Heart rate differential between 7X and Apple Watch

SO, this might seem strange, but when running, I generally wear my Fenix 7X on my left wrist (previously, my 945) and an Apple Watch on my right (mostly for music, text notifications, emergency phone calls). I have noticed a fairly massive differential between the two from a heart rate perspective; sometime upwards of a 30 beat difference. It's really hard to glean which one of the two is more accurate. But if I had to make a determination based on "feel" I'd probably say the Apple Watch is more accurate. Any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance,

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0 Yosif Starkov over 1 year ago in reply to C.sco

In general, I would agree with you, but, to your point about "comparing a previous-generation Garmin HR sensor to "the latest" Apple Watch HR sensor", here you can see preliminary Elevate 5.0 vs 4.0 testing. Unfortunately, the difference is basically negligible. I hope this can be fixed with a software update(s).

We also need to consider the fact that the pioneer in the industry is Garmin, not Apple, and it's obvious the latter's R&D is catching up at a really fast pace, so Garmin needs to have a proper answer to that.
Lastly, to your point about "every single sensor from every single company is going to have some people and/or some circumstances where it performs poorer for them than a different sensor would", I mentioned, what strikes me, is that my Venu 2 showed better measurement while it's basically the same sensor, same brand, same me, same training. Isn't that interesting?!

0 Yosif Starkov over 1 year ago in reply to C.sco

Elevate 5.0 vs 4.0 testing https://youtu.be/5-KFL_drbuw

0 C.sco over 1 year ago in reply to Yosif Starkov

haha I knew that would be a quantified scientist video before I even clicked the link. I quit watching that guy's videos ages ago.

0 Yosif Starkov over 1 year ago in reply to C.sco

Well, there are two other options:
1. Me starting making videos on my watches to show you the difference.
2. You get Epix Gen 2, Venu 2, and Apple Watch to see it with your own eyes.

0 Former Member over 1 year ago

I have an apple watch ultra, and recently compared it to my epix pro sapphire 51mm. I wore one on each wrist and did some walk/run intervals, and the HR was virtually the same the entire time. never went more than 1 or 2 BPM different from one another. Infact, I noticed the AWU had a little more lag than the epix.

0 Yosif Starkov over 1 year ago in reply to Former Member

Thanks for sharing! That is an encouraging statement having in mind Garmin uses an optical heart rate sensor, while AWU uses a combination of optical and electrical heart rate sensors.

0 Former Member over 1 year ago in reply to Yosif Starkov

I used the OHR sensor on both devices for the test.

0 entify over 1 year ago in reply to Yosif Starkov

Quantified Scientist is way to biased towards Apple - In one of his reviews he scored correlation value for hr accuracy above 1.00 which is impossible.

You should check out Fit Gear Hunter instead. After 22 crossfit workouts he got a correlation value of 0.952 for the new elevate hr sensor vs elevate 4 'only' got 0.90. CrossFit is a tough task for any sensor

0 Yosif Starkov over 1 year ago in reply to entify

Many thanks! I'll definitely check it out.

0 Vizi over 1 year ago

Apple watch has had the most accurate optical heart rate sensors for several years, but they lack sports metrics and dedicated ecosystem.

Elevate 5 in latest Fenox 7 Pro seems to finally come close to Apple watch.