630 or 235 - assuming the optical HR is accurate

> the 24/7 HR monitoring feature is calling to me
Not quite sure what you would really do with all that data day after day although a significantly elevated resting pulse (or even lower sometimes) can point to illness and/or tiredness although you usually know that anyway according to how you feel.
A few times have worn my strap all day including at night. In the past used to religiously record my resting HR each AM and often would put my strap on before getting out of bed for good! Typically I found my "motionless" resting HR to be a few beats lower than say just sitting in a chair for a few minutes. Ultimately it was "interesting" but rarely told me anything more than I "felt" anyway.

Another factor in these device choices is how well Connect IQ will be supported on each one. Looking at the DC Rainmaker previews that bit doesn't seem to have been implemented yet. It could certainly help to fill say some navigation "gaps".

Again with dynamics yet to really see what the 2nd generation ones are about. Dynamic read out of stride length sounds interesting especially if you felt like experimenting with trying to alter your style to lower or higher cadence. also there is some new left/right balance ground contact thing bit like cyclists have left/right power percentage figures. I am wondering if could help you detect temporary imbalances that could lead to injury if not treated.

Then there is the lactate threshold piece on the 630. Usually a very important number to know for an efficient training level to try and improve your performance in distance running.

So lots to wait and see I feel.

yes lots of good points there. The 'wait and see comment' is the key one.

your comment on resting hr and what you say is correct. however there are apps like ithlete and elitehrv that will NOW for free (or virtually nothing) do the resting HR and HRV daily HRV analysis MUCH better than the 235/630 are likely to - especially if you include the display info on the app/web compared to what GC is likely to offer. such insights are genuinely useful to people with a high training load IMO.

lactate threshold is interesting (well it is to me). you can readily enough already do this yourself with a 20/30 minute test or even have a good stab at it looking at your 10k PB stats. how they appear to be approaching it (ie NOT just based on the 'standard' non-lab test) is interesting. let's see how accurate it is. Even lab test are not 100% accurate and require interpretation and are potentially significantly affected by things like caffeine.

the extended running dynamics appear mostly a red herring. stride length is hardly 'advanced'. GCT L/R gives some idea of symmetry in form. the ratio thing just corrects the deficiency of the usefulness of the original VO metric (which running faster improves)

Yes I wonder how long it will be before Smartphone apps start offering "Lactace Threshold" calculations. I remember an interview where the SweetBeat boss (iOS HRV app) said that they could calculate LT but I don't think they ever released that feature. As you say using your 10k PR you can get close enough to your pace at LT using the Daniels online calculator.

The 235's big plus on paper is the 24/7 HR, whether that's actually useful I'm not sure ;-)

I don't understand all the rumor about "+optical HR, including all the benefits like resting HR"

It is completely useless.

1. First of all it will only work when the watch will be place directly on a hand. I run about 70 miles a week. Except for the summer the watch is always on some clothes. Even if not I don't believe it will fasten enough to measure correctly when you sweat. This makes this feature completely useless when you run. HR band is still the best and reliable way to run in zones.

2. Secondly. Resting HR. What for? You can easily measure your resting HR on a smart scale once a day in the morning and then forget about it for the rest of the day. This data measured constantly has no sense at all. Unless you are in a hospital but this is different kind of stuff.

3. Last but not least. Accuracy. I tested iWatch to see how accurate is this kind of measurements. At the same time I had medical heart rate monitor, the watch and the HR band. My resting HR is 42-45 which was confirmed by the medical stuff. At the same time the watch was showing 55-62. HR strap was very accurate and the results were similar to the medical one. Perhaps it was the watch itself but personally I think that the movement between the sensor and the watch is a weak point.

Of course this is only my opinion but this feature definitely is not a deal breaker.

"Completely useless" is hyperbole, even if it is just your opinion. Certainly there is at least some usefulness in the optical HR, even by your high standards. What about those times when it's warm enough to wear on your wrist and you've forgotten / can't locate / your HR strap? And it certainly is more convenient to have only one running device to wear instead of two.

I live in a northern climate and still have many days in the spring and fall that I could wear the 235, not just the summer. I assume that's true for you too.

