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Wrist heart rate monitor WHR inaccurate

Former Member
Former Member

Anyone else experienced issues with the heart rate inaccuracy? My FR945's HR reading is often higher than actual by 10%-30%. Usually when walking or moving around (e.g. cooking or talking & moving hands). It is disappointing because my $200 Fitbit tracks my heart rate accurately. This is a critical feature, because many other calculations depend on it.

Resetting the sensor (with garmin's support) did not fix it.

  •  Brilliant! Thanks Frank! Lame to have to do this but brilliant!

  • This is silly but it certainly seems to work. I've changed all of my "run" fields to be the "hike" fields that I care about. It does bother me a little to have my workouts registered incorrectly but I could edit them after the fact I suppose.

  • Oh, and do you want to teach me how to use the rest of my watch features, too? Like, now that I've changed all of the run fields to be hiking fields can I change the name to "hike" and have it stored as hikes instead of as runs??? Inquiring minds want to know! But, again, thanks for the answer!

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to thisIsMyUser

    I didn't try rename the RUN mode and I just use RUN mode for hiking.

    Actually this is a bug and Garmin must fix it!!

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Hi everyone, I've had the 945 for 3 days. The wrist heart rate seems to work really well during normal daily usage, but when I choose an activity it's absolutely shocking! I had high hopes for this watch, but in its current form Garmin should be embarrassed to sell it. I have updated it to the latest firmware and I've tried all sorts of different ways of wearing it, no difference at all. I will go back to my Polar M430, which has the best wrist heart rate monitor of all the watches out there. 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago

    The optical Hr is terrible. 

  • As it happens... It doesn't go above 150 in my new hiking mode, either. Lame.

  • Mine is accurate when running but is low when doing bleachers in gps mode. It will not read anything above 120 bpm when im doing bleachers because my gps speed is too low. Ill measure my heart rate in the 180s and it will say 120. However if input it in stairmaster mode and do stairs outdoors, its accurate. Its like there is a limiter based on gps speed. Anyone else notice this?

  • In my case after version 5.0 and WHR firmware version 0.09.00 things have gone a little bit better than they used to be in day to day activity (I’m not talking about training activities! As with trainings I use always cheststrap, I don’t check WHR correctness). If before it was correct usually then I was sitting or laying and in moving around it showed numbers what was way off and rearly correct, then now it’s gone a little bit better. Once it did even managed to show my HR correctly then I was going up from stairs Slight smile. It’s far from being as accurate as FR935 was for me, but it’s more accurate than it was for last 8 months for me. I started even testing other watches. (Oh, how correct is Apple Watch WHR, it has even read my PAC’s. And also how terrible is battery life and for fragile the watch is made by design).
    I saw that 5.09 beta is out and there are improvements on WHR. Going to test it. Maybe there is a hope and I can continue my 11th year jorney with Garmin...

  • Mine is crap as well. When I first used it; WHR was accurate. Since then my easy run and threshold run have the same average HR. I’m literally having a casual convo in my easy run pace and HR reads 175.  Never had this problem before with F235.  Very disappointed with this north of USD 500 bucks worth of gadget.