mioPOD Review
I just had to do a mioPOD Review as Mio were one of the first optical heart rate companies to enter the fitness market with a good product a few years ago. Now they are back, this time with a clearly superior product…but how does it stack up against today’s competition?
What is mioPOD?
mioPOD is an optical heart rate monitor designed to be worn on either your upper-arm or fore-arm. It should work with just about any sports watch or app as it supports BLE and ANT+ – so that would include the Nike, Under Armor and Zwift apps as well as a Garmin or Polar watch.
The ‘point of difference’ with the mioPOD is that it has a nice app that is, in part, powered by market-leading Firstbeat sports algorithms to deliver assessments of the effects of all your workouts as well as your readiness to train. The market-leading Valencell optical HR sensor is also used.
Who is going to buy mioPOD?
Mio Labs are targetting the mioPOD towards gym and fitness users as well as to some runners and cyclists who perhaps don’t want to wear a chest strap but who do want accurate heart rate data.
Perhaps you don’t want to wear a sports watch? Perhaps you are becoming more aware that different types of training are needed to get fitter more quickly and that you are not always equally as ready for them every morning.
Who is the competition?
To some extent, heart rate monitors on sports watches and chest strap heart rate monitors are the competition, but let’s ignore those and, instead, just look at similar technologies.
You may not have heard of all of these – Polar OH1+, Wahoo TICKR Fit, Scosche Rhythm+/24, Whoop and Biostrap. And you almost certainly won’t have heard of Runar but suffice to say, there are many more arm-worm heart rate monitors, however, those I’ve listed there are the best (I have a RUNAR but have not tested its accuracy, seems alright and cheap).
The Polar, Wahoo and Scosche products come with relatively straightforward workout-recording apps. Whereas the Whoop strap and Biostrap are more expensive parts of wider solutions that help you Bio-hack or deeply-understand your body and its readiness-to-train. They are generally for more serious-minded athletes, rather than someone looking for a simple sensor that will be accurate and work with ‘pretty much anything’.
You might wonder why Sunnto and Garmin (kinda) don’t have a more focussed product offering in this space.
mioPOD Review – Aesthetics & General Design
Its size is like the porridge in Goldilocks…just right. Any bigger and it would look a bit silly and if it were any smaller, the battery life would be compromised and it also would be prone to flipping over.
It’s comfy and it looks nice enough, although most of you will never see it underneath your T-shirt sleeve. I guess it looks a little weird on my forearm but any band looks weird there, in my opinion.
mioPOD Review – Using It
The mioPOD paired well with everything I tried over ANT+ and BLE. It only seems to pair with one BLE (Bluetooth Smart) device at a time so make sure anything else you have previously paired to is not present otherwise you will not be able to pair to a new device.
The on-off button needs a good press but that’s OK. Around the same button are some coloured LED’s that indicate the status of the mioPOD (ie is it on and recording) as well as HR zones.
I can’t see the point of showing colour-coded HR zones on the LEDs on my upper arm, it’s just not a convenient place to look. However, I will concede to you my earlier cynicism if you intend to wear the mioPOD on your forearm, as the zones will be very clearly visible there.
There is also ‘haptic feedback’. That’s just a 2020 way of saying that it vibrates! But don’t knock the vibrations, as vibrations go, it’s nice.
mioAPP – Using It
I sense that the app will be expanded in the months ahead. Yet even as of January 2020, it’s a good but basic app. It looks nice and all the key, post-workout information is displayed clearly.
If you’ve chosen to use the mioPOD away from the app then any cached data is reliably sync’d to the app.
However, the standout features on the app are those from Firstbeat.
