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.
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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.
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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
If you want an overall fitness tracker, the Ubitrack Smart Heart Rate Monitor Wristband is an increasingly popular choice. Although you certainly won't impress anyone with the way this device looks, it incorporates GPS tracking, built-in heart rate tracking at the wrist, and will measures metrics all day such as steps taken.
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