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HR monitor issues justify a recall at this point

The HR issues on this "premium triathlons watch" have been persisting for something like a half year at this point, none of the SW releases at this point have helped to fix the problem

Considering the price we all paid for this watch I would expect Garmin to do one of three things

  1. Provide a hotfix, it is unbelievable that you have been expecting users all over the world to hangout and wait 6 months for a SW update that works
  2. Enable users to downgrade the version until you release a version without critical bugs such as this
  3. Recall the entire series and figure out the HR issues on your own dime...

Without a reliable HR monitor all the downstream features are useless. I have owned the watch for about a year and must say it is a spectacularly expensive disappointment

  • I wish it was a software problem but...

    ohr and strap during an activity


  • Besides the sudden drops, I've noticed that HR readings stay constant for multiple seconds. The graph looks very blocky. Data Recording is set to every second too. 

    Here is the graph compared with my strap. 

  • Optical HR works by making an estimate of the HR and then correcting this estimate up/down based on the optical sensor readings. If the sensor cannot provide reliable readings, that causes the HR to stay the same until reliability improves. That's also the reason why optical HR may lock onto a wrong HR for a period: if it makes a wrong guess and sensor readings are not reliable enough, it takes some time before the algorithm realises it's wrong and corrects.

    (In contrast, HRM straps directly measure electrical impulses caused by every heart beat, so they are not prone to these kinds of errors. Of course, if the electrical connection is poor, they can occasionally fail as well.)

  • Thanks for the explanation, but in the first months the readings weren't like that. (Maybe the software was better back then or my watch is starting to break.)
    Thanks.

  • What kind of strap do you have with your watch? Could it be that the strap has stretched a little, causing the watch to be looser than before? Or, are you living on the southern hemisphere, cold weather affects blood flow in the wrist (living in Finland, I know this from personal experience).

  • I'm currently using an elastic band that still sits tight. And I'm in central Europe.