Review: MIO Alpha Heart Rate Monitor

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The MIO Alpha looks like a trendy sports watch and it is, but it also has the very special function of being the first heart rate monitor you can wear on your wrist that accurately tracks your heart rate while interacting with a host of mobile apps

Starting out as an idea to solve the uncomfortable nature of chest-strapped heart rate monitors, the Mio Alpha is an elegant and effective solution that also opens up a host of possibilities.

Out of the box, the MIO Alpha looks and feels like any sporty watch with digital hours and minutes in white on a black background for good visibility in most conditions. The strap is a rugged rubber affair and there are two buttons on each side of the watch face as well a an LED indicator below.

The MIO Alpha (SRT $199) comes with a rechargeable battery and the way to charge it is to connect it to the included charging dongle, which can be plugged into any USB port. It takes roughly 40 minutes to charge the MIO Alpha and battery lasts for weeks.

Setting up the time and date is easy enough and so is pairing the watch via Bluetooth to your smartphone, or more specifically, your smartphone apps.

What makes the MIO Alpha special isn't readily visible, the part that makes contact with the user's skin features two green LEDs that shine on a user’s skin plus an electro-optical cell that senses the tiny changes in the color of your skin, it monitors the flow of your blood and heart rate. 

A simple long button press enables this functionality which quickly finds and then tracks your heart rate. Since you're expected to wear the strap a bit tightly for optimal heart rate tracking, MIO says you can use the MIO Alpha for running, gym, biking and even swimming although I would personally think twice about using the MIO Alpha in water for any prolonged period of time since they advise against pressing the watches buttons while underwater (although you can start tracking your heart rate prior to taking a dip.)

Unlike a lot of similar devices that promise to do multiple things, the MIO Alpha does one thing and does it remarkably well.

I'd never considered  using a heart rate monitor during running before because they just looked uncomfortable, specially when you're drenched in sweat. The MIO Alpha, on the other hand, doesn't feel unnatural because of it's watch form.

I've been using the MIO Alpha as a regular watch and as a heart rate monitor for around a month and while it excels at the latter, there are some basic watch features that are sorely missing. There's no backlight, no alarms and limited display options. So, this isn't a smartwatch, nor does it pretend to be.

It's convenient that it can interface with such training apps as Adidas MiCoach, Endomo,MapMyRide, MapMyRun, RunKeeper, Strava and Wahoo Fitness. It seems straightforward enough that future apps can easily tap into the heart rate functionality.

That said, I'll take the MIO Alpha's limited functionality but stellar heart rate monitoring feature over a multitude of features that don't work well or detract from the device's primary function or affect its reliability. It looks like the folks at MIO had the same thing in mind.

Review: 4.5 out of 5