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Is it worth buying FR265 now?

7969186
9 months ago

I am thinking to upgrade to Garmin from Whoop and settled on FR265.

But after reading all the issues the folks are facing - HR monitor, activity loosing, accuracy issues - looks like I am into a world of pain.

Could you please comment if your issue has ever been solved by Garmin?
Any comments are welcome.

  • 0 3 days ago

    For me no and that's not an easy opinion to voice because there is a lot that I like about the watch. I REALLY want the optical HR to work as well as it did on my FR245. If you buy a 265, make sure you buy from a place you can return it to if you are not happy. If you are of an athletic nature, I would immediately take the watch on a good workout (after purchase) with an accelerated HR for greater than 10 minutes. My HR takes a sudden jump about 8 minutes into a run. Purely for testing reasons, after you finish the exercise leave the activity running for at least another 5 minutes so you capture how the optical HR responds during the wind down from exercise.

    If after the exercise you are not happy with the results, you can pray that Garmin will actually revert back to HR processing that works via a future update which I consider unlikely at this point, or since you've only had it a short time you can return it.

    If you are happy with the results I'd suggest turning off automatic software updates immediately, less than a week after the purchase of my FR245 an automatic update killed the accuracy of it's HR sensor, I took it back, got a different watch and carefully did only two updates after that which were my choice after reading forum posts regarding each release. My FR245 remains a more reliable optical HR sensor than my FR265, but outside of the (eh hem) minor consideration of having a reasonably accurate (core function) HR work well, I like the 265 better (the display is great) .

    Use some care with the Garmin computer app, it wants to sneak in updates even if I have them turned off. I now have the app running on a different computer than I normally use, I have auto and bike Garmins too. I use that other computer to update the non FR Garmins and for Strava I use this computer with a USB cable to do a file upload.

    And there's the rub, I've yet to find a software version for the FR265 that yields (for me) readings as accurate as the FR245 and I've done side by side comparisons same exercise. I have avoided the upgrades for quite a while based on the problems I see reported in the forums. At some point I will throw my hands up, take my chances and do another update, probably in the next few months before the warranty runs out.

    I wish I could unequivocally endorse the FR265, that would mean the HR sensor is working well for me, but I can't.