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What is going on with the HR readings since 14.13?

Former Member
Former Member over 1 year ago

I am getting very weird HR readings both from normal Run activities as well as Swim activities.

So what I'm experiencing is that the HR is much lower than it should be compared to all activities I've done since I got this watch (955 Solar) in the summer of 2022, and compared to how I feel.

It started with 14.13 where I was going out for a normal 5km run but the HR suddenly started to go down after about 1:30, instead of go up, and then after roughly 4:30 it dropped like a rock to 60. When this happened I watched it closely while running and it just sat there, in the low 70-80 and after about 7:30 I stopped the run because I thought the watch was bad.

Here's what it looked like:

Then I checked the forums and at the time some people was experiencing similar HR reading problems. After 7:30 my HR should be somewhere around 160 for me, so I understood that something fish was going on.

Here's an example of a swim activity with Firmware 13.22 back in November, 612 meters in a 12m pool at around 28 C temperature, and 148 HR average and 83% in Swim HR Zone 4:


Here's the same activity today with Firmware 14.15, same pool and same length, same temperature. Even with a slightly faster pace than the one above, now it says the HR average is 113 and 86% in Swim HR Zone 2. What??

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 1 year ago

    Same here.

    Also HR monitoring turns off during day and night.. Sleep measurements are totally wrong due to HRM not working during night etc... Something has gone terribly wrong at Garmin...

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Same here. HR monitoring does not work well anymore during activities. 

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    yes, I was also super happy with HR readings. I bought 955 due to light weight to minimize chest strap wearing (what I hate) and sice last updates it really goes wrong way. OHR readings are gonna be useles. I could buy some cheaper device, this was one of crutial characteristics.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to JarVal

    Exactly. That was one of the main reason I also bought this one. And all ll the metrics depend on hr correct reading.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Short indoor turbo session recorded using multiple devices/app. Recording did not start at the same time. The trainer was controlled by Tacx Training app. The heart rate graphs and average/max values from web Garmin Connect for each recording below.

    1. Recorded with EDGE803 and HRM-Dual (average HR: 135, max HR: 150). Recording interval set to 1 second. 

    2. Recorded with Tacx Training iOS and HRM-Dual (average HR: 136, max HR: 150). Recording interval unknown (judging by the graph 1 second).

    3. Recorded with FR 955 solar version using watch optical heart rate sensor (average HR: 137, max HR: 151). Recording interval set to smart (default setting).

    The watch OHR sensor follows pretty well the chest HR. There was a lot of sweating on my chest and arms (a plus for chest HRM, a big minus for watch OHR).

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 5258636

    Here is an activity I have done outside this Monday. First 15min warm-up, and after that do 20s sprint (>600w) uphill with considerable slope.  I ended the sprint out of breadth, and measured the bpm in my wrist with the finger higher than 160bpm and the last one higher than 180, the watch measured around 140bpm for this sprint.

    This Tuesday I did an easy run. I started doing the warm up (first 5min) , and the watch gave incredibly high bpm, which I confirmed to be wrong by doing manual heart measurement (the absence of power is actually me measuring the hr). After this I started doing the run and the watch would give incredibly low bpm around 110, when at the average 150w I have around 120bpm.  In the green circle I increased effort to understand if the watch would be sensitive, but it increased very little, and I actually continued to do that (peaks in power) without the proper responsiveness from the watch, where before with this power it would have to be higher than 130. In the purple circle I even increase more the power to manually measure wrist bpms higher than 140pm when the watch was giving 114. So I switch the watch to the other wrist and I start getting even worse readings of 70 (this while running) and the absolute bad readings (below 100bpm ) continue for a long time, and when the watch starts to give me around 100bpm, I manually measure  the wrist to be over 120.  I switch back to the original wrist and things seem to got improved, but still very inaccurate compared to past activities. By measuring manually my bpm were always higher than 120, and I only get close 120bpm in the watch by increasing the power of running to values where my hear rate gets higher than 130.

    All these activities are outdoors and running.

    Exactly the same easy run doing the same path with the watch working well. See the responsiveness of the bpm to power changes, also bpms close to 120 with average power of 150w. 

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I've observed the below problem now on two different Garmin watches - a 255 and a 955, both running the latest software. So I'm reasonably sure it's not a hardware problem. The below is typical, where the heart rate inexplicable rises much higher than actual, then suddenly drops to something close to the correct heart rate.

    Both times, I moved the watch around my wrist, loosening and retightening the watch around my wrist, and that's when the heart rate suddenly plummets to the correct value.

    I've also tried inserting my gloved finger over the sensor and that seems to be enough to trigger some sort of reset that gets the calculation back on track..

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    This needs to be bumped.

    Same issue here. It was not a problem with my FR245 and the 955 in the beginning. It started to appear with FW13.x and appears no matter how the watch is worn. So everything leads to this being a software problem. And not a word from Garmin. If this does not get resolved it is my last Forerunner.

    We already have three threads describing the same problem and nothing is happening:


    forums.garmin.com/.../hr-not-correct-when-doing-an-activity


    https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-955-series/325155/what-is-going-on-with-the-hr-readings-since-14-13

    forums.garmin.com/.../hr-issue-after-updating-to-13-22

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Please upvote in the bug report section to get this issue recognized and fixed by Garmin:

    forums.garmin.com/.../hr-from-wrist-broken

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Answer from

    1 day ago

    All, 

    Because this disruption did not begin with the installation of this beta software, we ask that you post in the main forum app for your device. Beta Bug Reports should only be used to report disruptions caused by the installation of the newest beta software.  For fastest and the most detailed assistance, we encourage you to reach out directly to your local Garmin Product Support team.

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    I have no words ...