Vivosmart 5 Stress Levels Consistently HIGH

Great analysis. Using medical grade equipment to compare measurements confirms what several of us have noticed compared to other measurements from  by other non-medical grade devices. In any comparisons, though, as I have stated, Garmin (and the other device makers clearly use different proprietary algorithms, so it’s never an apples to apples situation. Garmin seems to grade harder and is less forgiving. At any rate, I think we have to consider any numbers we get from consumer devices to use longer intervals and make assumptions to extend battery life and components and accuracy of devices in the consumer price ranges are not directly comparable with medical grade equipment costing  extremely more and having much higher quality specs they have to meet. Any numbers on consumer price devices have to be considered relative and not absolute. Garmin has been in this business for a long time and makes many high end products for different markets, so our assumption is that they would be a lot closer to actual and I do believe that Garmin just grades harder than Fitbit and others because the customer base tends to be much more hard core whereas the others are likely more focused on a friendlier user experience for a slightly less active market.

Would I like to have them fix their algorithms and use more accurate measurements at shorter intervals? Definitely, but not if it seriously degraded battery life or was forced to increase their price points above what consumers would want to pay. It had to be a balancing act and both medical grade and consumer products focus more on future products than ones already released. Patches can only do so much limited to the hardware they have, so that’s just the way the world works. At least we have a consensus albeit a small group that there are limits on the technology and the collected and analyzed data is what it is. I’ve just gone to comparing it to itself and accepting that some measurements will not be perfectly accurate, but are good enough to use for most. Good but not totally accurate data is still better than no data at all and we have to accept that these are still useful and helpful devices even given their limitations. Think of it as ranges instead of absolute data points and realize that it isn’t a medical grade device and not calibrated and held to the same standards as one. These consumer grade devices are so much better than older ones and will continue to improve, but don’t ever expect to ever to totally close that gap. 

I also have the same problem. I even gave the watch to other people because I thought maybe I am stressed without noticing but everyone gets the same high stress levels even when lying down 

Same issues.  I’m retired, have a great resting HR and strong HRV, and never had stress issues on my previous watch.  Got the Vivoactive 5 and my stress readings are dramatically higher.  I’m also being told by my sleep score that I’m having lots of stress right before sleeping.  Something seems really off.  

Same here. I’m healthy and active. My resting heart rate is almost always 50 or less. But, based on my stress's levels always being high and sleep scores always being 50 or less, I just ignore them. If I took them seriously, I’d probably be dead in a week. 

I am using Vivosmart 4 and had the last weeks a high stress level. Now it is back to normal. Though I felt not that bad I did not sleep very well because of the summer temperature. So I guess the trend was right. I was stressed though probably not that much as Vivosmart reported.

I’m glad we have had a few more posts on this issue. A couple of months ago I upgraded to a Venu3 and I can say that the measurements have been more accurate than my old Vivosmart 5. My heart rate is about 3 to 4 beats lower ( and is confirmed by wearing other watches) and my stress level is also lower and more varied which is a big change. I would still like to understand what algorithms are used for calculating this. For an active person maybe it is more accurate as more variables are taken into account, but for me with a desk based job maybe it needs fine tuning. I don’t understand whilst on my holiday sitt8ng on the beach relaxing why I am ‘stressed’. Loving the Venu 3 just wish Garmin would enable ECG in the UK. Wish this forum was easier to use on an iPad.

Thank you for the detail. This makes a lot of sense to me. I can relate to everything said on this thread. I’ve had the vivoactive 5 since January and it says I’ve had a very stressful day nearly every day. My HR does tend to run high, it has my whole life even though I’m young and healthy in my 20s. But it has my resting HR very low from when I sleep. My HRV is typically always balanced, and my sleep quality is variable but more times good than bad. Even on restful days it says I’m stressed! 

I think I can confirm that a Vivoactive 5 also averages HR over (too) long periods and apparently sometimes gets stuck.

I was cycling and while going uphill for 8 minutes, it showed a HR of 70- 80. When I went downhill after that my HR showed between 130 and 150. The next uphill part HR stayed around that number. When I stopped the activity, the HR graph did only show the low HR for the first uphill part, which is definitely NOT correct!

As for the stress levels, I have the idea that HR is the main indicator for stress levels. I have a relatively high resting HR and hence it often shows relatively high stress levels.

I did an experiment, I gave my watch for a day to my partner, who has a very low resting HR.

The results were amazing: stress levels between 0 and 5 and the body battery went up almost all day up to 76. During the night it reached 100 at 4:30!

When changing back I appeared to have extremely high stress levels continuously during the day, about double of what I used to have. Because average resting heart rate got lowered by my partners low HR, the watch showed very bad sleep and a very low body battery the day after the experiment, because my own real resting HR is much higher.

So I guess there is lots of room for improvement of the algorithms. I choose the Vivoactive 5 because it got good reviews, but I'm a bit skeptical now.

I’m having the same issue. Does anyone have a fix for this?