Ultimate Comparisons on Features of Heart Rate Monitoring Apps

Feature \ AppName	Cardiio	What's My Heart Rate	Instant Heart Rate	Runtastic Heart Rate	Kiwi Instant Heart Rate	Heart Beat Rate	Cardio Buddy	Precise Heart Rate Monitor	Cardio graph	Quick HRM	Heart Rate Monitor
App Icon
Feature \ AppName	Cardiio	What's My Heart Rate	Instant Heart Rate	Runtastic Heart Rate	Kiwi Instant Heart Rate	Heart Beat Rate	Cardio Buddy	Precise Heart Rate Monitor	Cardio graph	Quick HRM	Heart Rate Monitor
Fingertip Heart Rate Measurement	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓		✓	✓	✓	✓
Fingertip Absence's Alert	✓		✓	✓	✓	✓
Facial Heart Rate Measurement	✓	✓					✓
Face Absence's Alert		✓					✓
Measure Heart Rate & Breath Rate Simultaneously		✓			✓
Breath Rate Measurement		✓			✓
Animated Pulse Graph	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓		✓	✓	✓	✓
Local History Saving	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
History Analysis	✓	✓		✓		✓	✓
Sync To Cloud	✓	✓	✓	✓
Share To Social Network	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓		✓
Support Multiple Profiles		✓							✓
Auto Stop Mode	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓		✓	✓
Continuous Mode	✓	✓	✓				✓
Heart Rate Type Tagging	✓		✓	✓		✓
Current Mood Tagging				✓
Add Note Under Current Measurement	✓		✓	✓
Heart Rate Healthy level	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Breath Rate Healthy level		✓			✓
Reminder	✓	✓		✓	✓
Extra Features	9	1	3	1	1	1	1	2	1	0	0
Total Score:	23	17	14	14	12	10	8	7	5	5	3

Based on the ultimate analysis above, Cardiio iOS app has the top score among all due to the most number of feature it offers, such as fitness level, endurance score,how you stack up, age-gender heart rate chart, pulse wave visualization, life expectancy, target heart rate, calories burned and 7 mins workout. Although it is initially free for download, 5 out of 9 extra features are in-app-purchases, which mean you have to pay to use the features. Moreover, it is not available in Android platform.

What's My Heart Rate Android App will be another best choice since it provides all its features for free plus its daily health tips extra feature! However, in iOS platform, What's My Heart Rate will charge in-app-purchases for history saving, cloud sync and measure heart & breath rate simultaneously.

Instant Heart Rate stands the third, slightly less features as compared to What's My Heart Rate. It provides good extra features such as Heart Rate Zone, Azumio Timeline and Stand Up Test. Furthermore, it is available in free and paid version on both iOS and Android platform.

Runtastic Heart Rate offers a special extra features of history filtering, whereby users can filter their history based on different heart rate tag etc. It also offered in both free and paid version in iOS and Android platform, but there is an annoying thing in free version, whereby users can only measure their heart rate up to 3 times per day, if users want to measure unlimitedly, they need to upgrade to PRO. Other apps like Kiwi, Heart Beat Rate, Precise HRM, and Cardiograph provides almost the same extra features, which is heart rate knowledge and info. In Precise HRM, it did included a heart rate chart for your own reference after each measurement. Cardio Buddy provides a more special extra feature, as it show how your heart rate value stand as compared with animals and famous people.

Quick HRM and Heart Rate Monitor both doesn't provide extra features and Heart Rate Monitor has the least feature scores among all.

App Review - Cardio Buddy, a Facial Heart Rate Monitor

Cardio Buddy is a facial based heart rate monitor that measure your heart beat per minute by scanning your face. 

Utilizing almost the same concept like Cardiio and What's My Heart Rate, Cardio Buddy also requires you to static your head and position it into its region of interest before the measurement starts. It comes with a very fancy UI and scanning animation. Cardio Buddy supports auto stop mode and also continuous measurement mode.  You can also choose to flip camera and take measurement of your friends, however, the camera flipping feature is available in PRO version only. To start the measurement, you just need to tap the middle screen, then you just need to wait the heart beat value to appear. It did checked for your face presence during the measurement, thus it will alert you when your face is out of region. 

For its facial heart beat reading demo, you can check out my video on Cardio Buddt VS Pulse Oximeter (Face Mode) Here!

Upon completion, you will be prompted with your heart beat value, and you can add note too (PRO version feature also). It comes with a quite fancy history page called Heart Lab, whereby you will see interesting facts on how your heart rate stands as compared to other animals or other countries' residents. It also provides analysis of your heart beat over time in term of weekly and monthly basis. You can also share your result to social networks. Moreover, you can export your history data for your own usage(PRO version feature). 

