Oregon Scientific SE102 heart rate monitor is a basic heart rate monitor with two innovative and unusual features: Tap on Lens screen and Vibration Alert.
You can also get the watch to set your heart rate training zone automatically for you, based on your gender, age, height, weight, activity level (how often and heavily do your exercise) and target activity (how intense do you want your training to be).
An audio alarm (if switched on), wrist watch vibration (if switched on) and visual indicators alert you when you are training above or below your heart rate zone limits.
Tap on Lens screen: You can change your wrist watch display to show data of your choice just by a single tap. Choose one from the following data: Time, average heart rate, stopwatch time, heart rate in % of max heart rate, heart rate in beats per minute and calories burnt. This feature can be switched on or off.
Stop watch
While the stop watch is running, you can review the following data (in addition to the current heart rate) by operating a button: heart rate in % of max heart rate, average heart rate, calories burnt and the stop watch time
Basic time keeping: Time, date and alarm
Backlight
Wireless heart rate monitor (ECG accurate) with an analogue chest strap transmitter and a wrist watch receiver
Keypad lock on wrist watch so that its operations are not affected by the accidental pushing of buttons
Keypad tone: If switched on, you get a beep pushing a button. If switched off, you get silent operation.
Battery for chest strap transmitter is user-replaceable.
It can work with gym equipment (e.g. treadmills) capable of picking up your transmitter's signals to show your heart rate on the equipment's display panel
The features in bold above denote the features found in SE102 but not in SE128.
With the Oregon Scientific SE102, you can get your heart rate training limits automatically calculated for you, using your personal data and the new concepts of activity level and target activity. The activity level can be chosen from one of: little, hobby and athlete. The target activity can be chosen from one of: walk (65 to 78 % of max heart rate), jog (65 to 85% of max heart rate), run (78 to 90% of max heart rate). You are effectively telling the monitor: Look, here is my current fitness level and I want to do this type of exercise, now work out my heart rate range for me.
In a busy and noisy gym environment, the new vibration alert system will be of real use. It may be difficult in such situations to hear the audio alarm when you go over or below your heart zone.
The tap on lens on the Oregon Scientific SE102 is a bit of a gimmick. It is nevertheless a convenience. It saves you having to push buttons a few times to look at your favourite data.
You can now also review your average heart rate, and read your current heart rate in terms of percentage of your maximum heart rate.
Summary
The Oregon Scientific SE102 is a basic heart rate monitor with a number of unusual features, in particular the tap on lens and the vibration alert features.
Note: There is another variant of this monitor, the SE102L, which only has the tap on lens but does not have the vibration alert.