Heart Rate Monitor Strap and wrist heart rate monitor.

Yes it connects automaticly. You need to pair it with the watch once before first activity.

M

All paired. Is there a different icon or similar in activity screens on the device which tells me data is being provided by heart rate strap and not wrist sensor? 

Don't know for sure. But a message pops up saying it is connected. Just test it... Start an activity and remove watch from wrist. If you still receives HR data it is working. Takes les than 5s to see if HR is missing. But it should work. Has never failed for me.

M

So if I’m wearing the strap and take off my Fenix 6 x pro, my heart rate should still be displayed. Reading threads I think you need to be in an activity screen to try this, when on a watch face the HR is always picked up from the wrist sensor. Is this right, but I’ll try your suggestion on a warm up walk before a run tomorrow. 

2 other thoughts/suggestions: before you begin the activity, you can press and hold the center left button and scroll down to sensors & accessories and see if it is connected. 2. after you start a run or whatever, if you missed the message that popped up telling you the strap is connected you can again press and hold that center left button and scroll down to sensors & accessories and see if it is connected. 

In my experience, if you I do a suggested run of the day, I don't get the message that my strap is connected (it is connected, and maybe I got the message but I don't think so), so due to my OCD, I often at the beginning of the run check to see if it is connected via the above method 2.

I didn't know of the method to take it off my wrist, that seems like a good way too

Oortcloud said:

Start an activity and remove watch from wrist. If you still receives HR data it is working.

Yes, you need to be in an activity. You can try it out tomorrow. That will be fine. I am confident it will work out fine. Btw you can do it anytime. You only need to be in "activity mode". You don't need to actually start the run or walk etc.

M

MikeM said:

I didn't know of the method to take it off my wrist, that seems like a good way too

He he, it comes natrual for me when trying to run in winter climate.... When trying to maximize GPS performance you really don't want the watch under 3 layers of sleeves..

M

I can see it’s connected when I begin an activity. The question was more does the strap automatically override the wrist sensor so the HR data the device is getting is from the strap? 

And does all the additional data the heart rate strap provides automatically appear in Garmin Connect? 

You should be able to peer under the watch and observe the absence of the LED lights, thus the HR data is just from strap, I believe