When will Garmin finally work on the fundamentally flawed optical HR?

As a matter of fact, all current heart-rate sensors of Garmin are off by orders of magnitude, like its proven here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksBy5EgxESg

Every tester has the exact same results, Garmin optical HR cannot track fast changes in HR. Your HR needs to change over a period of more than 5 minutes to a higher level so that the sensor will actually detect that.

Why is Garmin not admitting that they have a fundamental software flaw in their optical HR. the sensor itself is more than capable enough.

Does Garmin even test the optical HR? Im wondering how all Garmin watches fail soo consistently in all reviews, and the Apple watches deliver so consistently an accurate HR-reading (by orders of magnitude better) with a less potent sensor.

And because its always the exact same kind of inaccurate reading its obvious that this is just a messed up algorithm in the core of the sensor-firmware.

How to get Garmins attention to that issue in a meaningful way? After soo many years Im getting sick of having to use a chest-strap every day, especially in the winter its a pain in the b...

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0 entify 7 months ago

Every time i read a post like this, im thinking do you even know how to wear the watch on your wrist right? I purchased dcrainmaker hr compare tool and i can tell you the elevate 5 sensor is spot on when it comes to running. Average correlation after 35 runs was 0.989 which is very good. Accuracy is highly individual and i might just be a lucky user or you might be unlucky?

The only activity where the sensor performs poorly compared Apple is weight lifting according to my own testings. Do you base your conclusions on 1 reviewer because reviewers like desfit, dcrainmaker, fit gear hunter is getting excellent results and the same level of accuracy as Apple.

These posts about bad accuracy tend to pop up more during fall/winter as cold hands/wrist really mess up with blood flow = bad readings.

0 Vizi 7 months ago

Some people had issues with HR for a long time. Some watches have working HR, some obviously have issues with HR tracking. Claiming that all are bad or all are good is equally wrong. From what I could see, this topic is usually ignored by Garmin.

Problem is present in all models that have elevate 4 and elevate 5 OHR.

Problems reported are always the same or very similar. Prevailing reply at the beginning of the 2024 was that problem is due to cold weather. However, users kept having same issues during spring, summer, autumn and now in winter 2024 that same answer is given, always disregarding several important facts:

No one explained why this same problem (very slow to respond to increase of HR) was not occurring so often in 2023, but became quite often after some software updates in 2024
No one explained why same users who used watches in 2023 and before, are having HR issues in 2024. They did not suddenly forget hot to wear the watch.
Garmin itself acknowledged that there is an issue and they said they would investigate and fix it. That was more than a half a year ago and since then Garmin ignores the issue and closed some discussions on the subject.
Few days ago, Garmin replaced the watch for couple Epix users that had HR issues. Few weeks ago they did the same for some users of Vivo 5 I think. So, it is not all up to users, there are other reasons as well, maybe even hardware faults. But due to Garmin being very quiet about the issue, real reason is not revealed.

So, I see that practice on this forum continues - users that have the HR problems are not helped at all but gaslighted as if they do not know how to wear the watch, or if someone does not have same issue he projects that all others are not having that problem neither. If person with problem bothers enough to prove that issue exists, than his posts are dismissed with "this is OHR limitation" (completely disregarding the fact that it worked before fine for same person and same watch).

Moreover, Garmin updates in 2024 have clearly proved that they break things on some watches and not on others. It only seems logical that same can happen with HR tracking as well.

I believe that hardware-wise OHR is very good but software updates changed HR algorithm for the worse for watches before fenix 8. Thus fenix 8 inherited same issues.

Since Garmin keeps ignoring the issue, I do not expect that this will be resolved. I think they treat it as "works as designed" (as they confirmed for several other problems during 2024 people complained about).