                   

Cardio Buddy is available for both Free and PRO Version($1.99) in iOS Platform. 

Enjoy :D!

App Review - What's My Heart Rate, a Hybrid Heart Rate & Breath Rate Monitor

What's My Heart Rate is a facial + fingertip based heart rate monitor by Facion, whereby it provides options to measure your heart beat by scanning your face or using your fingertip. Besides that, it can also measure your breath rate per minute.

Almost similar to Cardiio, What's My Heart Rate detects the micro color changes on your face caused by heart beating, by using a concept called photoplethysmography. While it calculates your breath rate by detecting the movements of your chest while you are breathing. Its developers claim that the accuracy is within 3 beats/min of a clinical pulse oximeter when performed at rest in a well lit environment. 

You can choose to use the facial measurement mode with either using front camera or rear camera. Rear camera facial measurement is a good option to measure heart rate of sleeping baby. You just need to press the start button and face to your phone screen, sit still for about 2-3 seconds, then the reading will be out. It did checked for presence of face before performing calculation, as it won't start to compute if there is no face existence. You can also measure you breath rate per minute in facial mode with the same procedure. For device with dual core CPU and above, you can perform heart rate and breath rate per minute measurement simultaneously too.

  

Whist for fingertip mode, like most heart rate apps, it works with rear camera.  Nonetheless, it won't warn you for your finger absence, but it will not show any reading until you put your fingertip back to the camera lens.

For its facial heart beat demo, you can check out my video on What's My Heart Rate VS Pulse Oximeter (Face Mode) Here!

For its fingertip heart beat demo you can check out my video on What's My Heart Rate VS Pulse Oximeter (Finger Mode) Here!

After finish measurement, the app indicates how is your average heart rate doing, is it bad, normal, good or stress), you can view this in adult mode or baby mode, because adult and baby have different range of normal average heart rate. Your heart beat data will be saved to local history. From the history page, you can view your average heart rate and breath rate in daily, monthly, and yearly basis. Besides that, you can also sync your heart beat history data to your own Google Drive(Android) and iCloud(iOS). What's My Heart Rate supports multiple user profiles too. You can use one app for all your family members and friends.

What's My Heart Rate is freely available in both Android(with Ads) and iOS (with In App Purchases) platform. In iOS, you need to purchase premium($1.99) in order to enable history saving for multiple profiles, fingertip measurement, dual mode facial measurement, and enable cloud storage.

Enjoy! :D

App Review - Cardiio, a Hybrid Heart Rate Monitor

Cardiio is a facial based + fingertip based smart phone heart rate monitor, whereby it provides options to measures your heartbeat by scanning your face or using common fingertip measurement.

Cardiio's facial measurement is powered by research conducted at the MIT Media Lab, where everytime your heart beats, more blood is pumped into your face. This slight increase in blood volume causes more light to be absorbed, and hence less light is reflected from your face. Cardiio uses your front camera to track these tiny changes in reflected light and calculate your heart beat. It claims that the accuracy is within 3 beats/min of a clinical pulse oximeter when performed at rest in a well lit environment.

Cardiio comes with a simple and sleek UI, whereby you just can see a stethoscope head with a red progress bar around it. By default, Cardiio measure in an auto stop mode, but you can enable continuos mode too in setting tab.

To start the measurement, just choose the measurement mode of your preference(facial or fingertip). When you press the stethoscope, the measurement will start and for facial mode, you just need to face to the screen to take your heart beat measurement. However, Cardiio didn't counter the loss of face from the front camera. It continues to calculate heart beat and give a final reading even though i didn't position my head towards the phone screen. Whist for fingertip mode, it works like common heart rate apps available, it did checked for your finger presence on the rear camera first before continue into measurement.

For its facial heart beat reading demo, you can check out my video on Cardiio VS Pulse Oximeter (Face Mode) Here!

For its fingertip heart beat reading demo, you can check out my video on Cardiio VS Pulse Oximeter (Finger Mode) Here!

When the scan completed, you are provided with a summary in which you can set whether the reading you got is a "Rest Heart Rate" or "Active Heart Rate" and also add some notes below it. The data then stored into local history and you can view it from history tab.

You can go through the insight tab to get your average heart rate summary in daily, weekly and monthly basis. The insight will also show you your fitness level of the day and provides you your life expectancy insight with interesting facts. Moreover, you can also see how your average heart rate stack up with average heart rate of other countries' citizen and famous person. Besides that, insight also provides you with your endurance score (VO2 Max), which estimate your maximal rate of oxygen uptake, an important determinant of cardiorespiratory fitness and aerobic endurance. If you are logged in to Facebook, you can compare your score with your Facebook friends too.

