Magellan: All fitness wearables will have heart rate sensors ‘within a year or two’

As sports bands become increasingly smart, Magellan has suggested that ‘within a year or two’ all fitness wearables will feature integrated heart rate sensors.

With the likes of the Adidas miCoach Smart Run watch having already brought integrated heart rate monitors to the fore, the vitals-tracking sensor is now starting to appear in phones, including the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5.

Now, according to Magellan, the latest selling point of the wearables market is on its way to being a mainstream inclusion, much like step tracking or sleep monitoring.

“At this point step tracking is a commodity,” Clark Weber, Magellan’s Senior Director of Wearable Technology said. “If a new product didn’t have that at this point I would be surprised.”

Speaking with TrustedReviews he added: “The same is going to happen, probably in a year or two, with wrist-based heart rate. If you are wearing something on your wrist you are going to expect to see that type of information.”

Although Magellan does not currently offer heart rate tracking on any of its wearable product lines, the manufacturer has suggested this could change in the near future.

“Heart rate is something that we are looking into for sure,” Weber told us. “We are going to be adding more and more sensors to the watch to bring in those expected metrics.”

Despite pointing to widespread adoption of heart rate sensors, Weber has been somewhat downbeat on the technology’s current implementations.

“The optical heart rate that they are using on a lot of these devices is fine when you’re resting but when you go for a run the reliability is not there,” he said.

“Getting my heart rate on the back of my phone at any given point of the day is interesting and if I’m tracking it throughout the day it could help me understand certain aspects of my wellness but when it comes to the specific activity that is going to be fairly inconvenient.”

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