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265 HR inaccurate even after update

SteveSchla
9 months ago

Anyone else still having issues with HR monitoring after the 21.19 update?

I bought a new Forerunner 265 a few weeks ago. As others have noted the heart rate monitoring is wildly unreliable and inconsistent. About half the time it's 20-40bpm below reality. It seems to only happen when I'm recording a walk or run - resting HR around the house is accurate. Today after a run I confirmed this by taking my wrist pulse and comparing what the watch's reading: 123bpm (watch) vs 141bpm (me). That's well outside what I'd consider an acceptable margin of error but reflects my experience with other recent runs and walks.

The watch updated to 21.19 yesterday and installed some other update today that I can't find any information about. This is my third Garmin so I'm aware of how it should fit and feel on my wrist, and I know the tricks to ensure good contact with the HR monitor. I do sometimes try the trick of wetting my wrist and the back of the watch, which seems to help for a couple of minutes but then my HR (as monitored by the watch) craters again. I restarted the watch twice today and had a couple of good recordings, but then on a walk this evening it was back to the same old inaccuracies.

This is very disappointing.

  • 0 9 months ago

    People have been having issues with HR for a long time. Garmin is closing the threads without resolving the issue. 

    https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-265-series/389690/wrong-hr

    https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-265-series/362213/heartrate-so-inaccurate-that-my-watch-is-basically-useless-for-training

    https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-265-series/396276/low-hr-during-first-15mins-of-run-ever-since-updating-software-to-v20-32

    They do that to "clean up" (read: hide) reported issue (of too slow to respond measured HR during workout) and treat it as resolved although it is not, and changelog  says nothing about solving this issue. 

  • 0 9 months ago

    And Garmin updated this article (our watch are 2-3 years old models) and it's now Function as Designed (FAD) ... Thinking

    ---

    "All,

    Thank you for the feedback. If you have not read Garmin Watch Optical Heart Rate Accuracy Tips already, please do! Please also update to sw version 21.19 and test a few more activities. If you still see OHR inaccuracies, please create a new thread. "

    ---

    The Reasoning Behind False Heart Rate Detection

    Your vascular system is like a balloon, so the movement of your body or flexing of large muscle groups can affect the level of blood volume in the wrist area, which makes it challenging to detect heart rate among the presence of other signals that have a much larger magnitude and that change more dynamically.

    In the following example, the watch initially detected and locked onto the runner's pulse, but around 20 minutes in it locked to their running cadence, likely due to the influence of leg muscle contractions impacting the blood flow in the upper body:

     

    Why Does This Happen?

    Cold weather may cause a lack of blood in the tissue on the back of the wrist. This can occur early in a workout before your blood really starts pumping.

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to socorsu

    They cannot or do not want to fix the issue, so they made article to make it seem like it is normal, completely disregarding the fact thst that issue started occuring more frwquently after software updates which changed HR algorithm. Hilarious.

  • 0 9 months ago

    I would first try and rule out cadence lock as a possible cause as otherwise you'll be on a hiding to nothing getting it resolved as it's the nature of the beast when it comes to wrist-based HR measurements whilst moving. By rule it out, I mean compare what's being reported compared to your step rate - if they are close then there's every chance that's what's behind it. Incidentally, there's a great article on the subject here which explains the problem space well and for me personally convinced me that it really is quite impressive that a reading is ever obtained at all! These charts illustrate the issue particularly well:

    Anyway, that's enough about cadence lock as it might have nothing to do with it. If it can be confidently ruled out (which might well be the case - it is hard to tell from your wording but it does sound like your 123 vs 141 measurement was done whilst standing still) then I agree it is worth pushing further. Do you have any other means by which to chart your HR? Showing that chart alongside your watch-measured HR and cadence would be particularly helpful I expect if it helps illustrate a relatively fixed offset or whether there's absolutely no correlation in trend at all..

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to 2090806

    with my older VA3 and F6PRo, i do not experience Cadence Lock or cold weather issue as explained by Garmin.

    Buying a new model, offer me a new bad experience with WHR :-(

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to socorsu

    This is not new. That section has been in that FAQ for as long as I can remember. 

    socorsu said:
    And Garmin updated this article (our watch are 2-3 years old models) and it's now Function as Designed (FAD) ... 
  • 0 9 months ago in reply to Matt

    the article, yes, not the graphs with extended explanations

  • 0 9 months ago

    I've had Garmins since 2017 and have always had occasional up and downs, minor blips, etc. but I always felt like my average HR after a walk or run was pretty accurate. I don't expect wrist HR tracking to be perfect but this is way outside the acceptable margin of error.

    (As a side note, I tried two different chest strap monitors and they were both wildly inaccurate - far worse than the watch. HR in the 200+ range during a relatively easy run on both of them. And I know the tricks there too. I worked out at Orangetheory for years.)

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to socorsu

    The graphs were there as well, they’re not new. Either way, it’s still correct information that was helpful 

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to Matt

    You obviously did not read any threads about this exact issue ocurring quite often after software updates this year. Same users, same watches, from having no problem to having this problem frequently. What changed? Software and HR algorithm within. So no, it is not normal that watch requires 15 mins into a run to get proper HR reading.