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Heartrate so inaccurate that my watch is basically useless for training

I got my Forerunner 265 about a year ago and I have loved almost everything about it.  I love the touch interface, the AMOLED screen, sleep analysis, training readiness, etc.  But I have been trying to use it to track my training and the heartrate is so inaccurate that it is basically useless.  Today was a good example, I just wanted to go for a 40 minute run on my lunch break.  I took the watch off, cleaned the sensor, strapped it snuggly on my wrist in the suggested spot and headed out on a run.  My goal was to get some good Zone 2 progress.  Instead one minute into my run, I glance down and I'm in zone 5.  I check my heart rate manually and I'm actually in zone 1.  I let the watch calm down and try again.  Same thing.  I do this for two miles.  I eventually discard the run because it's so crazy.  But now I've run 2 miles that won't be recorded.  Not the end of the world.  But my lunch break is almost over so I try again.  Basically the same deal.  I keep stopping to let my watch try to get in sync with reality, but by the time I'm done my watch now thinks I was doing an interval workout.  Having gone through this frustrating process a few times, my mileage, my load focus, my max heart rate, my training load, basically everything are now all out of whack.  Can't get good heart rate data running, biking, rowing, or stair climbing Disappointed

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  • To add to this, I ran a marathon on the 19th and beat my predicted time by well over a minute and a half.  Mind you, this was on a fairly hilly course with about 650ft of elevation gain, and it was warm around 70 degrees.  This tells me that the metrics are completely messed up and not right.  On a flat course in cooler weather I would have beat my time by well over 3 minutes.  The dagger though is, when you run a faster time than one of the predictions, it then proceeds to actually add time to the predecition after the race.  GARMIN! GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER! This thing is an absolute piece of garbage.

  • All,

    Thank you for providing your feedback and activity examples. We appreciate your engagement and are continually improving our products based on customer feedback.  If you can,  please continue providing examples of similar activities with both good and erratic behavior, and how often you experience issues with optical heart rate, to help further our efforts.

  • Another one. Running.

  • In my opinion HR should looks like below. The pace was more less the same.

  • Almost identical to mine. Just shy of an all out effort for me, but my HR was really low at 136 avg until c.11 mins in where it jumped to 171. 
    trouble is then future stats like vo2 max and performance score are messed up because it thinks I’m running 3:45 minute kilometres at 130-136 HR. 

  • This is exactly correct, if the basis for their metrics is off of HR.  If the HR sensor is not calibrated correctly or the firmware algorithmiclly is misinterpreting the data, none of the other metrics are going to matter and will be inaccurate.  To me, the only other thing that could be a problem is how they actually designed the HR sensor itself and how it protrudes from the watch and makes contact with the wrist.  I have noticed that when I run hard I tend to bend my wrist a little more towards my body and am wondering if that the sensor is just not making correct contact with my skin correctly.  I never had this issue with my 245 and the sensor seems more inset into the actualy watch body.  Just a thought.

  • I never had such issues with my FR 745 during more than 3 years! 

    Constant low HR readings during activities.... 

    Very disappointing. 

  • More data hope this helps someone.  Starting to get frustrating.....