Polar heart rate monitors are the ones I’ve used in the past. So let’s look at one that’s less pricey than the Suunto X6HRM but still does the job of counting the number of heartbeats in any given moment.

Two features that are important to me: The numbers have to be big, so I don’t need to wear my reading glasses during workouts in dim rooms. (I take an early morning class, and bright lights and early mornings don’t go together.) Plus, I want the monitor to stay set on the heart rate so I don’t have to push a button every time I need to read my heart rate. There’s nothing more frustrating than to glance down at the face of the monitor to find your BPM and to get the time of day instead. I don’t need a reminder about what time it is. (Besides, if I have to take my hands off the handlebars at 5:45 in the morning to push a button, somebody could end up in the hospital.)

One of Polar’s newest models is the F55, which everybody seems to be selling for around $220 — not so bad compared to the cost of a month’s training with a personal coach. And, my, oh, my, the features it includes!

The package comes with the wrist unit as well as the strap that goes around your torso to transmit your heart rate signal to the wrist unit. Without those, nothing else about a heart rate monitor matters.

But beyond the basics you get such features as OwnCal, which counts and displays calorie expenditures — not just for a single exercise session, but the accumulated calories for a complete training program.

OwnIndex measures your aerobic/cardio fitness in five minutes. This is a useful baseline to know when starting or changing your fitness routine.

U Fit, helps you stay on track to personal fitness goals, telling you how often, how hard and how long you need to exercise.

The OwnRelax is a quick way to test how relaxed your body is. If you’re a person who goes in for power naps or deep breathing exercises, you can now integrate them into your training session with all the vigor of a minister taking tea with a parishioner.

Finally, there’s Polar Body Workout, which provides guidance in strength training — including the count of sets, repetitions and weights recommendations. It’ll tell you how far along you are in the workout and whether your heart has reached the goals you’ve set.

If you haul around one of those postcards that are popular in gym classes showing what a given percentage of heart rate is translated to heartbeats per minute, this monitor does the translating for you. The device displays heart rate beats per minute or percent of maximum.

When the monitor reaches a given goal, it shows you on the display and gives an alarm beep.

You can download the data from the monitor into your computer-based training program via infrared for overall tracking.

The monitor has the capacity to maintain data such as exercise time, time in target zone, target zone limits, average heart rate, maximum heartrate and calorie expenditure for up to 12 exercises.

If you’re a triathlete, the water resistance goes to 50m.

So, is the display big enough? Not in my opinion. The monitor needs to add so much other text to tell you what you’re seeing and doing, that the number that really matters ends up being kind of dinky. And do you have to push a button to read the heart rate? Actually, no, you don’t. It keeps that heart rate front and bottom, even while it’s displaying other data to you. The photo shows 129. That number will stay up there as long as it knows you’re doing exercise, even while everything else above it changes.

So this one gets a one lung rating.

More on another Polar device next time.