Vivoactive 5 showing a different heart rate on the watch face to the one recorded in the app?

Where are you looking in the app? On the "My Day" screen? Are you looking at current resting or high?

Also, which watch face? Is it a stock Garmin watch face or from the Connect IQ Store?

Funny you should ask about a watch face! What made you ask?

Firstly, I look on the my day screen on an Android mobile then click the heart rate box to get to the graph, also viewing the graph online with my Windows laptop. So I look at the overall graph as well as current and resting HR, it's the higher heart rates that have been way too low, current is virtually spot on to the Polar arm band, untill the HR goes up to and above 100BPM the the watch would read aorund 88 while the Polar read 122!

Quick intro, I had a vivoactive 5 on 5th Dec (I check new devices against my Polar verity Sense armband to get an impression of accuracy) for 3 days it was perfect then the HR failed to read the higher rates (above 100bpm) consistantly, so I had a replacement - it did axactly the same thing!

Whilst out walking yesterday an idea struck me, I had put the same watch face on both devices the day I had them. Part way through the walk I changed the face back to a Garmin one. After 5 minutes my watched registered a walk activity, this hadn't worked earlier. The watch then seemed to work pretty well for the remainder of the walk. This mornings walk registered up to 137 bpm exactly the same as the Polar arm band! This afternoons walk has been similar. Also, when my HR climbs, the readout on the watch face takes a few minutes to catch up to the Polar arm band but was very similar when it did.

The watch face I used was the ASAP one Connect IQ Store., with the HR showing in the 6 o clock field.

Addition : The readout on the watch face and in the heart rate app on the watch didn't match what registered in Garmin Connect, either in My Day or the heart rate graph. At one point the wtach heart rate app said 135bpm and later Garmin connect said 88bpm for the same time frame.

After going back to the Garmin watch face, the HR shown on the watch heart rate app and the HR registered in Garmin Connect were identical throughout.

Apart from the problems with the Connect IQ watchface, please also note that different interfaces, and different modes do not always use the same sampling rate. So for example while the watch samples the HR continuously (up to) each second during an activity, the sampling rate in the all day mode can be 15s, and the all-day stats keep only 2 minutes averages. So any short time peaks you may see live, or during an activity, will be smoothed out.

Some more details on that topic are available for example here: 

• How Does Heart Rate Data Display in Garmin Connect? | Garmin Customer Support
• I Am Seeing Two Different High Heart Rate Values in Garmin Connect | Garmin Customer Support

Thanks, that's very informative!

Is there a heart rate graph that shows at better than 2 minute intervals do you know? Have a sampling rate of 1 second on the watch, but only 2 minute averages in Garmin Connect, seems a waste of data - unless I have it wrong?

I understand then that if I start a walking activity on the watch as I set out, the HR sampling rate is higher at up to every second, this is correct?

At the moment I have activity tracking on, but Move IQ is off and therefore Auto Activity Start is also off. Would this then mean that my walk would have the lower sampling rate of 15 seconds as it is being measured by the standard all day mode?

Thanks very much in advance for you answers!

5529740 said:

Is there a heart rate graph that shows at better than 2 minute intervals do you know

Yes, the HR graph in the activity stats (if you recorded one). The all-day graph comes always only in averages over 2 minutes, regardless whether you log an activity or not.

Totally understood, thank you very much for your time, I'll do as you suggest.

Hi, 99.9% of non Garmin watch faces DO NOT show the live Heart Rate, they are updated every 1-2 minutes, that is probably why you are seeing a difference. Independent developers do not have access to the same tools that Garmin do (for lots of good reasons), so have to rely on what is available. For HR to be shown on a (non Garmin) watch face and be updated every second it requires onPartialUpdate() which the Vivoactive 5 does not have

Hi, thanks for your reply, I may have misled a little, the heart rate I was judging by was the Vivoactive app on the watch, the one accessed by swiping down on the watch face. I didn't know that 3rd parties didn't have acces to certain things, but that makes sense to me.

At the moment deleting the 3rd party watch face seems to have done the trick, thanks for responding!