I work out at a gym with state of the art equipment. The cross-trainers and the arc-trainers all have heart monitor handles. In addition, when I go to start up a session, I input my weight. During the workout, I get displays of how many calories I have burned.

My question is how reliable are the readouts for heart beat and calories burned.

The manufacturer of the equipment is Cybex.

To the best of my knowledge, virtually every single calorie calculator on cardio equipment overestimates the amount of calories burnt.

Best to keep an eye on your food and exercise levels, and follow the trends.

Andrew.

The calorie estimate is barely useful for anything other than a qualitative comparison to previous workouts.

Particularly when doing HIIT, "calories burned" read outs are pretty shaky.

I agree with Chris; it's a good way to compare one cardio session to another. Outside of that, don't give much creedence to how many calories the machine claims you've burned.