You get your weekly INTENSITY MINUTES, TRAINING LOAD and RECOVERY STATUS as well as the ANAEROBIC TRAINING EFFECT and AEROBIC TRAINING EFFECT for every workout. There is some good and actionable information there for mainstream fitness geeks and wannabe athletes. At least it’s ‘good’ if the source data (HR) is accurate and, as we shall soon see, IT IS ACCURATE! (enough).
mioPOD Specs & Features
- 24-hour operation (claimed, not tested)
- Performance-level Optical Heart Rate
- Resting Heart Rate
- Burned Calories
- Fitness Level
- Heart-Rate LIGHT Alerts
- Haptic Alerts
- Running Cadence
- Training Insights
- 5 ATM Water Resistant (50m…you can swim with it, I’ve not tested that)
- Syncs with mioAPP
- Caches/Internally Stores 30 Hours Of Workouts
- NFC / BLE / ANT+ Connectivity
- Charger – (included) and compatible with a Garmin Forerunner/Fenix 2019 charger.
- The strap should handle your 40cm biceps (if not, wear it on your smaller forearm)
- The strap can be changed but the provided strap should handle smaller32cm biceps. My PR sample came with a spare strap but I’m not sure that the commercial ones do too. You could probably fasten two straps together to make it longer, I didn’t try.
mioPOD Review – Competitive Evaluation
I mentioned the competition earlier.
If you are comparing to Biostrap (Review) and Whoop (Review), then those solutions are much more comprehensive as well as more expensive.
- Scosche Rhythm 24 – I’ve heard some stories about reliability and won’t test this.
- Scosche Rhythm+ – this was a superior product back in its’ day but I think it has had its day. I have one but never use it.
- Polar OH1+ – This is a superior product and it’s usually cheaper than the mioPOD. However, the mioPOD has a better strap and caching is more easily enabled on the mioPOD. The mioPOD also has a superior battery life to the Polar. Hmmm 🙂 maybe I should use the mioPOD?
- The Wahoo Tickr FIT strap does not cache data but has a slightly superior battery life (30 hours). Tickr Fit is generally accurate but I have had a few wobbly data moments over the years and have previously always favoured the Polar OH1/OH1+ just for its cache.
Techy Bit From Me About My Personal Use: I currently use the Polar OH1 in my comparative product tests as it simply caches HR in its own right, it’s accurate and doesn’t rely on pairing to anything else. I’m struggling to find any reason why I shouldn’t use the mioPOD instead of the OH1. Oh. there is one thing, I just can’t get the cached data off from Mio’s app. If it automatically sync’d to dropbox/Google Drive it would be perfect FOR WHAT I DO. It does sync to my Apple Health but I’m not entirely sure how to get an unadulterated historical copy out of there. SIMPLE/AUTOMATIC tips please, on a postcard below (Rungap doesn’t work for me…I gave in 15 minutes after buying their ‘swag bag’)
mioPOD Accuracy
OK, it’s crunch time. I’ve used the mioPOD for well over 20 hours of exercise. Outdoor running, treadmill running, outdoor cycling and indoor weights have all put the mioPOD through its paces. I mostly have one data set to compare mioPOD to for each workout but I’ll show the occasions where I got 3 or more data sets too. Interestingly when comparing, sometimes, to an HRM-TRI I strongly suspect that the mioPOD was CORRECT at the start of the workouts when the two devices differed – of course, I can’t ‘prove’ that with two data sets #Sigh.
Let’s start with one example of that from today, as it happens. Spot the part where Tish Jones joined me for a few KMs. Hint, it wasn’t the bit where I slowed down 😉 I just about pretended not to be out of breath at 160bpm which was tricky…because I was.
This was a fairly long bike ride on bumpy Surrey roads plus a long cake stop in the TeePee/Tipi in Shere (Dabbling Duck). We had a lot of cake. I can’t seem to get the data out of the app but it looks about right on these two side-by-side charts
This ride was a grumpy trip on my own to Windsor. Remember there is no way that the HRM-TRI can pair to the Polar Vantage so the two HR tracks really are nearly identical. You will hardly ever get this quality of HR from a wristwatch with oHR.
Here are some changes in pace on a treadmill, this time with a 3rd device, also caching its own HR track. #Perfect
Here you can see the performance using gym equipment and free weights. There are 4 dropouts here for the mioPOD which is not good. These probably coincide with a specific exercise where I was only working out asymmetrically. From a personal perspective, at these low HR levels, the errors don’t bother me at all. But if you can get your HR levels higher with weights then this sort of potential error might be a concern for you.
