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Garmin Fenix 6x, wrist HR monitoring. Reading NOT even close.

2043232
over 5 years ago

I was doing stairs at work. 44 floors in 22 floor building. On first run garmin correctly noticed 24 floors which is ± correct. Then I went down. On second run ZERO floors detected... Very weird, but this is not a deal breaker to me. UPDATE: The bigger problem was HR,which was measured rather incorrectly.

On first run, the HR seemed to be a little behind reality, but that can be attributed to the wrist measurement, and I maxed around 140. Could be.

On second run, I was breathing heavily and my HR was definitely over 150, probably over 160 maybe close to 170. You can feel high heart rate. Garmin measured 113, which I'd expect to be resting rate while standing still after first run.

Now. This is NOT even close. Point of heart rate monitors is to give you some idea about your heart performance, and I'd like to see precision ±1, ±3 tops, when wearing HR belt.

Can someone tell me, what is expected accuracy? Because difference 47 (if I'm kind and considering that I had only 160) is WAY not acceptable measurement — I can ask passing maintenance guy what he think my HR is to get better estimate! Watch firmly attached. Cant be made any thighter even if I would really try. Watch don't move on wrist at all. Reading aren't jittery, they are stable, but completely off. Yes, each way up took under 7 minutes, but I don't assume, that HR raise is detected with such delay that it can be explained by that.

If this is not to be expected, what are the next actions I should take?

Also I noticed some weird estimations even with HR belt, but not as blatant as this one. I will definitely retry stairs with hr belt next week, but please tell me what do you think about this.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Can you post a link to your activities in Garmin Connect?

    TIA

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to gaijin

    sure.

    Let me put some legend to the time graph: There are 2 laps. First lap ends approximately on 6th floor of second run UP. Why? Because I saw, that floor count isn't going up, and thought, that garmin maybe needs to know, when I start second lap. So 10:54 is the moment, when I climbed 24 floors up, 24 floors down and 6 floors up. Not ideal to work with, I know. But you can see, that HR on first climb from first lap is max 146 (or so). Then on the way down it cames down to ~110 which is reasonable for walking down the stairs. 2nd lap it thus 24-6 floors up, then 10 floors down(my office is in the middle of building). But even if I climb 18 floors, from HR rate it seems I'm still going down effortlessly. But I can assure you, these floors on the second run weren't at all effortless. Not deadly, but not effortless. And HR simply cannot be lower than on first run, it can be same or higher, but definitely lower. And if you feel you close to total max and watches shows 113 you know there something weird.


    https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/4935646411

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to 2043232

    ... also when I had so called "113" bpm, I checked my carotid with my thumb — you need not to be einstein or do actual counting to realise, that this is not 113. Also my aerobic threshold was last time measured in lab to be 150, I wasn't able to speak without difficulties thus that's second indication I'm well over 150.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Did you use the floor climb activity ? Maybe it's like hiking, high heart rate is not working well. I use the usual run activity for floors. It counts the elevation instead of the floors, and I think it's more accurate. Floor count seems ok, but is it that reliable ? And floors are not all as high. The elevation seems quite fine, and the heart rate looks quite fine :

    connect.garmin.com/.../4681618980

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to RISBAC

    Thanks for recommendation, I will try that, BUT my main concern isn't floor count, as you typically know how many floors you did. My main concern is HR measurement which was extremely off. Do you think it is possible, that different activities can yield different HR measurement? In your run your HR data looks better than mine — did you use HR belt or wrist hr monitor?

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to 2043232

    Many complains about poor HR with hicking activity. So the activity type change the settings of the HR sensor maybe. It's worth trying with another sport mode. 

    I used the wrist heart rate. In most cases, with a tight enough strap, I find it good for a wrist sensor. Most of the time, I'm using an optimal arm strap though, the polar one. It's very reliable from my first months of test, and it's very comfortable. All my floor trainings had good heart rate measures, either from the watch or from the polar sensor. So I keep doing them in trail run mode (to see the elevation chart and total elevation). 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to RISBAC

    Thanks for info, I will try that and will report my results.