Everyone thinks running is an easy and affordable hobby to jump into. Grab a pair of shoes and some basic athletic clothes and get out the door. Before long, you might decide to train for a race. After that, you might even decide that you need a GPS watch to track your miles and offer more advanced workout data. Eventually, it feels like a page from “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” Well, there’s one more accessory to add to your running utility belt — the Polar H10 heart rate chest strap.

Polar’s workhorse H10 isn’t a new chest strap. It’s outlived some of its launch day features by a good margin. It is also the chest strap our entire team uses as a control device when writing wearables reviews, but we’ve never written about it in great detail. That changes today.