Still no VO2MAX after a month

Walking outdoors contributes to VO2max calcs too. https://www.firstbeat.com/en/consumer-feature/vo2max-fitness-level/

Your heart rate zones don’t look right? The difference between zone 1 and 5 is just 25 beats and that could be why the watch doesn’t display the VO2max. Did you manually adjust the heart rate zones?

My max heartrate is 188 so this seems good to me (did not make any manual adjustments).

My Fenix 3 HR had the same heartrate zones and and give me a vo2max around 45/47 (blue zone).

Can you show us your zone setup (% of what or manual values) and your RHR? This zones look really weird. With Karvonen formula this would mean you would have a RHR of 0 (zero - or maybe 1 ;-) !)if I assume that Zone 5 is from 90% to 100% intensity...

Marco said:

You only get VO2max when running OUTDOOR, you NEED GPS

That is only partly true.

When I moved my running indoors this winter, I stopped getting VO2max updates (as expected). But after a while (~a month or so) I started to get updates again, but not directly linked to any specific activities.
The explanation from Garmin was that the Fenix 5 Plus is capable of estimating VO2max from my daily activity levels, however it will not feed into Training Status. (I assume it's the same for the FR945)

Then in the spring when I moved my running outdoors again, I started to get estimates from activities again, the random updates stopped and VO2max started to be fed into Training Status again.

 So the bottom line here, is the poster should really have a Vo2max showing.

The poster says he:

• Runs outdoors with GPS
• Uses the "Run" app to record
• Has heartrate enabled during runs (even via a Strap, but OHR should also work)
• Has plenty of high intensity runs
• Has plenty of runs and history (1 month+)

That checks all the boxes. And no, the configuration of the heart-rate zones should not have any influence on Vo2max calculation. This is a bug and somebody from Garmin should be responding to this information telling us they are investigating or going to fix. I guess it takes a somebody like DCRainmaker to post a video about it to get a Garmin reply though :(.

Your heart rate zones are set up odd.  To obtain a VO2Max reading you have to run at 70% of your max HR.  If yours is set to 188, 70% would be 131.6 bpm.  You clearly have done that, but 131 bpm has you a little higher than the mid range of your zone 1.  You must not be getting a reading due to your zone settings.  I'd try correcting your zones and see what happens.

Fredderic said:

And no, the configuration of the heart-rate zones should not have any influence on Vo2max calculation

based on what evidence do you say this? I think this is exactly the reason why there is a lack of VO2Max.

Firstbeat Method for VO2max: "To facilitate analysis and enhance accuracy, timed segments of recorded activity data are identified on the basis of heart rate ranges and reliability; and only the most reliable segments are utilized. This allows the method to be applied to freely performed running, walking and cycling activities and diminishes the need for dedicated fitness testing protocols. The calculation requires user basic anthropometric data (age, gender, height, weight, etc.), heartbeat data (internal workload), and a measure of external workload."