heart rate values totally wrong after update 18.22

I think the main issue is that, the majority of us have had pretty reliable, and consistent results using the OHR, up until the latest updates.
So its not that we've bought a product that  has never worked,  its just it now doesn't work as well as it did. 
Later I'l go back and view some similar activities from this time last year and see the difference.
My thoughts are, the new firmware seems to cope with daily use, standard levels of activity, walks etc, but as soon as you go above about 130bpm it gets pretty erratic, and can't cope with the changes, or perhaps the amount of data, so either just gets stuck at about 150, or then if you take it off and give it a minute, it then drops to about 72, and will take forever to get HR back, or it'll just under record, like shown in so many examples.

1.@garmin Can you not release a test firmware that has the old, (say go back a year) in terms of OHR Algorithms, but with all the new features for everything else, that some of the the users having issues could trial.

2. is there a way to go back to old firmware?

Thanks

The sudden and quick drops should be as of a reset. This happen even if you put your finger on the sensor during an activity and by incident can happen if you try to adjust the watch.....the main problem is instead the fact that at the beginn of an activity the HR goes too high and than goes down. GARMIN is saying that this happen because we need to do a warm-up before the activity. I personally had only this problem of raising too high the HR on the first minutes of a run. If I do a warm-up of just 30-40 sec before starting an activity than it seems to be allright. So if the solution is to simply warm-up for 1 minute than let's do it. I will keep doing it and in case of any future problems I will report here

I must have misunderstood something, but the solution is to start the activity after the warm-up phase?

YES what GARMIN wrote is that we need to do a warm-up like a short run around and I just do personally 30-40 sec run but based on different body maybe needed more someone  and than you can start an activity on the watch. I tried and I didn't have HR initial too high datas....will keep trying and report

Do any of you know a person with FR165? It has the same sensor as ours but the SW is much simpler and still new without unnecessary additions, if they don't have our problem it's clearly the updates and not us who no longer know how to use the clock or absurd heating never recommended by anyone other brand.

Thom@s said:

've had a Polar, now a Garmin, and I have to say that for me this is pretty standard behavior, I'd say a feature of OHR. I'd be rather surprised that anyone with an OHR gets better results. But judging by people and reactions here on the forum, I think the response and output of OHR varies person to person and is quite individual unlike a strap where the measurements are strict and quite consistent by nature of the measurements.

P.S. I'm talking about the WillNorthYork charts. Not about dramatic dips and falls or spikes in HR as described by many users here which are logically unacceptable to me and I demand a correction!

Yeah, I mean it’s pretty much impossible (*) for me to be sure that I used to get better results, since I usually run with OHR alone.

The only reason I’m checking now is:

- I’ve had workouts where my HR seemed too low

- Others have complained about OHR problems with recent firmware

(*) I have tried recording both OHR and strap a couple of times in the past, with an older watch, and I have seen:

- the OHR does takes longer to catch up when you haven’t warmed up

- the OHR lags behind rapid changes in HR by a few seconds

For me the difference in the one interval workout I posted was pretty dramatic, but I can’t say for sure it’s never happened before when I wasn’t looking for it.

I guess I could always try downgrading my watch (if possible) and recording a few OHR+strap runs again. Or doing the same if and when new firmware drops and everyone agrees that the problems have been fixed.

EDIT: I also had a steady state run (optical only) on 18.15 which had some sudden increases (without a corresponding change in pace or perceived effort) which seemed crazy to me. At the time I think ppl were talking about this kind of issue, which was supposed to be resolved with 18.22/18.23. But again I can’t be sure if it wasn’t legit data — maybe I was just having a bad day.

I am returning my 955 to Garmin - would you guys recommend any other brand? Coros/Polar any other that actually gives accurate enough HR etc?

Every other brand would do, just check if you can broadcast HR to other devices, that's something not every watch model can. At least Garmin restricts it so that people buy certain more expensive models to use this feature. Polar, Wahoo, Suunto etc, all good brands.

Thank you!