Optical wrist heart rate always on

https://forums.garmin.com/beta-program/fenix-7-series/f/community-discussion/360515/hearth-rate-problem/1737727#1737727

Garmin-Laurie said:

I do understand the concern with the battery life, having the OHR enabled while using the HRM. However having this enabled is by design. The change is for a couple reasons. The first is consistency in HR/HRV throughout. So if one HR method is dropped, the other will pick is up. The 2nd reason is for Garmin Pay. When your OHR is disabled during activity, Garmin Pay cannot be used without a PIN code, because the watch is treated as "Off-Wrist". So keeping this enabled, allow Garmin Pay to be used during activities. 

The reason I do not want the wrist heart rate operating during an activity is not battery life. It is because it will sometimes override the external heart rate strap and give me false cadence lock heart rate instead. This messes up a lot of data. If the external HR fails during an activity I would rather see Zero HR rate retuned. (My external HR has never failed yet.) This is why I always use an external HR strap as it much more reliable.

I can not see the value of keeping the optical HR active during an activity for the benefit of Garmin pay.  If it is the first time I'm using Garmin pay for the day I have to use a Pin anyway. and the amount of times I use Garmin pay before and after an activity in the same day is very minimal and entering a pin on those few occasions is not a problem. 

Manually going into the settings and turning the wrist HR off and on every time before and after an activity is very inconvenient but is the only way I have found around this HR issue.

Please come up with a solution to this problem.

A custom power plan for the 955 would be an improvement but not the best.

Why not just add a setting that tells the watch. "If I start an activity with an external HR monitor disable the wrist HR for the duration of that activity." ?

Thanks.

milesnz said:

Please come up with a solution to this problem.

I don’t work for Garmin, I was simply linking you to a comment from a Garmin employee which confirms your observations and explains why this is the case.

milesnz said:

Why not just add a setting that tells the watch. "If I start an activity with an external HR monitor disable the wrist HR for the duration of that activity." ?

I’m think that’s how it used to work (wrist HR would be disabled if the external HR monitor was connected), which is why the current behavior is catching a lot of people by surprise. Just my two cents, but I’m guessing they won’t make this behavior optional (although anything’s possible), especially since there seems to be a workaround for all affected devices (manually disabling the wrist HR *). (* One person reported that this doesn’t work for them tho.)

To be clear, I’m not defending or apologizing for Garmin. I just wanted to post the link to the comment and thread so you could read it for yourself and see Garmin’s official explanation, as well as the surrounding discussion.

I actually agree that it kind of sucks for the optical HR to be used as a backup for external HR, since the quality/accuracy of the two sources is not identical (especially considering the recent complaints about poor optical HR performance in recent firmware versions.). It would definitely be nice if there was a setting to disable the new behavior, but we’ll see what Garmin ends up doing.

milesnz

I can confirm that this is by design. However, if you use an external HR strap during an activity- the data you see in Garmin Connect will come from the strap alone (and not the watch's OHR sensor).

I apologize for any confusion. 

PLEASE make it an option to disable this behaviour... The one time in my life I actually use garmin pay DURING an activity does balance the disadvantage of it alwasy being on. Also, if a strap is disconnected or whatever it will switch to OHR anyway right? Maybe not instant and might give a few moments of missign data, but couldn't care less about that for the one time in a year that MIGHT happen.

@garmin-sierra you finally turn it off if no new features are currently associated?!
After all, it drains the batteries and is completely pointless...

Is it possible someone could come up with a Garmin IQ app that would improve the situation ?

I don't want this feature on my watch either! I would very much appreciate the ability to have the OHR turned off when training with the strap, like before. Not having to manually turn it off every time!

I also saw that on the fenix line you can create a powermode with OHR disabled and assign this to an activity... But of course (and unfortunately) this is not possible on the FR955 so that doesn't help here either.

Indeed as B1nny mentions, simply entering the passcode would be much better (or at least should be an option instead of always on OHR.)

Really, such a waste of battery life this unneeded forced functionality...