Review: Nike C8 Heart Rate Monitor

I've had my Nike C8 heart rate monitor for a couple of week nows and I've used pretty much all of the features and I'm ready to give you my thoughts on it. To summarize, I really like the watch and would recommend it to others. It has lots of features for the price and is very easy to use.

As a watch it has all your standard features, time, date, two alarms, backlight (that actually stays on long enough to read the display) and two time zones. It's pretty easy to set the time and alarms. I never thought I'd use the two time zones but it was pretty nice when we were in the mountain time zone. It also has an auto off feature to save battery life, it can be set to shut off after a certain number of hours of inactivity, up to 24. The watch is designed for a man and has a huge face, which makes it very easy to read while running.

The heart rate monitor is pretty comfortable and I hardly notice when I run. I haven't had any problems with it staying in place. However Amy has used it a couple times and said it slipped down a little bit, but not enough to stop and fix while running (I bet she just doesn't have it tight enough). The readings have seemed pretty accurate most of the time. In order to get actuate readings you have to get the sensors wet, I get my chest wet too. I haven't had any problems getting accurate readings when I have done that (but without doing that my heart rate jumped up to 230 in a few minutes of really easy jogging). Unlike a lot of other HRMs, you can change the batteries on your own, saving you time and money from having to send it in. The manual says the watch battery will last 1.5 years depending on usage and the monitor battery will last 1 year with one hour of use a day (I busted out my trusty TI-85 and that's 365 hours). The strap comes off the monitor easily and you can toss it in the washer with your other running stuff. I've never been around anyone else with a HRM so I have no idea about interference.

Other than time the watch has three modes: Run, INTR (Interval), and Data.

Run Mode
This is the stopwatch. It has 50-lap memory and all kinds of other neat stuff. You can setup one heart rate zone, the max value is 240 bpm and the low end is 30 bpm. If you have the zone setup you can turn the alarm on or off so it will beep at you if you get out of the zone, it beeps at you even if you haven't started the time yet (I haven't decided if that's a nice feature or not yet, I'm leaning toward not so much). You can set which is displayed larger, lap time or total time. You can also setup 'My View', with that you can choose what is on the big display and what is on the little one from the following categories: LAP, HR, Time, or Total. You can't have the same category on both, which is kind of annoying if you are switching the two. There is a button that allows you to switch between views quickly. I think it is pretty hard to press, but it has gotten a little easier since I first got the watch. You can switch between Lap/Total, HR/Total, and 'My View'.

Interval Mode
This is a more advanced version of a countdown timer than I had seen before. Actually it's just two countdown timers (called segments), one goes off as soon as the other is done. I've used this for a fartlek and it worked pretty well for that. It will be really nice to use once I start doing interval training. It only has a countdown mode. I've used Ironman watches before and they have a couple other modes, like it counts up after counting down to zero and some other one. The thing I don't like about the interval timer is that if you want to store your run (see below) you have to switch to Run mode and start the timer. But you can change the view to display your heart rate along with the time remaining on the current segment. It would also be nice to be able to setup a different heart rate zone for each segment.

Data Mode
You can save up to 10 of your runs in memory. Then you can use the data mode to review those runs. Here is the data that you can review: total run time, average split time, average HR, best split and average HR for it, time in, below and above your heart rate zone, each split and the total time at that point and average heart rate for it.

Complaints
I really don't have any major complaints about this watch. If I was going to get another one (in this price range) I wouldn't hesitate to get this same one. Really the only things I would change is to have more statistical data (but I'm pretty nerdy like that) and have a separate zone for each interval segment. It would be really nice to be able to see what the max heart rate for each split and run (and that falls under the more stats complaint).

This watch retails for $120, but I found it at WatchNThings for $82.95. I was really happy with their service, I ordered the watch on a Friday morning and got it the following Monday and I only paid $5.99 for the slowest shipping. They also sent along two extra batteries. I very highly recommend them.

Hopefully I covered everything you want to know about the watch, but if not leave me a comment with what you want to know and I'll find the answer for you. (I reserve the right to just make something up if I can't find a real answer.)