Cardiio is more than just a heart rate monitor. It also provides a workout tutorial feature that guide you through workout by famous coaches around the world. You can get your active heart rate recorded after the workout.

Cardiio is available freely only in iOS Platform. Besides of the features stated above, Cardiio also offers some other powerful insights (under In-App-Purchase).
- Calorie Burn Monitor ($4.99) - know how many calories you burn after workout
- Target Heart Rate Pack ($3.99) - find out your target heart rate to maximize your workout effectiveness
- Specific Heart Rate Pack($2.99) - see where you stand based on age and sex-specific national statistics.
- Pulse Waveform Pack($3.99) - visualize your heart rhythm in a pulse waveform.
- Workout Coaches (price varies)

Enjoy! :D

App Review - Heart Rate Monitor

Heart Rate Monitor is a simple fingertip based heart rate monitor by Mobile Essentials. It is really "simple" that it has only a start stop button, a heart rate reading display and a signal processed ECG like graph display.

During measurement, it will beep with pulse too. Besides that, it didn't handle finger absent case as well, it will still give reading even though the rear camera lens is uncovered by fingertip.

For its heart beat reading demo, you can check out my video on Heart Rate Monitor VS Pulse Oximeter Here!

Heart Rate Monitor is available freely on Android.

Enjoy! :D

App Review - Precise Heart Rate Monitor

Precise Heart Rate Monitor is also a fingertip based heart rate monitor by Lakeba TechBeach.

During measurement, it will show you how your finger looks like in a camera frame and also demonstrate how your red finger frame is processed in the background (bright red and dark red interval difference). It also displays real time signal processed ECG like line graph. Unfortunately, it didn't compute the presence and absence of fingertip from camera lens. It will show some ridiculous heart beat reading too when you point your rear camera to any surface. Most of the time it takes beyond 10 seconds to show you the correct heart rate value, and before that it often shows over 150BPM values which is quite impossible for a resting heart rate.

Regarding its heart rate measurement demo, you can check out my video on Precise Heart Rate Monitor VS Pulse Oximeter Here!

After measurement, it will save your heart beat reading to local history. It also offers some healthy exercise and food tips that is good for your heart. Meanwhile, it also provides heart rate ranking chart that indicate how good is your heart rate according to your age and gender.

Precise Heart Rate Monitor is available freely on Android platform.

Enjoy! :D

App Review - Quick Heart Rate Monitor

Quick Heart Rate Monitor is a finger-tip based mobile phone heart rate monitor by Ygorilla. It claims that it can measure your heart beat per minute reading within 7 seconds.

During measurement, it will display reading along with real time heart beat PPG graph. Nonetheless, it did not handle finger absent issue properly, as it can display ridiculous reading even the camera lens is cover by table surface or point to anywhere.

Regarding its heart rate measurement demo, you can check out my video on Quick HRM VS Pulse Oximeter Here

After measurement, it will save your reading to local history. The local history will display your min heart rate, max heart rate and average heart rate for your selected session. You can also share your history to social media.

Quick HRM is available freely on both iOS and Android Platform. There is also PRO version ($0.99) for Android ( it claims that only 7 seconds is required to measure your heart beat and it is the fastest in the world )

Enjoy! :D

App Review - Kiwi Instant Heart Rate

Kiwi Instant Heart Rate is a fingertip based heart rate + breath rate monitor by Kiwi Health Care. It requires users to put their index fingertip gently on mobile phone's rear camera lens in order to extract the reading. Interestingly, it can also detect your breath per minute through your fingertips!

Kiwi Instant Heart Rate measures your heart rate and breath rate simultaneously. During measurement, it will show real time heart beat PPG graph along with a heart beat animation graphic for your reference. It is smart enough to check whether your index finger is in place or not by pop up an alert message if it can't detect your finger. However, there is one thing quite annoying in which the LED flash light always turn on once i am in detection page and there is no stop button for me to stop it unless i navigate to other page.

Regarding its heart rate measurement demo, you can check out my video on Kiwi Instant Heart Rate VS Pulse Oximeter Here!

After you finish your measurement,  it will prompt you with your heart rate value with its responding level of heart rate ( < 60 is good, 60 - 90 consider average, and > 90 is bad ), and also your breathing rate too ( < 12  and > 20 is bad, 12-20 is good). You can also save your data to local history and share to social network. 

Moreover, Kiwi Instant Heart Rate also provides some useful knowledge about your heart rate, respiration rate and also cardiac functions. It also enable you to set your own reminder to alert you to measure your heart rate. 

Kiwi Instant Heart Rate is available freely on Android platform only ( with Ads inside )

Enjoy! :D