So, tentatively I’d say it looks accurate. I’d like to be more definitive but I’m not going to spend any more time on mioPOD for this review.
Price & Availability
It seems to be only available from the manufacturer right now for $99 and from Amazon in Europe/UK for £89/Eu125.
That pricing level is not too bad but is slightly ambitious. If you buy it from MIO to import into the UK/Eu you will be ALSO charged about Eu/£40 in import duties and fees. ie only buy it if you are in the USA or by from Amazon in the EU/UK.
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Thanks for the review.
Hey I HAVE a RunAR…but while it seemed ok at first when it was warm (including for intervals) it became rather unreliable during the winter and as a result of getting super ANNOYED with it I went back to the HRM-Run (the red one) and have not looked back since. That one CAN be trusted.
you pays your money and you takes your choice
I’m hoping someone finds an accurate way to get HR from a watch. We know optical will never work, they need some fancy new idea. I don’t find having to wear a forearm monitor so onerous, but it’s a bit silly to spend e.g. $800 on a watch and need something (actually two somethings, a footpod for instant pace accuracy) to supplement it.
i opt for silly every time
Got on board early with the MIOPOD. My first device had issues with a sun shield on the device. SUPER customer service. They sent me another device, all good, except after setting up hepatic vibes, they didn’t work. More wonderful CS. A third device is on the way. Thanks Marcelo.
I have had the Polar OH1+ for about 4 months. PIA with UA Cold gear long sleeves, it flips over awful easily. It is important to remove the HR monitor from the strap after each run- the reason, for some reason sweat finds its’ way under the pod, even when temp is in the 40’s. Might be my old fingers, but to remove the device to charge can be trying. The unique charging means more crap to charge. As 5K mentioned the MIO can use a newer Garmin charge cable. Also, OH1 is kind of finicky to get it to record the run, takes several pushes after getting the device turned on. Not great DL experience with Polar Flow.
Hoping my 3rd MIO works as advertised. The app is great.
A quick ego note, 76 yrs old with over 92,3xx rod miles over the last 43 years.
5K keep up your great work. It is appreciated. Nick
thank you nick
+1 to all your factual comments on both devices.
tfk
I failed to mention I have found the OH1 and the MIO appear to be very close in my experience with Heart Rate Tracking. I was into Polar HR devices when most people thought Polar was a bear. The numerous HR straps I have used over the years seemed to always need some “warm up” time. Showing either ridiculously high readings and sometimes foolishly low readings. I have found the arm bands (OH1 or MIO) to rarely go haywire. Nick
I had the Scosche 24 for a while. But during the time I had it, they never got the app working on Android, and told me I should find a friend with an iPhone to modify settings. My iPhone friends hurl enough insults at me as it is. 😉 But I also saw that it was dropping out at various times, so I finally returned it. Question on the Miopod, I saw on the spec/features that it said “Running Cadence.” Does this mean it will send that data to your device (in my case a Garmin Forerunner) along with the heart rate? I’m not a fast runner, and I’ve had a few times where the battery of my Forerunner was draining too fast to last the full marathon, so I would turn my OHR off to conserve. So I’m looking at getting the Miopod to transmit data to the watch so the watch can just focus on getting the GPS and not worry about powering the OHR (and possibly whatever it uses to count the cadence) Thanks for the review!
enable ohr to CONSERVE battery…yep. sounds perverse. the BLE connection needs more juice then ohr (or so i was told)
IDK if mioPOD transmits cadence, i dont think so.
What about the Ant+ connectivity? Maybe I should just leave my Tempe at home…
how do you mean? it DOES have ANT+ connectivity
I mean would the Aint+ be a lower power drain than the BLE if I used the MioPod instead of the watch’s ohr?. You stated I should use ohv on the watch to conserve the battery since the BLE needs more juice. But if I only get the data from ANT+, would that conserve battery power on the watch? Or am I totally misunderstanding what you were trying to explain to me? (possible, I’m still learning all the technology bits and pieces)
ah sorry, i don’t see the comment thread like you do.
yes, compared to ble
I’m stumped by the idea that 24hr of battery life is good. The Garmin HRM-Dual boasts 3.5 YEARS of battery life, even though it is a chest strap. What am I missing (besides 3.495 years)?
nothing if you are looking at pure battery life.
