I own a lot of Garmin products for my boat, but I recently purchased the Garmin Epix Gen 2 in 47 and then wanted a larger size so I bought the exact same watch in 51. Both have the same issue.
We all need to complain to Garmin and get them to correct this as this issue applies to all of their watches. The heart rate sensors are fine in all of the watches. The software is the problem. This is how I know. Switch to broadcast HR and it's perfect. Fix this Garmin! It should be easy
I work out very hard and generally wear a cheap orange theory heart rate monitor as well. My garmin watch is generally 20-50 bpm below the orange theory monitor, unless I restart it or switch to broadcast. If I switch to broadcast, it jumps up immediately and catches the OTF monitor.
I bought this thing to notify me if I go into AFIB. How can anyone possibly trust it? It's worthless as a heart rate monitor. I want to keep it, but it's easy to see why Apple is eating everyone else's lunch. The forum is comical. Everyone has turned into an apologist and says buy the strap, warm up first, or they keep posting the link. It doesn't work. Plain and simple
Here's some screenshots showing today's workout. I wanted to see how long it would go before it recognized I was working out. It was going to go through the entire workkout without picking it up. For context - 30 minute workout and my heart rate was mostly in the 130-140 range. Garmin watch never approached where it should be the entire thing. At the 28/30 min mark, I put it in broadcast just for effect. So for the entire 28 mins, it never caught up. It jumped up for the final two minutes. It didn't even have my heart rate in the grey zone if anyone is familiar with Orange Theory. Burned 100 calories when I really burned over 400. Frustrating.
