I've had a new Edge 540 for about 3 weeks now, and it consistently wants to autodetect my FTP and max heart rate to values that lower than what makes sense. I just finished a 70 minute ride, averaging 210 W over the first hour of the ride (note, normal training, not an FTP test). I currently have my FTP manually set at 221W based on my best 1hr average power this season (not from an FTP test, just a training ride).After today's ride, my Edge auto-detected my new FTP at 180W, 30W less than I just demonstrated in a not-maximal effort. Looking at my data, my actual zones make sense with the 221W estimate, and they'd be way too high with the 180W estimate. Max HR is the same way...my HR runs pretty high (so I'm only ever going to be a mediocre endurance athlete, fine!), and Garmin placed 58 minutes of that 70 minute ride in HR Zone 5, obviously my zones need to be adjusted up. But when Garmin has proposed updating my HR, it wants to set it down from 184 to 180. My manually set 184 is based on highest workout HR this season, and is obviously still too low (since Garmin is putting my hour-long workouts entirely in Z5). Shouldn't it be "autodetecting" HR (or at least zones) that line up with my actual performance?
None of my performance stats are making sense, which I have asked about before, and no-one has been able to explain. I know other people have similar issues, but I haven't seen any explanation for why Garmin behaves this way. What is the point of the "autodetect" features? With all the data they have available, and presumably "experts" developing the algorithms, why are they missing the mark so much? Shouldn't they be offering some insight other than "Garmin has no idea how to use your data to quantify your performance"?