And yes you can manually take your HR before waking up. But you can also use a stop watch and measured distances for training - no need for a GPS watch, right? What's nice about these watches is the convenience and added value they bring to our training. I for one would like to see, every day, my HR when I wake up, my HR during training, my HR when I climb 140 steps every morning at work, etc. Knowing your HR at any given moment is a nice window into your fitness and can show how external activities affect your HR, measured and tracked precisely with the 235.

Of course none of this matters much if it's not accurate. That's why we need to see DC Rainmaker's testing to draw our own conclusions. But based on his testing, we know some optical HR monitors are just as accurate as the straps. Here's hoping the 235 is in that category.

I don't understand all the rumor about "+optical HR, including all the benefits like resting HR"

It is completely useless.

1. First of all it will only work when the watch will be place directly on a hand. I run about 70 miles a week. Except for the summer the watch is always on some clothes. Even if not I don't believe it will fasten enough to measure correctly when you sweat. This makes this feature completely useless when you run. HR band is still the best and reliable way to run in zones.

2. Secondly. Resting HR. What for? You can easily measure your resting HR on a smart scale once a day in the morning and then forget about it for the rest of the day. This data measured constantly has no sense at all. Unless you are in a hospital but this is different kind of stuff.

3. Last but not least. Accuracy. I tested iWatch to see how accurate is this kind of measurements. At the same time I had medical heart rate monitor, the watch and the HR band. My resting HR is 42-45 which was confirmed by the medical stuff. At the same time the watch was showing 55-62. HR strap was very accurate and the results were similar to the medical one. Perhaps it was the watch itself but personally I think that the movement between the sensor and the watch is a weak point.

Of course this is only my opinion but this feature definitely is not a deal breaker.

Some responses:

1. Personally, I almost wlays have the watch "touching my skin" independent of the season (and we have extremely cold winters where I'm from), but I suppose that's personal to everyone. As for "HR band is still the best and reliable way to run in zones" -- for pure HR, optical can be just as good as standard HRMs, but that is sensor and skin type dependent.

2. Remembering to measure your HR the moment you wake up is not necessarily easy. Also, this automates everything. Similar to smart scales, the "it just works" factor is HUGE and can be the difference between someone actually recording/measuring something and not. Again, I understand your opinion here, but for most I would imagine this would actually enable resting HR to be something they track.

3. Comparing the Apple Watch HR sensor to the Garmin 235 "Elevate" sensor (without actually having tested the latter) is completely unfair at the moment. We have no idea. There are plenty of awesome optical HRMs that are as accurate as a strap (Scosche is my personal choice). Until we know the accuracy level of the "Elevate" HRM specifically in the 235, none of us can speak to it's accuracy.

Some responses:

1. Personally, I almost wlays have the watch "touching my skin" independent of the season (and we have extremely cold winters where I'm from), but I suppose that's personal to everyone. As for "HR band is still the best and reliable way to run in zones" -- for pure HR, optical can be just as good as standard HRMs, but that is sensor and skin type dependent.

2. Remembering to measure your HR the moment you wake up is not necessarily easy. Also, this automates everything. Similar to smart scales, the "it just works" factor is HUGE and can be the difference between someone actually recording/measuring something and not. Again, I understand your opinion here, but for most I would imagine this would actually enable resting HR to be something they track.

3. Comparing the Apple Watch HR sensor to the Garmin 235 "Elevate" sensor (without actually having tested the latter) is completely unfair at the moment. We have no idea. There are plenty of awesome optical HRMs that are as accurate as a strap (Scosche is my personal choice). Until we know the accuracy level of the "Elevate" HRM specifically in the 235, none of us can speak to it's accuracy.

I agree that in particular situations this feature might be something interesting but I still see no need to know constantly my resting HR (even if you forgot to measure it every day it doesn't change a lot in short period of time. You can do it once a month). I still think that for most people optical HR will be useless. Therefore I pointed that it is not a deal breaker. Of course I might be wrong.

But more there are some doubts already (this comes from an article about measuring heart rate).

