fenix 7 heart rate not accurate

1271255 said:

that his bug is intentional

 Correction - that this behaviour is intentional. 

I think if Garmin claim on their website that the device can read your heart rate, it should read your heart rate correctly all the time. It really is a load of rubbish and unacceptable that it struggles to read your HR in certain situations. How can we be certain that its actually even accurate throughout the day for your health metric data if its not even reading correctly when I'm on a stationary bike?

I can’t believe I’ve found a thread with people having the same problem as me.

From what I can gather, when the F7 is not in an activity profile the WHRM only activates if you move your arm. This means it won’t accurately record HR (in the widget) for someone using a strap paired to Zwift etc. where the arms are stationary.

Honestly, this is a ridiculous behaviour/feature and I agree with many of the users here. For a 1k+ watch that is advertised as being a 24/7 fitness tracker that’s unacceptable. I came to the forums hoping there was a fix but it seems this is something that has been going on since the F5.

This is almost certainly a bug. I’ve tracked workouts in fitness studios, hikes, runs and rock climbing (indoor/outdoor) with the F7 along side an assortment of devices (whoop, orangetheory’s HRM, withings, Fitbit and a polar chest strap). While all have some deviation from a chest strap (as most wrist based devices do) the F7 has a distinctive behavior where the heart rate suddenly drops and sustains that drop. Almost like it’s being shifted 25 to 35 beats lower than the actual HR by an algorithm.

Appears to happen most often during a sudden change in the activity intensity but that is just a hypothesis. 

Every time I have experienced this so far I have been able to solve for it by prematurely ending the activity and starting a new one. The heart rate almost immediately corrects itself. On longer hikes I’ll end up having to do this 2-3 times and stitch the files together after the fact to get a complete workout. 

This bug very evidently seems to be some sort of algorithmic attempt at modulating the heat rate reading within an activity. It also doesn’t seem to be working as intended.

Hope we hear back from someone at Garmin on this. Seems like a surprising miss on their part and writing it off as “wrist based hrms work like this” seems unfair given a number of other wrist based hrms do not have this issue.

That is not true. I have tested my Fenix 6 or in non activity while doing elliptical. My chest strap connect to the elliptical. Then i press a button on the watch to see the current hr and it matches. To be true i had 2 Fenix 6s before my pro that i had returned because indeed it did not work. I had to start an activity to make it match. Then i got a 6 pro and ohr is perfect. In activity or non activity started. 

My Fenix 7x has the same problem during outdoor run mode. Heart rate display drops to 80bpm and gets stuck there. I tried switching from left wrist to right wrist but issue persists. Any suggestions how to fix this?

If it does not work now, it will never work. If it is under warranty, ask for an exchange. The next one may work. 

I know exactly what your are referring too. Returned a fenix 6x as the HR was garbage. Brought the fenix 7x and just did a turbo session with just the watch on my wrist and it was saying 76bpm during a maximal sprint that my HR strap was saying 168. Shocking!!! Spoke to garmin and he said the watch is not made to be accurate during cycling and weight lifting as the wrist moves which impacts the HR on the watch. So bad for a 700 quid watch. My £150 Fitbit was more accurate. Have you kept the watch and resolved?? 

I cycle and the wohr matches my chest strap but I wear the watch a little higher on the forearm. I also tested against an elliptical and it followed the computer with a little lag. But like I mention, it does not work with all watches. I use to test the two previous 6s I had by climbing up the stairs and using a polar h10 connected to the phone to compare. The watch will not go higher than 80 when my hr was 110. Then I got a 6 pro and did the same test. Perfect.