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Bad O2 and HR accuracy

1387800
over 4 years ago

Anyone else have bad accuracy readings with their garmin instinct  solar? Checked my O2 and HR with a medical grade device at work and O2 was off by like 3% while HR was off by 14 BPM. I know this isn’t a medical grade device but even my Felix 6 and old Samsung phone can get the O2 right on the dot. 

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  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Yeah, it just isn't very accurate. End of story. SpO2 has a deviation of easily up to 3%, *if* it can measure at all, which is why Garmin introduced infrared in their newest sensor.

    And HR basically depends upon the depth of your veins and whatnot and can be off by the dozens. Garmin introduces a new sensor every one or two years, and it's never really much better than before. My old Vivoactive HR was more reliable, even if it didn't analyse heart rate variability. When I'm hiking, the heartrate on the Instinct Solar is off by up to 30 bpm. It's a joke, I've turned it off.

    As a reality check, the newest Samsung watch has HR, SpO2 and blood pressure (!), and the additional sensors offer ECG, body fat and muscle mass. Then again, their battery life is barely two days.

    I believe the reason why many have the feeling that battery life got worse with newer SensorHub firmwares is that Garmin increased the sample rate in an attempt to get better accuracy. (Another reason, in my opinion, is that the battery charge counter regularly goes bezerk after a firmware update.)

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I did not have complaints about HR accuracy until recent update. Yeah, it was not perfect during my interval workouts, but now it's erratic even for low intense activity. At the moment I resorted to external chest HR for all kind of cardio and resistance workouts. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to 4241327
    4241327 said:
    I believe the reason why many have the feeling that battery life got worse with newer SensorHub firmwares is that Garmin increased the sample rate in an attempt to get better accuracy.

    It's been a terrible trade off in my opinion.
    I didn't have much issue with accuracy before - and I've not subsequently noticed any improvement. I have noticed, however, a significant drop in battery life.
    Terrible update; should have been optional rather than done as an automatic update. Would turn off auto update now, but it seems the damage is done unless I hard reset or roll back the update.

  • +1 over 4 years ago

    Please note: you are comparing medical grade certified devices to consumer grade sensors. There will be a difference.

    Here is the information regarding both the OHR sensor and PulseOX sensor accuracy:

    - Activity Tracking and Fitness Metric Accuracy

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Garmin - Chris

    What about 20-25% discrepancy between chest HRM and Instinct Solar OHRM during activities after the recent update to 15.10 and sensorhub update to 6.0.1? Instinct Solar OHRM at the moment is probably useful for measuring resting heart rate only.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 4787013

    I agree with you, I monitored it constantly comparing it with a cardio band + edge and a venu sq. The result is that venu sq is more reliable than the instinct and, more surprisingly, the instinct solar has constantly ca. 60 BPM less than the real HR. It is not possible to monitor my progress during activities, even considering it as a proxy!!!