Product Review: Mio Alpha Heart Rate Monitor

The Mio Alpha is a Heart Rate Monitor without the chest strap. It’s more comfortable to wear and provides real-time heart rate monitoring with an accuracy that is just like wearing a chest strap. Read my Mio Alpha Heart Rate Monitor review below.

Mio Alpha HRM has won several awards for it’s innovative design and approach in measuring heart rate. Instead of a strap like most HRM in the market, the Mio Alpha uses LED Lights and an electro-optical cell to “sense” the volume of blood under the skin. From there, the watch uses an algorithm to calculate pulse signals and determine the heart rate.

The Mio Alpha has Bluetooth technology to communicate with popular fitness apps like Wahoo, adidas miCoach, Strava, Runkeeper, MapMyFitness, and Mio Go.

Mio Alpha HRM Watch Features

Here are the main features of the Mio Alpha:

• Continuous heart rate monitoring offers a real time assessment of training
• intensity
• No uncomfortable chest strap – so you can train with heart and comfort
• Tested accurate at performance speeds
• Water resistant up to 30m depths
• Customize your workout with 3 user-settable heart rate zones
• Connect to your favorite fitness apps & devices with Bluetooth® Smart (4.0)*
• Mineral glass display shows time, exact heart rate, & exercise timer, so you
• can have to-the-second visual data on everything you need to know
• Comes in 1 size (Fits wrist sizes 5.7”-7.8”)

Mio Alpha Heart Rate Monitor Review

The watch looks great. It’s rectagular design is trendy. I got the black color and it’s gray highlight makes the perfect color combination for a sporty watch.

It’s simple to operate. It only has two buttons for viewing and to change settings. It’s so easy to use that I didn’t bother to read the manual. But I did read it later on to check the other functions.

The display is large and easy to read. However, there is no button to turn on any backlight. I wonder how I was supposed to use this when running at night. The display is bright enough when looking at a certain angle. The digits just glares back at you. At night, the same thing happens, a small amount of ambient light is needed and you can see the digits at a certain angle. However, you won’t see anything on the screen when it’s completely dark.

Once you set the HRM on, it can quicky detect and display your heart rate. No long wait times. And since it’s chest strap-free, you can run and workout more comfortably.  I may look geeky wearing a GPS watch on one wrist and an HRM on the other wrist.  But I prefer that than people seeing me fixing the chest strap like I was wearing a bra.

A drawback is that the Mio Alpha HRM Watch just works as an HRM. It only gives the current time and heart rate. It doesn’t offer other simple features like a timer, stopwatch, or an alarm. You can only recall the data of your previous workout. To view a history, better use it with an app on your mobile phone.

On the bright side, the accuracy of the Mio Alpha has been very good. I tried comparing it with chest-strapped HRM and the average reading has been very close. There is only a one beat difference in my tests.

My Mio Alpha Test Run

A Quick Comparison

I made a quick comparison with my Wahoo Blue HR chest-strapped heart rate monitor. As I watch the reading from the Wahoo app, the Mio Alpha tries to equal the reading from my Wahoo HRM. As the value changes, the Mio Alpha also catches up.

The Mio Alpha is quite accurate once the heart rate stays constant. But once the value goes up or down, there is a delay on how fast it will catch up to the new value.  But it eventually hits the same value as my chest strapped HRM in a less than a second.

The 10 Minute Test

After the quick check, I used both devices for 15 minutes. Just a normal activity of walking and sitting. The value now changes rapidly and I wonder how the Mio Alpha would compare to my chest-strapped HRM.

After about 15 minutes, the Mio Alpha registered an average HR of 101 compared to the chest strap HRM that reads an average of 100. That’s close enough.

The 6.5KM Test

I was not contented with the short test so I took it for a run. I used the Mio Alpha and the Wahoo BlueHR at the same time during the run and compared the reading.

After 6.5KM and 40 minutes of running , the Mio Alpha registered an average HR of 168. The Wahoo App showed 167 from it’s chest-mounted HRM.

Not bad at all. The Mio Alpha misses only 1 beat.

Mio Alpha Heart Rate Monitor Review Summary

Mio Alpha HRM Watch is a great alternative to a chest strapped HRM.  It is just as accurate and looks trendy.  It is also a great every day watch to keep track of time.

However, it lacks other features I look for in a running watch and I look forward to future upgrades.

Mio Alpha works with many popular fitness apps which can extend its features based on the app capabilities like calories burned and history tracking.

Read more Mio Alpha Heart Rate Monitor reviews and products at Amazon.com