I am a Garmin HRM user from long time and I live in Italy.
I bought the premium HRM (the one with the unit removable from the band) back in 2014.
It worked just fine for more than 3 years. Then I did a major watch update with a Forerunner supporting the advanced running data so I decided to sell the HRM (BTW never had complains coming from the guy who bought it) and got the HRM-run. The sensor worked relentlessly for more than 3 years and countless of CR2032 batteries then it stopped working.
I used it in every weather condition, running in winter at -5°C, in summer at 35°C and under heavy rains. I found it once in the washing machine after a 40°C,1000 rpm spin cycle - my mistake, I just put all my running equipment inside the machine without noticing it - and it worked for another full year! (I'm quite convinced that with a new o-ring gasket it could have worked more and more because when I opened it the last time I found some water drops in the battery compartment and the gasket was a bit loose).
Problem is that it stopped working while I was abroad in Portugal on summer vacation, so I searched for an official Garmin seller there and bought the HRM-tri (it was the only sensor available in the shop at the moment).
I used it and after 6 months and I noticed I was having wrong readings the first 5-8 minutes of any single activity (more than 200 bpm). I asked to Garmin Italy for support, but they didn't cover it under warranty it because the 2 years were limited to Portugal. Garmin Italy told me that buying a new HRM was cheaper than starting an official replacement with them because in addition to the new sensor cost I would have had to pay the shipping expenses to/from the warehouse.
I decided to buy the newer HRM-pro and planned to return the HRM-tri to the shop in Portugal on the next summer because I was going to spend another vacation there. To my surprise the shop was closed definitively when I came back later on that summer!!
Since April 2021, I replaced the battery once in October, and in December it stopped working. It was dead, not reachable from both the watch ( I tried also with a friend's watch) with Ant connection and from the phone via Bluetooth. I tried with all the standard procedures like removing the battery and replacing it with a new one, resetting the watch but nothing changed! I started a Garmin support request and received a new HRM-pro in January 2022.
Two things I noticed so far on the HRM-pro vs the other sensors I used before:
- From time to time the advanced running data coming from the pro have a gap the first 3-5 minutes of the activity like it's not connected even if the watch displays the "hrm connected" notification at the beginning.
- Every time a software update is installed, I have issues with the connection to the watch causing loss of data in some portions of the activity. What I learned to do after 3 or 4 updates is that when an update is pushed to the sensor and the update cycle is done, I remove the battery from it and leave it without for 5-10 minutes like a master reset. When battery is installed again, it starts working normally.
Please Garmin, come back to the quality standards you've "spoiled" me with the 2017 HRM-run!
Thanks!
