The first thing that you will notice about the packaging of the Timex Health Touch Heart Rate Monitor Watch is that you can check the product before you open it. The packaging highlights just how simple the Times Health Touch Heart Monitor is to use. You put the watch on and touch the dial for 10 seconds and you get the reading. If you’ve already added your age, the watch tells you whether you’re in the correct heart rate zone or not and how many calories you’ve burned making it a perfect gym accessory…

…but…

Test Drive 1: My instructor asks me whether it has a heart strap. I say no – the Timex Health Touch Heart Rate Monitor Watch doesn’t need a heart strap to monitor your heart rate and that’s its biggest feature. 15 minutes into the workout and the watch locks up and when you’re sweating buckets on a high-intensity workout, it gets very difficult to try and reset it. Will try again tomorrow.

Test Drive 2: I’ve figured out how to unlock the watch in case it locks up. Turns out the lock feature is to prevent inaccurate readings in situations with excessive moisture/water.  There’s a line in the manual that’s a bit worrying: It could be difficult to get an accurate reading if the watch is exposed to excessive moisture such as in a shower, pool, or in this case, me! Sure enough, the watch locks up. I unlock it. It does it again. After three unlocks, I give up. The workout ends with the calorie burned reading showing 350. According to my instructor, the workout should have burned nothing less than 800 calories. 350 calories is a slow stroll on the treadmill for an hour.

Despite my experiences, I would definitely recommend the Timex Health Touch Heart Rate Monitor for people who are starting out on a workout and for seniors who are looking to walk to stay fit and need to maintain a certain pace and no more. It would be especially useful for people trying to lose weight and who are therefore monitoring their daily calorie deficit closely. It’s convenient to carry around, easy to get the readings and ensures that you are in the correct zone for your workout – especially conveninent for those who hate the gym treadmills and cross trainers but would like to measure the heart rate and calorie burn during their outdoor walk.

At INR 4,000, the Timex Health Touch Heart Rate Monitor is fair value for money. But I can’t help but think, in today’s day and age, what stopped them from sticking a couple of more chips in the thing and giving you the option to play music and add a MiCoach-like feature, telling you to walk faster or slower. Next version Timex?