Garmin vs Polar Heart Rate Straps

I first got a heart rate strap when I bought my Garmin 800 bundle a number of years ago. It was quite interesting to get a measure of "actual" effort vs. perceived effort and I wore it for every ride for interest reasons - although I never trained to it.

Garmin Strap (with transmitter):

However it was about 8 months later that the readings started to get a bit erratic. I wrote about it here: http://midlandscyclist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/garmin-heart-rate-monitor.html

In fact with the last strap I referred to in the above post I stopped wearing it for a while and then would only wear it for a "more interesting" ride. I effectively stopped using it other than on the off-chance it would be reliable, and it was for a while. Often moistening the contact patches would help before putting it on. However it eventually got less and less useful and was hardly worth wearing. At over £30 it was to expensive to keep replacing for just over a years use.

However my son came back for vacation from university and he had bought a Polar Strap. These were apparently fully compatible and a fraction of the price

Polar Strap:

Its (as of August 2015) £10-12 from Amazon so about 1/3rd of the price. So I ordered one - from Wiggle in this case for £12.30 in a M-XXL size. It arrived promptly as always and I went to fit it.

This is where the only problem arose. It's not clear from the photos but in fact around the popper is a rubber collar. I assume that this is to form a water proof seal around the contacts on the transmitter unit. No matter how I tried I could not get the transmitter to fit so I had two choices - return the strap or "modify" it. For £12 I decided that I would trim the rubber collar back so that the transmitter would fit, so carefully, with a new and hence super sharp Stanley blade, trimmed about 2mm off the collar. 

Here are the bits I trimmed off:

The result was that the transmitter then fitted perfectly. Since then I have worn the strap for all rides expect commutes and it has worked faultlessly in every circumstance. It has been absolutely drenched in sweat when I was in the French Alps and never had any issue. This is what I would have expected the Garmin strap to deliver - but in this case Garmin won't get any more of my money for a HR strap.

As a side note I read on a forum that sometimes Garmin straps can be made to work again but cutting a 5mm or so strip out of the strap between the poppers. I have not tried this through!