Where is Garmin at in a fix for the Optical HR bad data?

A discouraging thing I just noticed, I used the top menu to go to the Beta Program. There are change logs for each of the Beta candidates more recent than the current "Live" version. There was much of nothing mentioned in the Beta Change Logs for addressing the bad HR data.

 Where is Garmin at in coming up with a solution to make the HR data to be at least as reliable as it was back in the FR245 days? Had I known I was buying a crusade rather than (what I thought was a desirable upgrade to my FR245), I wouldn't have. If there isn't some reasonable fix to the HR problems, or if Garmin ushers in a new HR sensor that is at least as reliable as the FR245's version and doesn't offer us poor saps that invested in the FR265 / (FR255) " a really serious discount to get something that actually works, taking another chance on a Garmin product without assurances that the HR has been fixed is not a mistake I will repeat.

I'm not talking medical grade data, or absolute max peak instantaneous values, just respectable reasonable data that doesn't suddenly jump for no reason 10 minutes into an exercise, well no reason other than it was reading wrong for the 1st 10 minutes.

So point blank  is Garmin making a serious effort to address the HR data problem?

  • The optical HR is so unreliable on this watch, I just assume it's not even there.  If I want HR with any degree of accuracy, I have to wear a chest strap.  Here's the graph from a weight lifting workout I did this week where I forgot to bring my chest strap with me to the gym, so I was stuck using the optical HR.  For the first five minutes, I was warming up with a run on the treadmill at a consistent 7.5 MPH pace.  Why would my HR bounce around?  Where you see the spikes, I had just finished a set and could feel my HR was way higher than what the watch was showing.  So I hit pause and then restart immediately, and lo and behold, my HR jumped from 92 to 130 in one second.  Happened again at the 20-minute mark:  HR was showing in the 60s.  I hit pause and restart and BOOM it jumped to 127.

    Total garbage.  

  • They said that a year ago amd did nothing. It is just to calm down users with false hope.

  • Pause - Restart, I will have to give that a try and see if it makes a difference on the treadmill. It will be a couple of days. Quads are pretty sore from braking while descending a couple of miles on a trail. 

  • honestly i don't have high hopes

  • My results are preliminary but I tried the Pause Restart on a 3 mile Treadmill Run today. I did it just over 1 minute into the run and no funky sudden jump from a low value on the chart. Preliminary because for the short run I started more aggressively and I can't swear that wasn't a factor, but the initial results were promising.

  • I do use an external HRM, but the wonky sensor means that sleep/body battery/stress is crap. 

  • i also reported some systematic OHR related errors like other users here experience too. dont want to repeat them ; but this was new for me:

    Scenario:  running: a very steep hill, >30%, which means for me, full HR load , stiff lacating muscles etc.
    temperature is not cold, so that no errors of the OHR sensor should be there because of cold tissue/skin.
    at the beginning of the climb-run, the OHR goes up, then when my load at max, it drops.

    blue dots: groud contact time (running is getting quite difficult)
    green: height
    grey: HR

    i think garmins OHR measurement is somehow calculated / coupled to the step/frequency 
    because of that , instead of HF 160-165 (near max for me) it shows HR 117-126 which is ridiculous 
    because i had full "load" running up.