Thank you for the nice review! I am trying to decide between the OH1 and the mioPOD, it would be used by my “childreen” with small arm diameters. Would both devices fit well?
Which device could be more accurate for interval running training?
maybe the oh1 would be better for smaller arms,
they should all be as equally accurate for intervals ie mostly accurate
How i sync to my phone? The app doesn’t sync with the device.
android bluetooth connectivity, in my experience, varies considerably between sensors and phones.
generally ios is better
Just moved to mio from Polar OH1+. Was happy with Polar, but the battery life killed me (max 7.5 hours when it dies)…
Thus I wanted to ask, what’s your experience with the best placement for mio (running / weight lifting)? Is it out side of the biceps / triceps / on the biceps (as suggested by mio)?
for running i never have probs with the outside of the biceps at the triangle bit at the bottom of the deltoids.
Thanks!
The battery life of the mioPOD is nowhere near the claimed 24 hours. After fully charging the mioPOD the first time, it went dead after about 4 hours, after four separate workouts. I then realized perhaps having it paired with the Wahoo app was not a good idea because the mioPOD remained connected to my iPhone in the background (the bluetooth connection menu showed the connection). So I unpaired it from the Wahoo app, hoping for a much better battery life. The battery life improved but it’s not likely to hit the 12-hour mark.
In chatting with Mio Labs, they made the surprising disclosure that their packaging never stated the 24-hour battery life, by sending me a photo of the said packaging. I brought to their attention the 24-hour battery life stated on their website. To which they said that was incorrect and should never have been posted.
I am returning mine for a refund.
hmmm
indeed so….
https://the5krunner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Capture-61.png
We bought a mioPOD about 18 months ago, and I think that mio went out of business. The training insights app is not usable, giving server access failed error for about half a year. Is there an other recommended app that could be used with normal battery life? If we would buy a running watch, which models could connect to the mioPOD? Thanks!
hi
i don’t think they have gone out of business but i think ‘stuff’ is happening. i was meant to talk to them about it but never did.
the mioPOD should connect to just about anything. however you might not see some of the more unusual features like the Firstbeat feature.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wahoo-fitness-phone-powered-fitness/id391599899?ign-mpt=uo%3D8
Just to check all is good i would use the free Wahoo Fitness app. That connects to pretty much anything.
the onlypotential complication might be if you have an android phone s they are notirous poor at connecting over Bluetooth. you might be lucky if you have a Samsung or Google android smartphone
then it will work with almost any app or almost any sports watch as a straightforward heart rate monitor. you wont get any of the caching.
a good watch would be a coros pace 2, garmin 245 or polar Vantage M2 or suunto 5 peak. apple watch is pretty cool to and WILL pair to external heart rate monitors. all these watches have their own HRM but the wrist is a POOR place to get accurate readings and miopod should be better.
Thank you! Do you know any solution, which would “give back” the anaerobic training effect firstbeat features? A Garmin Forerunner 245 or a Coros Pace 2 would do it, but they cost twice the price of the mioPOD.
the watch would have to support it. yes, i suspect those 2 watches will both give you the info.
ultimately the anaerobic effect is a modification of time spent in HR zone 4 and zone 5 (kinda), so you can get that info easily enough from many apps even though it’s not quite the same
I could try out a Coros Pace 2, which recognizes the MioPod as external HRM device. Unfortunately since the Mio app is completely unfunctional, I can not disable the haptic alarm, which was set for a too low HR value, and is quite disturbing. Might there be an other way to disable alarms without the app?
I would like to use the lactate threshold feature of the Coros Pace 2, but chest straps are no option. Would it be worth to use the MioPod instead of the built in wrist HRM, at all?
i dont know how to disable the haptics with out the app. perhaps you can deplete the batter and somehow reset it???