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Is Respiration Rate not working?

PhotoPete
over 1 year ago

New Epix gen 2 user (just upgraded from Fenix 5).

Respiration rate just sits between 13 and 15. If I do a heath snapshot for two minutes it just never changes no matter how quickly or slowly I breath. If I exercise it just never changes. I’ve tested it by breathing between 5 and 30 breaths per minute… still just records between 13 and 15.

I’ve tried the watch on both wrists and from loose to tight. Still no correlation to my actual respiration rate.

Have any users actually managed to get this to reflect how fast they are actually breathing? Am I doing something wrong?

As one of the few metrics which is easy to check the accuracy of, this complete failure to record any sensible respiration data puts serious doubt in my mind as to whether HRV, pulse ox, stress etc etc are even vaguely working or whether they are just made up features.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Etupes25

    Really well said! Wow! @Garmin - Chris to the tracking case!!!

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Following up on a previous post, I wanted to compare how the different activities stack up in measuring the respiration rate.

    During a single uninterrupted indoor cycling activity, I successively recorded mini 2mn sessions across various activities on the watch.

    Here is how the different activities reported the respiration rate

    Activity Min Avg Max
    01- Health Snapshot #1 14 14
    02- Walking 25 28 30
    03- Treadmill #1 26 28 30
    04- Breathworks #1 4 6 7
    05- Indoor Cycling #1 26 28 32
    06- Breathworks #2 4 4 5
    07- Health Snapshot #2 15 16
    08- Yoga #1 12 13 14
    09- Indoor Cycling #2 29 32 35
    10- Strength 31 34 40
    11- HIIT 29 34 39
    12- Health Snapshot #3 15 18
    13- Indoor Cycling #3 29 32 38
    14- Yoga #2 12 12 13
    15- Treadmill #2 34 39 41
    16- Breathworks #3 4 4 4
    17- Indoor Cycling #4 31 27 33

    I guess what is going on here. A regular activity seems to measure actual breathing rate, while the health snapshot, Yoga and Breathworks activities expect a certain range of values, and normalize heavily to force fit the individual's data in the range. The average adult at rest breathes at a rate between 12 and 20 brpm, so the Yoga and Health Snapshot expect this range. The breathworks app is absurdly off but it makes sense, since the goal is to breath at 4brpm, you end up breathing at 4brpm (great workout!).

    To try to maintain comparable conditions, I maintained the best I could constant low power (150W) after a 20mn warmup to stabilize HR, a normal breathing, the same position on the bike. To compensate further for fluctuations of conditions, I randomized the selection of activities.

    Here is what the entire bike ride looks like itself:

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Josh

    The issue remains escalated with engineering. There is no new update.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    If I count breaths at rest manually, as inhale + exhale = 1, I usually have 6 or 7 brpm. 
    My Garmin Epix2 shows between 12, 13, 14, about double. or counted differently ;) 
    is 1 breath = inhale + exhale?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Oxidant

    No. You are counting correctly. The watch just doesn’t work correctly for respiration rate.

    You’d be better just guessing how quick you felt you were breathing and picking a number yourself. Useless feature.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    like we see Respiration Rate is useless, SPO2 many have this off because is useless, Heart Rate without a strap is a joke because of cadence lock, VO2 max is only a software calculation and many say is different from a test lab, step count is a joke

    the question is for what we have paid 800-1000$? 

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 9649896
    9649896 said:
    like we see Respiration Rate is useless

    I demonstrated that my respiration rates measurements are seriously off for the Health Snapshot, Breath Works and Yoga for sure For regular activities of running, biking, it seems alright and well correlated to the actual respiration rate. I would use it to determine ventilation thresholds manually, although better tools exist: I use instead AlphaHRV for the first ventilation threshold, and the built-in FTP test for the second threshold.

    9649896 said:
    SPO2 many have this off because is useless

    I agree personally. I will see this week-end whether significant changes of altitude make this feature somewhat useful or informative.

    9649896 said:
    Heart Rate without a strap is a joke because of cadence lock

    because of cadence lock and intractable challenges of optical measurement on the wrist. This will be true for any wrist-based sensor, and maybe for any battery optimized optical sensor. I always wear a chest strap as I care about accuracy.

    9649896 said:
    step count is a joke

    Step count can be seriously off when I don't walk intentionally, as in a real walk. If I go on a walk, it is pretty good. If I record a walking activity, it will be very good.  As I  go on walks to reach higher steps goal, the error introduced by non-walking activities (like driving :-) will be negligible. If I am just curious how many steps I did as I went about my daily life, the number will be off quite a bit.

    9649896 said:
    VO2 max is only a software calculation and many say is different from a test lab

    This is where I disagree strongly. The Garmin system and algorithm for VO2 Max, Training Load, Training Status, Recovery are very solid and anchored on individual physiological measurements. The algorithms have a narrow error rate (about 5%) on average, but can diverge more for some individuals. The assumptions are very important (age, weight and maximum heart rate) and getting the HR Max right is a challenge for sure. HR and HRV measurements can be a challenge as discussed above, but this can be solved. Pace and Power measurement are solid as well.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Etupes25

    thank you very much for your answer much better than lock the discussion 

    im waiting for your test with SPO2 you are very well documented

    respect