Related
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

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??

Top Replies

All Replies

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Garmin-Sierra

    do you realize that this post is from 4 months ago? It's been an age since the first post, coming from (drumroll...) 6 months ago.

    Fact is that team Dev is not delivering the fix yet. Guys there's a problem.

    HR readings is a core business feature for Garmin sportwatch.

    My concern is that the next super awaited sw version will not have the fix for this.

    Can you please provide a tangible update about the matter? please

    Something like, "we're still working on it, it will (not) be in the next official release coming"

     

    ty

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 1 year ago

    There are multiple problems with Garmin OHR and metrics which are, unfortunately, completely ruing user experience.

    As many users have noticed, Garmin FR 955 does not correctly measure or recognizes sleep. Sometimes heart is not measured / recorded at all, sometimes it is but it not included as should be in Garmin Connect app.

    Last night went to sleep around 11PM, woke up around 5AM. Hearth rate was measured correctly, watch was several times synchronized with Garmin Connect app in the morning and yet - watch shows 55 min of sleep for the entire night while app shows about 6h.

    In addition, body battery starts to increase when I wake up (during nights it drops to 5) until about 11-12AM and then again starts to drop. Unbelievable!

    Because of this behaviour, my current training readiness is about 5 and body battery around 10.

    Something is seriously flawed with Garmin Forerunner watches for months already but unfortunately it seems that Garmin only wants to sell nice watches and is not interested in user experience, feedback, health info etc.


    Definitely worst purchase in a years.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 7419217

    My heart rate readings are still completely out of whack in software update 16.17. Now that that update is being rolled out publicly, I’m guessing I’ll be waiting another 3 months for the next quarterly software update before there’s any hope of a fix? At that point, this thread will be 9 months old.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to ohwhen

    do you really not understand that they have nothing to solve? only a few have problems, it's not a software issue. I put the response from garmin support above. This is a recreational device and should be treated as such (official answer)
    as long as you use it, use the strap and that's it

    this is the reality sad
    I would like to be wrong
  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to iosint

    I’m under no illusion that if you want accurate heart rate readings then you need a strap. The issue I’m having is I could go for a walk and the watch’s optical heart rate sensor will say my heart rate is 220bpm, when in reality it’s probably 90bpm. The result of that is a casual 5km walk will result in Garmin saying I need 70 hours of rest, my training status is unproductive/strained, and says the recommended workout every day from there should be a rest day. On the other foot, I can go out and do a 5km race flat out and the watch will say my average heart rate was 70bpm and, after 1 hour of recovery, I’m good to go again. I’m not looking for deadset accuracy down to a 1bpm tolerance, I just want to be able to go out a casual run and have a rough idea of the level of effort and how my overall training is looking. 

    I’m strongly of the belief that it’s a software issue. One, because everything worked perfect until around the 14.XX updates and, two, because Garmin support (Sierra & the call centre) have admitted it to be software issues on multiple occasions. The support centre have been telling me for months it’s software and they’re still working and testing their way through it. If they’ve given up on trying to sort it, claiming it as a lost cause on their end, and are now just panning people off by telling us to buy heart rate monitors then it‘s poor form by them. At the end of the day, I know I’m just a number to Garmin and there’s not much I can do about it but I’d like to cling on to that small bit of hope that this forum thread will make a difference to those impacted.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to ohwhen

    Well put. Same here.

    There are real human beings working at Garmin on this and they deserve our respect. I am certain that many/most of the people at Garmin are themselves running/biking/swimming enthusiasts who want a great product as much as we do.

    It's clear that they have their attention divided. If you wander over to the Garmin 965 forum, they are experiencing even more fundamental problems, such as entire functions not working at all. (I'm happy I got the 955 when I had a chance to choose a 965.)

    We still are right to expect a fix to this software problem and this is frustrating to all of us to varying degrees. Clearly, some experience this problem far worse than others and some don't see this at all, making for a very emotional thread.

    Below is my latest run with the stated problem, yesterday. I also had a similar problem 3 runs ago and also 14 runs ago.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 6340692

    With the latest 16.17 FW my HR readings with external strap all has been very good and not seeing any drop outs. Let’s see how it evolves though. 

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    This is how a HR graph looks without a strap on a walk with my dog (avg pace 18:27 /km). 
    For Garmin Support this looks okay.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I'm starting to notice this problem more frequently now that the weather is getting a bit chillier, which matches up with this problem becoming less frequent when the weather started to turn warmer a few months ago. I was given a hint to warm up before going out for a run. I'm not sure if this helped at all, but I have also observed sudden heart rate increases and decreases more than an hour into my run (as have others), so the suggestion to warm-up doesn't always work.

    Another interesting thing that I've noticed is that I don't think this problem occurs when the heart rate monitor is measuring outside of an activity. That is, exiting a running activity on the watch and simply using the standard heart rate monitoring seems to restore an unreasonable-looking heart rate to something that better matches reality. Anybody else observe this?