1. Biology makes optical sensing a complex and challenging task. Unlike chest strap heart rate monitors -- which closely emulate a real EKG machine by measuring electrical pulse -- these devices use light to track your blood.
2. To accomplish these readings, optical sensing requires you to hold absolutely still -- no talking, no moving, no muscle-tensing, no sweating, no smudging allowed.
3. There's another complication, too. By the time blood reaches the capillaries in your wrist, it has already slowed down to a rate that doesn't necessarily reflect your true heart rate -- especially, as Dr. Zaroff explained, at BPMs above 100.
4. One potential issue is skin pigmentation. As Bharat Vasan, COO and co-founder of Basis explained, "The light has to penetrate through several layers...and so the higher the person is on the Fitzpatrick scale (a measure of skin tone), the more difficult it is for light to bounce back. For someone who is very pale in a very brightly-lit setting, the light could get washed out. The skin color issue is something that our technology compensates for. The darker the skin, the brighter the light shines, the lighter [the skin] the less it shines

As the accuracy is discussable the whole idea to use it a sport watch is a bit tricky (running on 70 and 80 percent of you max HR is a big difference) but you are right we should wait until the watch can be tested.

We will have it soon in our clinic and then I will run some tests again. Probably on next Thursday I will run my monthly performance test. I will extend it with HR tests. I will provide with the results. I hope until that we will have the watch :)

BR.
Wojciech

It's interesting seeing how much interest there is in optical HR.

I am not sure if this with people who train with HR already but don't like straps or those who never have trained with HR but think they will do with optical or bit of both.

What is also interesting when I looked at the leaderboard of the Strava segment for a race I did on Saturday was how few runners were wearing an HRM - including none of the top 5 fastest runners and about 1/3 altogether. And this from good standard club runners (say all under 40 mins for 10K)

I tend to agree with Wojciech about accuracy. I have a 225 and it largely works for me but largely means I often get small parts of my runs where it is wrong. I now virtually never do with the latest Garmin straps. Trying then to review average and max HRs on runs is tricky when not 100% of the trace is correct.

I also wonder what people are going to do with 24x7 HR recording especially given any one day is rarely the same in how much walking about you might need to do between actual training sessions. Will people decide to take the day off training if their day average was 1-2 beats higher than yesterday etc etc

That's what I worry about the most - HR accuracy. I love the idea of 24/7 HR analysis, but not at the cost of accuracy. If that becomes an issue I'd stick with my Fenix 3 or maybe go with the 630 (smaller form factor).

Having a second device defeats the whole purpose for me. If I have to have a 2nd device that I put on when I want HR, I might as well use the chest strap. I tried a miolink for a while but never could get reliable data and having to have it on the same wrist as the watch made both uncomfortable. On the opposite wrist the signal would drop in and out due to the weak signal.

i too tried the Mio Link and had it give sporadic highs and lows even with it cinched uncomfortably around my forearm. my skin isn't very dark, but i think maybe my bone structure is shaped in a way that the light can still leak although i really didn't see that happening when i had it really tightly cinched.

it seems that the optical sensors work well for about 3/4 of the population...maybe they will figure it out ultimately for the rest of us, but i'm guessing i'll need to stick with a chest strap until something more robust comes out that works for my arm. too bad. it would be so nice to have one device to put on ones wrist and be done.

i thought the 225 was an intriguing design with its little "rubber gasket" to block out ambient light. i never tried it (already owned a 220), but i will be curious to see how this gasket-less design on the 235 plays out for most folks.

I thought the vivoactive was a great value for the price. What I didn't like is that each screen could only have 3 data fields. No more, no fewer. I also missed having customizable workouts and Garmin calendar training plans. The fenix and 230/235/630 have these features. GPS was accurate and the size was amazingly small for all it did. The vibration alerts were weak, although I think those were later improved.

What I also didn't like about the VA was its poor build quality - it felt very cheap compared to the F3. Concerned that the 235 apparently has a plastic face. That might be a showstopper for me. Can anyone comment on their experience with other Garmin plastic watchfaces in terms of durability and visibility of scratches over time? Any pics would be great.