It almost feels to me like the team over at Garmin doesn't understand exactly what the O2 sensor is measuring, or why. Personally, as a person with Asthma, I like to keep an eye on when working out. Though in especially older versions of the software the O2 sat would be disabled during exercise, which kind of misses the point. The again the section in the Garmin Connect app lists the O2 readings as Pulse Ox Acclimation (or Pulse OX & Acc.), except for one major issue.... This section does not show your pulse rate it is just O2 (or Oxi if you prefer) and Acclimation (which still has its own other issues). On the website version of Garmin Connect it is just listed as Pulse Ox, because the Acclimation is not on that screen, but then AGAIN neither is pulse.
The way the watch reads your O2 sat has also somewhat confused me. It uses the Red LEDs for O2 Sat, because Red is better for this function, but the Green for Pulse though either Red or Green is fine for this function (and Green uses less battery supposedly). Turning on all day O2 tends to pulse between Red and Green, which is known to actually cause confusion in sensors due to numerous reports (and would help explain the horribly inaccurate pulse as well). It also seems to cut my battery life in half (surprising but whatever). The frustrating part is I am not actually getting all day O2 readings. It is extremely common for me to look at the reading and have the reading state it was from 8+ hours ago, and more than 50% of the time 12+ hours ago. So, I will sit there keeping my wrist very still while it takes a manual reading, often while wearing a finger Pusle Oximeter. More often than not it fails to read, but when it does, I have found it to read on average 5-10% lower than actual. I have provided pictures of this to Garmin on more than one occasion. Then to top it off, the app and website show 1 hour averages for my O2 saturation, except how does it have those numbers if it hasn't read for 12+ hours?
This wouldn't be so bad but as an Asthmatic recently diagnosed with breakthrough covid it would be nice to quickly see my O2 saturation or get alerted when it drops significantly, but I can't rely on its testing frequency or accuracy. I do realize this is not a medical device but being off by more than 10% at times is extreme. Below 92% it is recommended to see a doctor, so having it read low by 10+% implies I should be getting an ambulance when I am actually at 98% and it is reading in the mid 80s.
