Mio Motiva Strapless Heart Rate Monitor Review

Disclaimer: Mio sent me this heart rate monitor to review, however I am under no obligation to do so nor to make the review positive. This review reflects my personal opinions about the Motiva watch.

Like I said, I was sent the Motiva Strapless Heart rate monitor to review from Mio back in November 08. I was ready to post my thoughts after a few weeks but decide that I wanted to give this heart rate monitor a more lengthy trial.

I have been using the Motiva for more than 3 months now, daily and here is what I think of it.

What I Liked About The Motiva

Before getting started you need to personalize your Motiva by enter some information into it. Things like your name, weight, birthday, activity level etc… Setup takes 5 minutes maybe 10 reading the users guide beginning to end. So it wasn’t too difficult to set it.

The big feature of the Mio Motiva is it’s ability to display your heart rate without using a chest strap. There are 2 silver senors on the front of the watch where you place your index and middle fingers. A “test” message appears and in about 5 seconds it displays your current heart rate.

As far as accuracy goes I did test it a few times against the old fingers to the neck method and it was pretty close, 5 beats was the most it was off by.

Along with your heart rate in BPM (beats per minute) it also displays the percent of your maximum heart rate that the BPM equals. For example, tonight when I got back from my run after about 10 minutes my heart rate showed as 99 BPM and it also displayed it as 52%. That is important for training within your targets (see more info on target heart rates from the American Heart Association)

5 Different Exercise Timers

This is a feature that I really liked. Instead your standard timer that goes from 0 until you stop it (which is also does) you get ability of using 4 other modes. It counts down to zero from whatever number you set the timer to, I used this when I was running around my neighborhood and was trying to get back to my house before the timer ran out.

I won’t go into all the other timer modes but I will say that I did manage to find a use for all of them.

Calories Burned

The Motiva also tracks the number of calories that you’ve burned during your workouts. This worked really well while doing steady state exercises like running but once I started doing HIIT the numbers seemed off by quite a bit.

Heart Rate Recovery Mode

Some experts say the faster your heart rate recovers the healthier your heart is. I think that’s true and I was able to track that using the heart rate recovery mode. You take your heart rate right after you stop exercising which gives you your “high” rate, then it counts down 60 seconds and asks to take your reading again which is your “low”. Then it displays the difference and gives you a rating. Either Poor, Fair, good, superb, mine has been fair for 2 months now.

What Didn’t I Liked About The Motiva?

One of the features of the Motiva is that it has the ability to track the number of calories that you consume everyday. It’s promoted as a major feature of the watch but I found no use for it. I did use the feature for a few weeks but stopped because I found it to be tedious. I would forget a meal or a snack and that would throw the whole thing off.

In general I have stopped counting calories so I really don’t have a need the calorie counting feature.

The whole package comes with a little book called Mio Sense and inside there is a lot of good information including the Mio Sense weight management system, a few simple workout plans and food tables that show you the calories, fat, carbs etc.. of a wide variety of foods. I really hate the size of the book, I think it’s made to fit in your pocket but it is way too small and is almost unreadable. That’s a shame because the content is great.

Recommendations

Overall I like the Mio Motiva and recommend that you pick one up either at one of the many dealers or directly online at Miowatch.com. It will help you keep your workouts focused and the timers are extremely useful. Many of you know that I am doing P90X and a heart rate monitor is recommended, this watch fits that role perfectly. It’s stylish and I honestly get asked about it once or twice a week when people see me taking my heart rate, which I do a lot.

There is definately more to this watch then I have mentioned here. Each one comes with access to the 3500 calorie club which I have yet to sign up for at miowatch.com but the descriptions of the program seem excellent and if it equals the quality of the watch it’s self then I’m sure it is great.

One finally note: Look for the first ever weightlossweapons.com contest where I will be giving away prizes including a MIO Motiva Petite Heart Rate Watch worth $100.

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