Blaze Heart Rate Monitor reads too high

[Wilkovian]

Hi, 

So I switched to the Blaze from a Charge HR, which I really loved, because I wanted something that looked more watch-like with some more smart-watch type features. 

I love it but I've noticed the HRM sometimes decides to just climb and climb. I like to do long warm-ups before I exercise and some of that involved jogging on the spot etc (I must confess I occasionally do this to bring my steps up as well). 

Sometimes when doing this in particular my heart rate on the watch shows as climbing rapidly and then sitting around 145 and occasionally 155 when clearly it's only actually around 75/80. 

I suspect the answer is simply to take it off when jogging on the spot and not using that to raise my steps... but it is a convenient way of doing so when I have a really busy day at work and happen to get 20 minutes to myself when I get home or something. IT sometimes reads this as elliptical training which is fine as I can just delete the activity; but the heart rate reading too high issue bothers me as it suggests my daily heart rate readings and calorie burn might be way, way off and I'm just not noticing it. 

Sometimes I can make it not do that by sitting for 20 seconds and letting it get back to a realistic heart rate and then starting again and trying to hold my hand still but sometimes not. 

Any thoughts? Anyone had the same problem? 

I've tried different arm positions

[AlejandraFitbit]

Hello all, I hope you are doing fine.

I appreciate all the efforts in trying to fix this heart rate issue you are experiencing and recommend follow the instructions provide in this post, there you will be able to see some things that might be affecting this reading and some tips to improve it.

If after following those steps you keep having problems, feel free to get in touch with our support team, for a faster response you can contact them via chat.

I hope this helps, let me know the outcome. 

[Wilkovian]

Thanks for the response but I think I speak for most of us in saying we've tried this and are still coming up against a brick wall with it. It's obviously just a limitation of the device.


It's just disheartening that it still seems to be being ignored as a problem beyond assuming 'user error'.

[silkcityd]

The main reason I stayed with Fitbit was the calories burned aspect, but that is calculated by the heart rate. I am using Fitbit {Blaze} AND My Fitness Pal to balance calories in and out.  This is the MOST accurate way to determine your weight loss goals.

It seems to me the heart rate is very accurate until you get into one of the exercise modes, in my case its weight lifting.  That's where things go bad and the heart rate is clearly, clearly way too high.  In the end, your calories burned for that session is not accurate at all.  Yesterday, I didn't go into exercise mode and just left it alone.  In my mind, the Blaze is always calculating calories burned so, what difference does it make if your in one of the mode's or not.   I'd rather do that, than have the appearance of burning too many calories and being counter productive in the whole process of weight loss.

FITBIT....what are you doing about this cause I know I aint the only one by a long shot...

[AlejandraFitbit]

Thanks for the update @silkcityd and @Wilkovian.

Since the troubleshoot provided didn't work, I've gone ahead and escalated your case to our support team, for them to take a deeper look at this. Please keep an eye on your inbox for further instructions.

Keep me posted. 

[Wilkovian]

So; I was wondering as an update to this if the Fitbit Ionic or any of the newer post-blaze devices have solved this issue? 

Also, have any of them incorporated a lock-screen option to prevent accidentally pausing workouts and so on? 

I ask this as a friend of mine recently switched from his Fitbit Surge to a competing device manufactured by one of the GPS sports watch companies that is actually slightly cheaper than the ionic, looks more like a conventional round watch whilst working really well as a smartwatch, pairs with an ECG heart-rate monitor strap so it can be super accurate when needed with no fuss but works on a wrist-based monitor the rest of the time, has built-in GPS for outdoor activities and has a really easy screen-lock function. Basically on any screen you like you can hold down the button on the side and then select the screen locking option and it will lock it to the screen you were just on - to remove that function you just hold the button again and select unlock but it would be almost impossible for that to happen accidentally... which really suggests to me that it would not be that complicated at all for Fitbit to address that issue as well. 

Have they done so with the newer watches? 

I know my friends' watch he runs it just on the wrist-based heart rate all day but whenever he exercises switches to the chest strap and has found it's bang-on (as you'd expect) and as it's the same device it massively reduces the faff of adding the exercise later, although you do have to put on the ECG strap. This means you can be assured it's accurate when it matters. 

As I use Fitbit for calorie burn with Myfitnesspal an hour-long workout having too high or too low a heart rate for some or all of it can massively effect the recorded result so I can end up thinking I have hundreds of extra calories to burn or that I haven't actually worked all that hard in the exercise... either way is counterproductive.

I've been really disappointed by Fitbit's refusal to engage properly with the heart rate issue, but if it's a limitation of the technology and they've decided simply to not take that route with their tech and instead to trust in the wrist-based monitoring (despite its issues) then fair enough, I can respect that. 

The lack of screen locking is deeply disappointing though especially since it seems to be a fairly straightforward thing to implement and would show that they're actually listening to their customers.

So, have the new watches addressed the issue at all? I'm still on a Charge 2 now (unfortunately I lost my Blaze about 6 months ago).