Let my heart rate monitor’s untimely demise be a lesson to you. It is dead because that’s what happens when you don’t properly close your water bottle, then jam it into your gym bag, and the water drips all over that oat bar you had opened but were saving for after your weightlifting class. The oat bar turns to mush and coats in a sticky goo whatever resides in your gym bag. The numbers on my heart rate monitor only partially appear now. I think its electronics are, as the experts call it, “toast.”

But that’s all right, because it gives me the chance to pore over the current options and find a gadget that’s cool, affordable and has features I never knew existed when I bought my last monitor at a yard sale in Santa Cruz, one of the healthiest cities in the United States.

I’ll start with the most expensive monitor (because it’s getting close to Friday Fantasy Happy Hour), then look at the ones that are closer to my budget.

If money is no object, then you’ll want to consider the Suunto X6HRM, which sells for between $550 and $600. This device comes from a company in Finland (which explains those cool double u’s in its name) and is almost twice as costly as the Suunto Advizor Wrist Computer worn by that guy Sawyer on Lost when Ben informs him if his heart rate goes over 140, his heart will explode. (That beats any threats my instructors have barked at me during my gym sessions…)

The Suunto X6HRM is more than a simple heart rate monitor. It’s an over-the-top computer that will keep you informed about any number of data points, whether you’re cross-country skiing across the Arctic snowcap, rock climbing in Afghanistan, or cave diving in the Gulf of Mexico.

Besides the requisite heart rate monitoring (with interval timer, average/highest/lowest heart rate and altitude profile memory), you can record altitude, vertical speed, altitude difference and cumulative ascent with the on-board altimeter, gauge sea level pressure and weather trends with the barometer, establish your bearing with a compass, and set three alarms or monitor two time zones with the watch. The monitor comes with a transmitter belt (the thing you wrap around your chest so it can count your heart beats).

The challenge in using a monitor that’s jam-packed with this many features is that you need to learn which buttons to push and for how long in order to measure whatever is important to you at the moment. In other words, it’s mightily complex. If you choose your toys by the number of buttons it has or the complexity of its menu interface, then Suunto is your company. (I mean, if it were a company that made more ordinary products, it would probably only have a single u in its name, right?)

Next time I’ll look at something a mite simpler, in case your goals are more modest.