Myzone MZ-Switch

The Myzone MZ-Switch Heart Rate Monitor gives you the best of all worlds by being wearable in three places – on your wrist, arm or chest. Accuracy is good, it's light and it's comfortable to wear for long periods – however, the price is similar to some full smartwatches.

At £139.50 the MZ-Switch is up there with some well-equipped smart watches, such as the Garmin Forerunner 45 at £129.99. That comes with full GPS for exercise tracking and recording, as well as the watch function and many more features besides. The MZ-Switch is purely a heart rate (HR) monitor, though, and requires a smartphone or bike computer to show its data either live or post-exercise. That makes it look pricey.

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If you aren't interested in GPS, you can pick up a fitness tracker that shows heart rates on its own screen – such as the Fitbit Inspire 2 – for far less. The Inspire 2 £89.99, though at the time of writing Fitbit was selling it for £59.99.

From a purely cycling point of view, where you are likely to already be using your phone or bike computer to record your rides, the MZ-Switch makes more sense if you want to add HR data... but then, you could get a Wahoo TICKR HR Monitor with chest strap for £39.99 instead. Alternatively, if you want optical HR at the wrist, the TICKR FIT strap is £64.99.

Obviously, the main selling point of the MZ-Switch is its versatility in switching between wrist and chest, but it's still cheaper to buy both Wahoos (around £105) than the Myzone.

Also, Polar's H10 HR sensor has similar capabilities to the MZ-Switch – such as memory for training without a phone app connection, and Bluetooth plus ANT+ connectivity – and that's significantly less at £76.50.

Performance

Price aside though, the Myzone monitor works well, is easy to set up and you do get an app to run alongside. The MZ-Switch also feels well-made, and I had no issues with durability or reliability throughout the test period.

In the box you get the HR monitor itself, a wrist strap, an arm strap, a chest strap, a USB charger cable and a storage pouch. The monitor snaps into the holder on each strap and sits there securely. The straps are all good quality and fit comfortably, and offer a decent amount of adjustability to suit various sizes.

The setup is just like any other Bluetooth or ANT+ device; turn it on and then, from the device you'll be sending the data too, search for it and connect. For most people that device will be your phone, after you've downloaded the Myzone app. It will also work with things like Strava.

The app itself doesn't bring a whole lot to the party. It's basic, but you can bring up data on past workouts such as average/peak HR and calories burned, with the latter being calculated from the details you give the app: age, weight and height.

As for HR range, like resting and maximum figures, they cannot be set manually. The app uses data from workouts and fills these in itself, and from that it works out your HR ranges.

Personally, I carry out max heart rate tests reasonably regularly and would like to be able to set my zones and fill in my maximum numbers myself. The more you wear the MZ-Switch though, the better the overall data will be.

The five zones (50-59%, 60-69%, 70-79%, 80-89% and 90-100%) are represented by different colours shown by the LED, so you can see how hard (or not) you are working without having to look at the app.

Connectivity

Connection to other devices is simple enough too. It linked straight away to a Bryton computer and a Mio, plus a Garmin Edge 530 after a little bit of faffing. I find the Garmin a bit picky when it comes to pairing, though.

When using the wrist or arm positions the MZ-Switch uses optical measurement, which Myzone says gives 95% accuracy. I found it in line with the figures I was getting using my Garmin Fenix 6 Pro. When switching to the chest strap the EGR sensor improves on that with 99.4% accuracy.

> 15 best heart rate monitors for cycling – get useful fitness data

Wearing my Garmin on my wrist alongside the MZ-Switch on the chest strap, I found they tracked virtually identically up to about 170bpm. Above that the chest mount data was more stable, while the optical sensor sometimes read a few beats higher or lower. It's not enough to massively affect averages over a decent-length workout, though.

Battery life is decent, too. I got 15-16 hours out of a full charge, and you can keep an eye on battery level on the app. It only takes a couple of hours or so to charge as well. The MZ-Swift is also waterproof down to 10m.

Overall

The MZ-Switch performs well and is easy to use. When you consider the app though, it doesn't really bring a whole lot more than other heart rate monitors on the market, especially from a cycling point of view.

Verdict

Precise and comfortable HR monitor with optical and EGR sensors, but pricier than two separate devices