Heart rate very high since 5.50

The sticking point is that this could be fixed with a firmware update. The old firmware may have been less sensitive but it seems to have actually been more precise (see above for debate over these terms). A new piece of plastic, metal, & glass (aka a watch) is not needed to fix this problem. Somebody at Garmin just has to write a bit of code that makes the sensor a bit less sensitive and push the update...One would think, since they're gathering vast amounts of our data, someone might be able to identify this problem. Let's hope, in this instance, they are looking.

After the first week of this behavior, it has now been reading high, so I'm in the same situation as the rest of you.

Bit scary. Last week I ran with my garmin HRM chest strap. And suddenly after about 10 minutes of running at 153 Bpm, my heart rate was rising till 181 Bpm. It scared me so I stopped running and within 20 seconds it slowly dropped under 170 Bpm and lower. I don't know if it's related, but Training indicator last 7 days was at the end of the scale. Today I ran with the wrist Heart rate at 145 Bpm and after 20 minutes it went up to 185 for 4 minutes. So I stopped again and slowly walked home. Training Indicator last 7 days is again at the end of the scale.

I'm a bit worried. Maybe I should see a doctor? I checked the watch software version and it is 5.50. I'm 51 years old, a beginner with poor physical condition. However i'm running 2 times a week a few km the last year. Can it be that I've a max heart rate of 185? During those high readings I felt good (outside worried) and when I wouldn't have known about the heart rate I would have continued running.

Last year a did a running course, to be able to run 5 km. At first all went well, VO2 max rising. Suddenly in november the watch told me the run was to much, my VO2 went down, my fitness age rose. I was disappointed, so i stopped running. This month I picked it up again. I noticed my SPO2 didn't work. So I did a reset of the watch. That solved the SPO2, but since then I receive moments of a heartbeat of around 185, while I'm 51. Scary, not happy with that! How can I train in a heart rate zone while having problems like this? These high readings are with the polse hrm and with the strap HRM. next time I will run with a SPO2 meter at hand, so I can check underway what's really going on.

bit of an update:

I reached out to Garmin support on twitter and they replied by saying that they don't think running a HM with 50% of it as abnormal..? Mind boggling as they've told me they have compared to previous activities and saw no change (when in face there's a significant one). Take a look at the convo, and I've actually linked them to this topic to show them it's not my problem alone.. Apparently there's a 6.0 on beta now, so this might bring something..

Hi everybody, just dropping by to chime in here as I seem to have the same problems with unusually high heart rate readings. Looking back at my data it seems to have started in the middle of November, but I didn't really notice it until december. Heart rate readings are not consistently off, but around every other run on average shows unusually high HR for a given pace. I have runs with bogus readings at the beginning as well as runs with bad readings in the middle or towards the end. On a couple of runs I stopped in the middle when HR looked off to me and saw it slowly creeping up when it should have gone down. Taking the watch off and putting it back on sometimes helped sometimes not.

I hope garmin fixes this. As of now the problems really defy the purpose of using the forerunner at all. 

P.S.: Btw, I first thought it was related to outside temperatures as it started when it got cold (like, below 5 C). Anyone else see a correlation there or is it just concidence? 

Yesterday I did a reset to factory defaults and did a firmware upgrade to the 6.04 Beta version which was released 3 days ago. Today during a run everything looked fine. I checked a few times the OHR of the watch compared to a SPO2 meter (which has also heartrate monitor) and it looked the same. However I'm a beginner and my run was short.

I also upgraded to version 6.04 Beta justnow and will check tomorrow if I still experience the problem with the peaking HR. The last three runs (with version 5.50 installed) I wore the watch on the inside of my wrist. My wrists are quit thin and I don't have much "flesh" on the outside of my wrist, so the watch is basically touching my wristbone directly. On the inside I have some more "flesh" which might be better for the monitoring of the HR. All three runs the HR was quite in line with expectations. No peaks.

Tomorrow I will give it a try with the watch on the outside of my wrist and hopefully the problem is solved now. I will keep you posted...

Same here. Since a few weeks my Forerunner 245 doesn't want to connect with my HRM-Run strap. So until I have a solution for this problem, I run with the wrist HR. Now my heartrate is much higher and I have a lot of peaking HR.

Here below you see 2 screenshots of my HR during 2 runs. Exactly the same track, same conditions, same speed and same effort.

With HRM-Run strap (November 28th 2020) (Average: 145 bmp, Max. 154bpm) Version unknown.

With HRM from my wrist. (January 23rd 2021) Average: 149 bpm, Max. 168 bpm - Version 6.04 Beta.