0 Vizi 7 months ago

Here are several links that clearly show that the problem has nothing to do with winter or with people not knowing how to wear the watch and that many people started having problems after software update:

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/epix-2/366187/epix-heart-rate-reading-way-too-low#pifragment-1292=8

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/epix-2/292820/heart-rate-on-epix-2-activity-way-too-low#pifragment-1292=11

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/epix-2/388538/epix-2-heart-rate-off-unusable#pifragment-1292=4

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-265-series/362213/heartrate-so-inaccurate-that-my-watch-is-basically-useless-for-training?

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-955-series/362273/heart-rate-values-totally-wrong-after-update-18-22

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-955-series/384760/heart-rate-values-from-optical-hrm-still-totally-wrong-with-20-26

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-955-series/388845/wrong-ohr-data-20-32

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-955-series/390798/recent-hr-issues-with-garmin-fr955

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-955-series/387654/old-ohr-problem-is-not-fixed

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-965/386942/forerunner-965-hr-issues-after-update-20-29#pifragment-1279=2

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-255-series/362575/have-you-also-found-the-ohr-completely-useless-with-18-x-19-x-20-x

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-255-series/388451/ohr-issue-after-20-32

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-165-series/374026/measurement-hr-is-now-very-bad

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/healthandwellness/f/vivoactive-5-series/383972/hr-glitches-vivo5

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-7-series/286294/fenix-7-heart-rate-not-accurate#pifragment-1292=12

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-7-series/315382/hr-concerns---it-is-inconsistent#pifragment-1292=31

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-7-series/364924/wrist-heart-rate-bugged?pifragment-1292=10

Since this HR lag issue affects all elevate 4 and 5 watches, it affects Fenix 8 as well (has same OHR sensor as Fenix 7 and Epix pro versions).

0 Chris 7 months ago in reply to Vizi

The problem seems to be that Garmin and e.g. Apple do handle poor readings differently. When an Apple Watch doesn't get a proper reading, it seems to just not record HR at all. If a Garmin watch doesn't get a proper reading, it seems to "guesstimate" a value similar to past values. Since there's no way to tell whether its an actually measured value or a guessed value, this can be confusing...

0 1271255 7 months ago in reply to entify

entify thats the culprit: running works almost every single time because of the way how the sensor works. Its correlating the steps with the HR. So its optimized for running. But on cycling and everything else the sensor fails. And yes I know extremly well how to wear the watch. Im into that topic since more then 10 years already. Im complaining since that time but everybody (like you) is just making up arguments to support Garmin for whatever reason. Why are there so many _identical_ measurements from so many different people out there. All have exactly the same characteristics how the HR failed. Thats a systematic issue as explained in the first posting.

0 1271255 7 months ago in reply to Chris

would be cool if we as users could actually see the sensor output. Im a developer myself and did some projects in robotics where I needed to sanitize sensor inputs from cameras and therefore I can imagine some of the challenges they have faced. But also the current result is "typical" for a wrong way of sanitizing the data.

0 kstate1980 7 months ago in reply to 1271255

The video suggests that the HRM is accurate except for during strength training.

0 Dr Phil 7 months ago in reply to 1271255

1271255 said:
running works almost every single time because of the way how the sensor works

but not for everybody.

1271255 said:
on cycling and everything else the sensor fails

but not for everybody.

1271255 said:
Thats a systematic issue

Assuming you mean systemic then that is clearly not the case as OHR works fine for some.

This has always been the case since OHR arrived on watches. It likely will always be the case as long as OHR exists on watches and that includes all the other brands too.

And despite the naysayers, Garmin has consistently worked to improve the outcomes from OHR since the very beginning. You only have to take a look at the number of changes to the software and sensors over the years.

0 sokszkota 7 months ago in reply to entify

unless it's a bit colder 0 to 6C, then for the first 10-15-20-30mins it cannot lock-on into HR whatsoever. I already had 3 examples where, even when walking, it showed me 50 -60 bps, where it should be 80-100 in reality. I already remember why i was always wearing ECG strap with Garmin.
Now you telling us there is no problem LOL. Learn to wear watch seems like iphone failure where folks 'forgot' how to handle s phone

0 MKWillisSP 7 months ago

Has been working well for me over a hundred or so runs. No complaints at all.