart rate monitor.

If you have any further questions or would like to see more of their product line they have a website at: http://www.polar.fi/. From there you can click on the country you live in (lower left corner) & go to that country’s Polar site. These sites are loaded with information & quite interesting.


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