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Here's how bad the optical heart rate is on the FR265

lytleric

There are a lot of posts on this forum of users experiencing erratic and/or unreliable heart rate readings from the optical heart rate sensor on the FR265. I am one of those users. I previously had a FR45 and do not recall any major HR inaccuracies from the OHR sensor on that watch. When I upgraded to the FR265 (or what I thought was an upgrade), I was shocked and puzzled that the heart rate reading was all over the place -- usually it was too low (based on what I know by feel) and often jumped up by 10, 15 or more beats from one reading to the next. The "solution," if you want to call it that, was to wear a chest strap. (FWIW, I tried multiple wrist positions and strap tightnesses with no improvement.) But again, I didn't seem have this issue with my FR45, at least not to this degree, so what is going on with the FR265?

I decided to conduct an experiment to see just how bad it is. I also have an Edge 830 that I use for cycling. So I brought my Edge 830 to the gym for a recent strength workout. I wore my chest strap and connected it to my Edge. My FR265 was on my wrist with the optical sensor reading my heart rate. I started activities on both devices simultaneously. After the workout, I downloaded the .csv data into Excel and plotted both sets of HR on the same chart.

Here are the results. The blue line is my heart rate as recorded by the Edge with a chest strap. The orange line is the FR265 with optical heart rate. The workout started with a casual 10-minute steady 7-MPH jog on the treadmill. The peaks that follow are my sets of lifts. 

Note the gap between the Edge and the FR265 -- especially during my treadmill warm-up. What is going on here?? The FR265 was jumping up and down randomly. I have no idea what that random spike is.

Here is my HR during some of the lift sets. Again, the FR265 HR was all over the place and the gap between the two is huge.

Some stats:

Greatest jump from previous reading: Edge: 6 BPM. FR265: 18 BPM. (How can my HR jump 18 BPM within one second? I had 13 readings where it jumped seven or more BPM within one second.)

Average difference between the two devices: 6.27 BPM

Greatest difference between the two devices: 38 BPM

Percentage of readings with more than 10 BPM difference: 20.1%

What this boils down to is that the OHR sensor on the FR265 cannot be trusted and is, in effect, worthless. The question therefore is what, if anything, Garmin is going to do anything about this. Considering the FR265 is no longer a "current model" on Garmin's website and has been superceded by the FR570 as the mid-tier running watch, I'd say the answer to that question is "nothing."

  • 0 in reply to ronand

    Unless something has changed the only exception that allows loading older firmware is if you are a Beta tester. In the event that you are unhappy with the Beta you can revert to the latest release, but Garmin does not officially support otherwise, like revert back to the release you were using (if it was not the latest release), that is to the best of my knowledge.

    Now I'm not saying you can't hack an older release in, it's kind of similar to stopping a release from actually doing an update. Even though I had updates turned off, if I used Garmin Connect (hooking the watch up to a PC and using Garmin Connect on the PC) the watch would download an update anyway and when I disconnected from the USB cable, the watch would ask if I wanted to update now, or later. I'd say later, shutdown Garmin Connect, hook back up to the USB cable, browse the watch, copy then delete the update file from the watch. So I have a few older versions squirreled away, but not many, just as a result of stopping an update.

    I had found instructions to restore an older version

    install an empty "force.tmp" file to the Garmin folder, along with the gupdate.gsp file for the software you want to revert to.
    Then unplug and install. Your watch will backdate to whatever version you loaded. Backdating software will revert your watch to default settings.

    The problem is having the older version of the firmware to install. The watch doesn't allow for export of the current version, of at least there is no obvious way that I've found.

    So if you know a place where Garmin (or someone else) has archived the firmware versions, or happen to know a way to force the watch to export the current version, then I'm all ears.

  • 0 in reply to gxgene1

    I rolled back the OS version in my 745 back when the 745 was having elevation issues.  The trouble was two fold 1) I had to locate the older version of the OS which was damn near impossible. Garmin does not keep old OS's kicking around. Luckily I had a beta .zip file saved on my local hard drive.  And 2) whenever I sync'd the 745, GC realized I was running an older OS and kept wanting to install the new OS.  I continually had to say "no' when prompted.

    Eventually I messed up and said yes and then I had to roll the OS back again.  A major pain. Eventually I gave up, updated the OS, and lived with the messed up elevation readings until buying the 245.  After which Garmin did fix the elevation issue in the 745!

    That said I really do like the 245.  The watch display is great.  The watch has all of the features I like and want.  Plus the watch plays nicely with my Edge 1050 for recovery times and all that jazz.  I just wish the optical heart rate was a bit more inline with the heart rate I get when I wear a heart rate strap.

  • 0 in reply to gxgene1

    You find the stable versions attached to the first post about the beta cycle. Just look in the beta forum...

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