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Sigh, Looks like I might have to go back to my Fitbit for 24*7 tracking

Former Member over 9 years ago

Well, I have had my Watch for 4 months now and I am still struggling with getting meaningful data for 24*7 calorie burn and RHR.

First calories. Now this may be a GC issue, but as GC is an integral part of the product and experience I'm am posting it here. Calorie burn tended to vary according to the accuracy and sampling rate of the OHR sensor. The biggest issue was erroneous spikes of data adding calories. With recent SW updates it is better but not really satisfactory as it still occurs. Perhaps more annoying though relates to the "significant bug" post:
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?339499-Found-a-significant-bug

It appears that GC cannot cope with data from two different sources even if its its own products. I.e. the Forerunner 235 and Edge 1000. For example. Today I went for a 50 mile ride at 11am. I synched the watch prior to going. After my ride the Edge 1000 told me I had burnt 2850 calories. That was 750 calories per hour moving time so I'm OK with that. I synched the Edge and my calorie burn for the day was 3900. About right. I then synched the watch and I now have 5350 calories burnt. Really? Where did the extra 1500 calories come from? The new calorie total is also uploaded to the watch. So the information regarding my burn for the day is fairly useless. Data from two Garmin products should not overlap and double count. If you add an external activity to the Fitbit HR then the Fitbit data is overwritten by the activity data. For me this is a major issue.
And while we are dealing with calories, the calories remaining weekly graph still doesn't match the daily data so the weekly trend is useless.

RHR. I have no idea what is going on here! Firmware 4.2 has given me much lower values than previously. This seems to be due to false "dips" in HR being registered as my RHR. E.g. it may record 38 when my HR through the night is 51. And the 7 day trend still doesn't match that in GC. Still. Now we have Firmware 4.3. Since the upgrade my RHR has shot up to around 65 for all 4 days. I can see in GC today that I have readings in the mid 50's so why is it ignoring them? Now when I look at the 7 day trend in GC its totally different to the watch. E.g. Friday GC trend states 41. The watch is 63, a huge difference. Who knows what is correct. The Fitbit measured RHR slightly differently but it did used to be fairly consistent and you could read trends.

I have persisted with this watch and I really wanted an all in one device, but it looks like it will be used as a device to record gym sessions only and the odd run, and that will be with a strap. For indoor cycling I will use the Zwift app which imports into Strava. Calorie burn for Zwift is compariable with the watch and strap pairing and I get the added bonus of power info which the watch can't pick up.

Don't get me wrong, the Fitbit has its faults as a 24*7 tracker with some over recording of calories due to HR spike, but at least it can integrate other activities better.

I will still keep an eye on this forum to see if things get better. Hopefully they will.

0 Craig-m62 over 9 years ago

I did try a fitbit for a couple of days and it did not sync too well, it didn't like the small display or having to tap it to get any information so it went back, the software just didn't back it up and it was useless in the gym

So after that I tried a Mio HRM and although accurate and having not much else functionality wise, I also gave up on that due to the dsplay being so dim it was virtually unreadable and it was too large and cumbersome.

So step up the spend and get a Forerunner 235 - it won't sync with the computer, it won't sync with the mobile app, express, with no sunc it does seem to pick up some data on the PC but not much. So had this a matter of days and I thought it was going to be good but already looking at consigning it to the return mode. All the software it is supposed to link to, it doesn't and that is a large percentage of the usability of this thing. I think I may have to give up on wrist based HRM and activity monitor anfd go back to a chest strap.

All the write ups seem to be rally good for this gizmo and when I get it I would expect it to work out of the box, the beta testing that the consumers seem to end up doing should be charged back to Garmin, when I pay this amount for a glorified watch I expect them to have at least made a working production model!