While charging in unusually dim lighting this morning, I noticed hairline cracks on the face of the HR sensor. Panicking, I did some research and found this has happened before to people (like me) who have not damaged the sensor in any way. I have not dropped, smashed, or otherwise done anything to the underside of the watch. It is on my wrist 99% of the time. Sent an email to Garmin support this morning and hope they can address the issue quickly. I love this thing and hate the idea of being without it. ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1284467.jpg
Another Australian purchased 5x owner here with cracks. I have flicked off an email (thanks for the advice) and will update on what response I get back. I will be pretty annoyed if I am sent a refurbished replacement to be fair.
After wearing the new watch for a few days, it does appear that the cracks were impacting the OHR in some way. I'd been stuck on very high stress always in my all day stress graph. Even the times I was asleep, it was showing as high stress. With the new watch, i'm getting a range of readings, including low stress time while sleeping.
My replacement arrived after less than a week. It was in a bag labelled refurbished but it looked as good as new. It has gold pins in the charging port. It had software version 6.something and it updated to v 8. Pretty good. Satisfied.
nmyeti - when I first got my replacement back (I only had the cable issue) my stress data went to low too. Lots more blue where I had gold before. It started to jump back up again after a few days though.
Another Australian purchased 5x owner here with cracks. I have flicked off an email (thanks for the advice) and will update on what response I get back. I will be pretty annoyed if I am sent a refurbished replacement to be fair.
No response from Garmin via email. Does anyone have advice in how to get a response from Garmin in Australia? Many thanks.
No response from Garmin via email. Does anyone have advice in how to get a response from Garmin in Australia? Many thanks.
I am in Australia (Melbourne) and have had my 5x replaced on this issue. I emailed the address suggested in this forum including photos of the cracks. After I didn't get a response to the email after about four working days, I phoned the Australia Garmin support number. They looked at their system and found my email and said it had gone to the US and not yet been allocated to AU. So the support agent then issued me with an RMA and I sent it it. I suggest you call them. I don't know how long it would take the US to allocate the case to AU or if it would ever have happened. Just don't hold your breath waiting for them. Hope you get your replacement watch soon. Incidentally, my replacement, labeled re-furbished, seems good as new and is better than the one I sent in because it doesn't have the horrid cable connection problem that the one I bought had. It could be because the replacement has the "gold pins" which I gather were added to latter models because of connection issues.
TBH i'm ignoring the spiderweb of cracking on my wrist HR sensor, because wrist based heart rate monitoring is universally crap. Several different models of watches have all told me stuff like "you climbed that 10% grade 1/2 mile hill at 110 BPM!" or "You did an Xterra tri at an average of 160 BPM!" Bad data is much worse than no data.
