F5 Heart Rate Monitor Quality

I don't know if anyone can really answer this yet, but I'm beyond pumped at the "Idea" of a HRM that some day works on your wrist as well as the strap, or at least close to it (I get it, no running dynamics of course). It just seems that to date the technology really isn't quite there yet - intermittent data, needing to wear so tight it cuts off blood to your fingers, etc - I and friends have had and played with a few models. My question, does anyone know if there is reason to be optimistic that the F5 hardware is "next generation" in this area, and will be a bit more useful? I super love the idea of good 24/7 data, as a guy that "used to" have A-Fib, I pay close attention to my heart rate these days....

Super exciting, thanks - and Ray, as always, excellent and informative review!

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

I don't know if it will be any more accurate but based on early reporting from DC Rainmaker this 3rd generation "Elevate" technology from Garmin will bring every 1 to 2 SECOND capture 24/7. That matches what Fitbit has always done but no one else in the marketplace has... existing Garmin products only capture every second during workouts but then drop to capturing heart rate about once every 10 minutes to 2+ HOURS so you end up missing a lot of data during day to day activities and sleep. Apparently this was to save battery life but Garmin must have figured out whatever Fitbit has been doing because now they can capture constantly. For me this is an important upgrade and I expect similar enhancements when other Garmin optical HR products like the FR 235, Vivoactive HR and others are upgraded.

0 scottj2 over 8 years ago

I've been wearing the FR235 since it came out. The optical HRM was very buggy at first, but it's decent now, and certainly good enough for me. If the F5 is at least as good as the FR235 hrm, then I'll be very happy.

0 webvan over 8 years ago

Well the HR sensor has its good days and its bad days on my FR235, the cold doesn't help of course. For intervals on the track it's pretty much consistently bad though, both at the beginning of the fast interval and during the recovery phase...I can live with that but what's a bit more worrying is all the advanced training data Garmin are apparently planning to extract from the HR. How reliable is it going to be when the raw data it needs is "variable" ? Or is some of it only going to be available using a chest strap (like the lactate test on the FR735XT?). I haven't seen discussion of that so far ?

0 FryeX over 8 years ago

Well the HR sensor has its good days and its bad days on my FR235, the cold doesn't help of course. For intervals on the track it's pretty much consistently bad though, both at the beginning of the fast interval and during the recovery phase...I can live with that but what's a bit more worrying is all the advanced training data Garmin are apparently planning to extract from the HR. How reliable is it going to be when the raw data it needs is "variable" ? Or is some of it only going to be available using a chest strap (like the lactate test on the FR735XT?). I haven't seen discussion of that so far ?

There is no optical sensor in the market at the moment that would provide this data accurately. Once Optical sensors start to provide real HRV data this can happen. So if you are interested in that kind of data like recovery times, only good and reliable source is the HRM belt. I think from the Optical sensor manufacturers Valencell is currently closest to reporting actual HRV, but even they are not ready.

0 2goBeyond over 8 years ago

There is no optical sensor in the market at the moment that would provide this data accurately. Once Optical sensors start to provide real HRV data this can happen. So if you are interested in that kind of data like recovery times, only good and reliable source is the HRM belt. I think from the Optical sensor manufacturers Valencell is currently closest to reporting actual HRV, but even they are not ready.

Valencell will be the 1st to say the samething, but for testing a OHM against a Traditional chest strap, their OHRM is the literal measuring stick for that tech; although in my personal experience the OHRM that is on the Fitbit surge...was always really close to my actual HR, even with muscle flexion. I had a FR235 (and yea that HR for it was all kinds of awful) and tested that against my surge, a wahoo tickrx and a scosche rhythm+. Ran stairs till failure. The surge/soche were nigh identical (Like 1BPM difference) the chest strap was 2-3bpm higher than either. The fr235? Nearly 100bpm off (I think the other three were around 172-175bpm...the FR235 had me at 88bpm?)

0 FryeX over 8 years ago

Valencell will be the 1st to say the samething, but for testing a OHM against a Traditional chest strap, their OHRM is the literal measuring stick for that tech; although in my personal experience the OHRM that is on the Fitbit surge...was always really close to my actual HR, even with muscle flexion. I had a FR235 (and yea that HR for it was all kinds of awful) and tested that against my surge, a wahoo tickrx and a scosche rhythm+. Ran stairs till failure. The surge/soche were nigh identical (Like 1BPM difference) the chest strap was 2-3bpm higher than either. The fr235? Nearly 100bpm off (I think the other three were around 172-175bpm...the FR235 had me at 88bpm?)

You need to understand that HR and HRV are different things. While HR might be close enough, if the HRV data is not accurate it does not matter for the calculations. So for many the optical HR is enough as they see their pulse. But to calculate these advanced metrics the variability between heart beats is what counts. So for HR readings Some optical sensors seem to be just fine already. For HRV, none at the moment.

0 2goBeyond over 8 years ago

I'm a dunce, I glossed over HRV. My brain saw HR, my apologies.

0 webvan over 8 years ago

What's strange is that originally Garmin had said the FR235 wouldn't get VO2Max and recovery with the built-in sensor but they did add it in the end so they can't be using HRV for these estimates, same thing for TE.