Max Heart Rate

The app/website seems to average the numbers over a several minute period before coming up with the max - although that doesn't explain your first result where the watch is lower than the app.

eg, during an activity today, I hit 173 (and actually saw it hit that on the watch at the time). Looking at the activity in Connect shows the max of 173, but the general health/heart rate stats in Connect show a max of 163, with a corresponding 2 minute time period for that reading.  I was only above 170 for less than 30 seconds, so it's likely the average over a several minute period would have been 163 as shown.

trux, here are the screen shots for HR: the watch that shows a max of 129, The summary page shows max of 120, and the detail page shows 116???  very confusing

Yes, it is exactly what docau wrote. The HR is stored with different sampling rate on each level. While Activity files have the sampling rate of up to one record per second, the daily data is recorded with the sampling rate of one record each two minutes. It means, if the activity or your watch shows a HR of say 170 bpm, you'd need to keep the same effort (and the same HR) for at least two consecutive minutes to get it recorded as 170 bpm. If not, the daily log will get only the average for the two minutes. In other words, all the short bursts of HR will be flattened, in the daily report.

The Activity details may show higher values, since the sampling rate is higher.

this does not make sense to me.  If my watch records something, and the app syncs with the watch, and the app is a recording of what the watch does, how can what is on the watch not be what is on the app, makes not a bit of sense to me?

The watch has a direct access to the HR sensor and reports the immediate maximum in real time. The app gets samples of every two minutes (as for the daily HR data), and up to one second for the Activity HR data.

Personally,  I'd tell the immedaite maximum as reported by the watch may be interesting indeed only in real time. It allows you to react quickly with your effort to adjust the HR. In the same time, for the daily reporting, the short HR bursts have no importance, hence the 2 minutes sampling rate makes much more sense. From my personal point of view, the metrics used by Garmin makes sense.

what about the app itself.  If the summary page shows 120, shouldnt the detail from the app be similar?

srubin33 said:

If the summary page shows 120, shouldnt the detail from the app be similar?

In my case it indeed is. Are you sure you are looking at the same day, in both cases?

yes, the screen shots above are from yesterday

and the same time spot.