Heart Rate inaccurately low during almost all exercise

I notice that at rest and throughout the day and night my Instinct 2 Solar accurately and frequently monitors my HR, and I love the resolution and function of this. However, during all activities (the reason I bought the watch), my HR is consistently low, either half of what it really is or a solid 30-50 bpm down from my actual HR. 

My primary activities are backcountry skiing, stairclimber, trail hiking / running, and in general activities that involve sustained HR near or at my aerobic max. I will be traversing a steep up slope on skis and feel my heart hammering, take a timer measurement on my wrist and count 180 bpm, only to see my watch clocking in at 130 realtime. I have done this in multiple conditions, including while maintaining full cardio load, and coming to brief rest to measure. This dramatically alters my calculated loads for these activities on Connect and Strava, which defeats the purpose of monitoring vitals for technology informed training. 

I have gone through all of the garmin support articles and suggested fixes, I have even shaved my entire wrist to get a better fix on the sensor. I have experimented with every position, orientation, and tightness, and switched wrists.

The only thing that has worked inconsistently is letting my HR come all the way down to rest, and then ramping it back up again. From a signal processing standpoint, It's almost as if the HR sensor signal is aliasing until the HR frequency jumps under Nyquist. But this fix does not work consistently, maybe 30% of the time, and man does it kill a good workout. 

I have had an instinct 2 for several months now and this is becoming a deal breaker, and I may see myself go back to Apple as a result (watch ultra). I love almost everything about this watch, but I feel like, how can they not get this one core thing right? 

Has anyone else run in to this consistently? Does anyone from Garmin have any further suggestions other than the boilerplate support links? 

  • BTW, I just turned on the MoveIQ and did 50 squats watching what the LEDs do. They continued flickering, without going solid.

    I have had the experience several times that even within a model series, one watch switches to high power mode while the other remains in low power mode. I assume that this depends on the different sensitivity of the motion sensor.

  • Strange, I have 5 different Garmin watches, and none of them does it, regardless how strong I move. I even tried beating with the fist on the desk rather strongly (which generates strong acceleration curves), and doing different kind of arm motions, jumping jacks, running, etc, and all those watches still just go on flickering.

  • BTW, does you watch go into the solid LED light (activity) mode even when you start pedaling on an indoor bike (no arm motion involved at all)? That's another good way I tested the HR sensor many times previously, so it should work for the testing even in cases when squats trigger the activity mode (which I do not quite believe, but lets tell it can exists).

  • I think the real question is "WHEN is the watch able to recognize a motion pattern to put the sensor in high power mode".

    The Move IQ is a hit-and-miss for me.

    I did a 100+km bike ride yesterday with an entire ride recorded on bike GPS and the chest strap. The first half of the ride I sporadically observed and compared the HR on the watch face (passive 24/7 thing), with last 2 or so hours of the ride recorded as bike activity on the watch too. There were numerous lengthy stops watching kids sports games, bakery stops, etc.; 7 hours total with almost 3 hours of stops, so plenty of data and HR ranges.

    The recorded part is easy to compare with readily extractable HR data. Ignoring the blue straight lines which are stops on the bike computer, there is generally a good agreeance between the two. Whenever I compared the watch to the bike computer, there was no more than few bpm difference. Good enough for me as a back HR device if HR strap is not available.

    First part of the ride Garmin picked up as 3 Move IQ ride events but HR difference observed during those events was a lot larger at times then what was observed with watch recording. Plenty of times HR was matching the strap or within a few beats (generally lower), even 160+bpm.

    However, there were certainly instances with watch HR much lower than the strap, more than 80bpm at times. In the picture below, top of a steady 3+ minutes hill climb during one of the Move IQ events, watch was locked on 82bpm, with strap HR climbing 160+ bpm, a slight drop to 159 by the time I pulled over and took the picture. I am annoyed that I never checked the HR light if it was strobing or solid in the passive monitoring phase of the ride.

    Hence, I do not think Move IQ is what puts HR into the high power mode, as differences observed between passive and active HR modes would not be as big. Move IQ or whatever algorithm controls passive monitoring can be reliable, so there is hope with updates things will get more consistent.

  • I do not think Move IQ is what puts HR into the high power mode

    I did not say that Move IQ puts the sensor into high power mode.

    I meant that the motion sensor sets the HR sensor to high power mode. Whether a Move IQ event is then also started or not is another question.
    In my experience, there are differences in the sensitivity of the motion sensors, which may cause one watch to go into high power mode while another watch remains in low power.

    just my two cents

  • I was hoping if Move IQ (based on motion sensor or else) identified an activity to be say cycling that watch would trigger the "high power" cycling tracking profile automatically in the background. Given my observation difference between Move IQ cycling event and recorded one, I don't think that is the case.

  • In my experience, there are differences in the sensitivity of the motion sensors, which may cause one watch to go into high power mode while another watch remains in low power.

    I have very high doubts about it. I tested many Instinct watches, and never saw any of them going into the full power HR sensor mode spontaneously regardless how strong the the motion is. I would only believe it, if you could provide some evidence.

    If you want to have the watch in the high power mode, just start the HR broadcasting or an activity on it (you can discard it at the end). 

  • I have very high doubts about it. I tested many Instinct watches, and never saw any of them going into the full power HR sensor mode spontaneously regardless how strong the the motion is. I would only believe it, if you could provide some evidence.

    My experiences are based on the experiences of various Garmin outdoor watches that I have used since 2016 and therefore no longer own some models. For example fenix 3, fenix 5x, fenix 6x. Therefore no evidence. For example, my fenix 6x was replaced by Garmin for exactly this reason, and the replacement watch behaved completely differently and switched to high power mode.
    You don't have to believe it.

  • If you want to have the watch in the high power mode, just start the HR broadcasting or an activity on it

    Or call up the HR widget.

  • , I just turned on the MoveIQ and did 50 squats watching what the LEDs do. They continued flickering, without going solid.
    After how many squats, or after how long time, go the LEDs on your watch into the solid mode?

    6 - after some seconds / instinct 2x solar - a watch that I don't think you own.