A while back I noticed that I wasn’t earning as many activity minutes as I used to, even though I hadn’t changed my activity level.
Then, more recently, I increased my activity level and started watching my heart rate while I was exercising. It always seemed a bit low. Then, it started to seem stupid low…. Like enough exertion that it would be difficult to carry on a conversation, but showing a heart rate at like 70. About 10 minutes later it would suddenly jump up to like 140.
So I tried everything in the troubleshooting document.
I made sure I was wearing it ABOVE the wrist.
I tried it higher on my wrist above the wrist bone, I tried it lower on my wrist but above the wrist bone.
I tried it tighter, I tried it looser.
I made sure when I moved the watch up and down on my wrist my skin moved with it.
I tried it on my right arm, I tried it on my left arm.
I cleaned the sensor, I cleaned my skin.
I tried making sure I was manually starting activities with the right activity type.
I restarted the phone.
I unpaired and re-paired the watch
i did a factory reset on the watch.
I tried walking with my arm not moving, my arm moving.
I got out a Polar chest strap I had, and the Vivosmart was always at least 20 beats less than what the strap said, sometimes as much as 50bpm (again, strap more accurate, but by that much?!).
I heard that the watch could accidentally pick up the cadence on a treadmill, so a couple times waving my hand around in big circles got it to kick in correctly - and rather than 70 bpm, I was at like 140.
Each time I got on the treadmill I would try tighter/looser, right arm/left arm, waving my arm around (which stopped working, and probably made other people in the gym think I had a tic), nothing helped.
I bought an HRM Pro, thinking it would sync directly to the Connect app, like my Polar chest strap does, and just use that on the treadmill, watch for the rest of the day, but nope- it was worthless without the right watch. Right back to Amazon.
I started looking into Polar, Fitbit, even Apple Watch. As clunky as it is, I still preferred the way the Connect app worked to all other platforms. So I was not happy. At all.
Considered getting the Vivosmart 5, but based on this experience, why would I trust it to be any more accurate?
So today, I was wearing my watch loosely just for comfort, so loosely that it was able to fall down below the wrist bone to my hand. Like, “I don’t think this thing is even in contact with my skin enough to get a reading” loose. And lo and behold, I noticed my heart rate just going about my day was about 10-20 bpm more than I was used to seeing it.
I tried it on the treadmill, and bam, instead of it not figuring out I was exercising above 100 bpm for the first 10 minutes of my session, it kicked in right away.
Apparently, wearing it ABOVE the wrist bone as the instructions and troubleshooting say to do made it really inaccurate for me, no matter what else I did.
Which really ticks me off because the FIRST thing I did was to make sure it was HIGH on my wrist, and by always making sure it was above the wrist bone, I was apparently making it worse.
So, if all else fails, do exactly the opposite of what the instructions say, apparently. What a pain!!!