Heart rate monitors for Cycling I am an absolute novice around heart rate monitoring and its implications, just trying to validate/argument my knowledge through a discussion here. 

I do 30 kms a day commute and upto a 100 km a day on the weekends, Over the past one year, I haven't seen a significant dip in my weight, although I can definitely fell that I am less fat. Thinking of optimizing my cycling for better results, for which a lot of people recommend considering your heart rate.

I am using Strava for a while now, and I think Wahoo HRMs are the best to use, as people mostly recommend it. There is also the Polar H7, which is a cheap and supposedly compatible HRM with Strava.

I have a budget of around 100$ but can stretch to 150$ if I get good value for money.

My questions are -


How do you guys use heart rate monitors with cycling?
What are the features that you guys consider as a must in a cycling/Running centric HRM.
Any other suggestions/trivia. 


Update

I guess I just need a basic way to monitor my heart rate while cycling. Any value addition would be nice, lets assume for now that strava integration is not necessary but would be a significant value addition.

Conclusion

I brought a Garmin VivoActive HR. Have been training with it for almost a month now and its serving me just fine so far. :)
Interesting and personal topic.  I'll ignore your budget for now...

Ok i make use of a Garmin Edge 1000 with a HR monitor.  I like to monitor my HR by % of max rather than beats.  Makes it easier when looking at zones thinking of it in %.

For a indoor training on Zwift i use the Wahoo Kickr you refer to above.  Now here it records in beats since thats what Zwift shows but whats good here is it supports Bluetooth and ANT+ 

Different tools for different applications.  

On the bike Polar works fine easy enough to upload and you can see tour zones, HR in beats or %.  Garment n provides a few more options like routing, HR graph even these days on the edge 1000 and 520s.

Coming back to your budget... The Wahoo kickr is a simple cheap option to use with your phone if you only using Strava.  If your using other apps like Garmin connect, Polar etc a dedicated monitor and strap has more advantages.

But you pay for those advantages.  I guess flexibility and compatibility are the major things to consider.