I know Garmin uses my chosen activity class (GCM->more->Settings->User Settings) when calculating calories for an activity. My question is, does it also use activity class when calculating calories for my non-activity daily steps, as reported in the GC Daily Summary->Activities breakdown? I'm taking here primarily when using the all-day HR on my watch, which supposedly should make calorie estimates more accurate.
Garmin states (https://support.garmin.com/faqSearch/en-US/faq/content/DJEru6ns626MZTh2kvUXZA):
"The Garmin fitness device uses this information along with gender, age, weight, height, and lifetime athlete settings in order to calculate the calories burned during a given activity."
... which would suggest NO. And NO would be consistent with what i'm finding that during a run i'm given 50-60 cal/km, whereas outside of a run (from steps) i'm given 90-110 cal/km. The later is approximately what GC or other websites give me when they don't take into account my HR to calculate calories for a run. And yes, my daily HR trace looks normal even when it's giving me these high non-activity calorie values.
90-110 cal/km when walking around is of course is ridiculous (i shouldn't get more calories for walking a km with a much lower HR than running a km). Age, weight, RHR, maxHR, VO2max, etc are all set correctly on GC, GCM and my watch (735xt) and are stable.
Can anyone reconcile these numbers?
Does anyone know what determines calories given for non-activity steps (when using all-day HR)? Is it RHR, maxHR, activity class, something else? It looks like they're basically assuming the equivalent of an activity class of 0, which would explain the discrepancy.