I use a Polar M400... I like it a lot.
Personally I would say M400 (or M430 now) is by far best watch price/performance vise. It offers almost everything twice more expensive v800 has, and it's super cheap (150eur for something like M400 is, is cheap, especially when considering Garmin and Suunto watches for 500+eur offers less and are way less accurate). I have v800 as when v800 came out, it had so cool features I changed my Polar s725x for it next second when I could get my hands on. And only real difference between v800 in m400 is, you can connect bike sensors to v800 (speed and cadence) and that v800 has route guiding which m400 doesn't.
Just curious, what do you need the heart rate monitor for?
Depending on people and why they workout
For pretty much everyone, who is not 20 anymore, and who still like to push hard, I would say HRMs should be obligatory
If you are in shape, it's easy to push real hard for long time (ok nothing is really easy in Z5 but still
), and I don't think it's really healthy for old(er) heart to be at max over and over again. So seeing your HR number infront of your eyes, and of course knowing your limits, is easy to back off from time to time, and take it a bit easier. That's why i say phone applications with phone in pocket and chest strap connected via bluetooth are useless. You need this data during training/workout not at home on computer (sure also then for analyses, but main thing is during session).
Another thing is training, even if it's just recreational. With proper training you have easy and hard sessions. And as far as I'm concerned, except for short interval sessions, which can't be done based on HR due lag, HR is only real orientation point on this how your body behaves, feels and what it does. While with lot of training and experience, you can actually guess quite accurately where your HR is during exercise, there's still no replacement for good HRM, so nowadays noone is training without HRMs anymore.
As far as "charts" goes... they are useless. Those charts are so average of average that they might work for few people on world, and everything else is off. Especially with HR, where 5 bits/min difference actually means a lot. Your numbers depend on training (ok I admit I still have some 500h of training a year, but even nowadays my resting HR is around 38-39 while my max HR is 178), of course your genetics, and on the end also on your age (max HR goes down with years). So it's perfectly normal that someone has max HR 180 while same old and same trained guy has it 210.