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Vivoactive 4S heart rate completely off while steep uphill walking

Hi,

I have made a mistake propably and bought Vivoactive 4S as a gift to girlfriend for HR and activity tracking.. hesitating first, but since HR issues on my Fenix 6 has been resolved, I give another chance to Garmin. But HR issues all over again.

When me and my girl are practicing steep uphill walking the HR is too low, sitting around 100 bpm no matter what. Once you stop and go back downhill, it rise up to 140 bpm at spot. Take a look:

How to fix this? Different activity? Or different brand of watch? :-(

Regards

Tomas

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0 ovekvam over 4 years ago

Do you have a chest strap for measuring heart rate? That works a lot better than wrist sensors for intervals.

0 Vizi over 4 years ago in reply to ovekvam

Garmin users need HR chest strap to get accurate readings during walking?

I really hope that is not the case.

0 ovekvam over 4 years ago in reply to Vizi

I think the wrist sensors are fairly good for regular walking, but if you do hill intervals, you can get results like shown above with the technology we have today in most brands of watches.

0 Vizi over 4 years ago in reply to ovekvam

I think that if device cannot measure even remotely accurately HR during lower intensity activity, it is issue with that device (hardware or software). And serious one at that.

I did not use Garmin watch for long but really hope that it will not have such problems.

0 ovekvam over 4 years ago in reply to Vizi

There is a lot of filtering involved with the wrist sensor technology, and it struggles with quick changes in heart rate.

0 GoRingo over 4 years ago in reply to ovekvam

I tend to disagree. I had Samsung Galaxy, I have Fenix 6s.. Even dammed Xiaomi miband for few bucks was working better. And again, if the HR reading is so bad, why Garmin doesn't say it to us, so we know what we are getting? Anyway I have read that Vivoactive uses the same HR senzor as Fenix line, my Fenix is working as fine. But I am using "Hiking" mode wich seems to be not available on Vivo.

0 GoRingo over 4 years ago in reply to ovekvam

It's not exactly an interval, it's walking up for 60 minutes, it's skiing track

+1 ovekvam over 4 years ago in reply to GoRingo

Definitely not an interval, then. I would try the "run" activity next time.
By the way, my VA4S got new sensor software today. I don't know what was changed.

0 GoRingo over 4 years ago in reply to ovekvam

Will try "run" this weekend

0 Vizi over 4 years ago in reply to ovekvam

It is not quick change of heart rate, he was walking uphill for some time.

It was only when he started going downhill that HR rose. It seems as if HR measurement was more affected by swinging arms (which was more pronounced when going downlhill so it picked up his HR) than by actual HR pulse.