Does anyone have heart rate hiking issues like these: (heart rate monitor seeming to get in a "mode" of registering low when heart rate is clearly higher?)

SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish over 5 years ago

Last couple hikes especially I have noticed hrm appears to be stuck in a "low reading" mode and for example last time track 86 bpm 10+ min into the hike up elevation when clearly my hr is at least in the 120-130 range. I say stuck because it seems to have corrected itself when I went to the app to try to figure out what was going on, clicked on heart rate, then went to "abnormal hr settings" and finding nothing applicable, back out of app, looked at my watch and saw it quickly shoot up to 126ish, and slowly climb from there. No idea how/if/why that got it to record more accurately? Previous to going to the app I did try several things such as repositioning the watch, tightnening the band, etc with no help. On a second hike since directly observing this behavior, I went to this same area in app, but did not seem to have an immediate affect, however still decided to start recording more accurately soon after (I did not directly observe it shooting up to semi-realistic hr that time).

Is there a reliable way to cause the app/watch to restart reading or "error correct" while tracking when you see a suspect hrm going on during an activity?

0 eezytiger over 3 years ago in reply to eezytiger

Today I tried a side by side test of 6X WHR vs 5X+ and HRM-PRO, using the Hike profile to record my dog walk, including the drive to and from the country park. I admit that my HR was not exactly tested during this gentle stroll, but I can compare exactly the data from the two HR sources, shown below.

6X WHR is green, 5X is red.

Much as I expected there is general agreement in the shape of the HR graphs, but at any moment in time the numbers may show a large gap, even though overall the pattern is the same. Also, as expected, there are clearly some odd moments when the HR values go haywire without explanation. FWIW I was not driving and kept my hands mostly still on my lap during the journeys out and back.

I don't understand the crazy 6X numbers on the return journey at all. Completely unjustified. This is why, when data accuracy matters to me, I always wear a chest strap.

0 8875222 over 3 years ago in reply to eezytiger

Thanks for going to this much effort! Unfortunately a chest strap isn't doable for me (34HH bra size). However as per previous response about arm strapped hrm I'm thinking this might be a solution for me. The new polar verity sense look like the go due to compatibility with garmin. I'm in this deep $$ wise whats another $130?!?! Thanks again

0 eezytiger over 3 years ago in reply to 8875222

Haha, no trouble at all. I always like to keep abreast (am I allowed to say that ;-)) of how things are moving on with new firmware. Both watches are on the latest betas, so I was curious to see how bad things are (or are not) nowadays. Knowledge is power and all that.

0 SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish over 3 years ago in reply to eezytiger

Yeah, thanks for posting the data. This kind of thing is very similar to what I find without graphing comparisons: randomly going wild for no apparent reason with no changes.. but then other times it appears pretty good. I wish there was a way to reliably correct it or get it to "sync/auto-correct" itself. So far with hiking I have found switching to the phone app to look at the data a couple times SEEMS to be the only way to get it to check and become more realistic, but only sometimes? Then again I have switched to "walk" for most hikes to avoid most of the silly numbers recently so I'm not sure of current behavior in hike mode itself. At least with walk mode its not guaranteed to give bad numbers at first like it was in hike mode.