Heart rate inaccurate

[Wills66]

I have started using the Fitbit blaze to track my heart rate for training.

For the first month or so it worked wonderfully, and it has tracked my resting heart rate to be 41 bpm (which is correct!).

However, I have found over the past few weeks that suddenly the tracker stops tracking my heart rate throughout parts of the day, and for some reason thinks my resting heart rate is now 47 bpm, which is a considerable jump!

I have tried using this whilst exercising, and in the beginning, this has worked very well; whereas now, when I am exercising, the tracker seems to think that my heart rate is at about 80-90 bpm when I am pushing it flat out.

Clearly, something is wrong, but I can't figure out what. I have been washing the back of the tracker with water, and have even used the soft bristles on my toothbrush to clean the tracker, yet nothing seems to help. I am left with a Fitbit which tells me my heart rate is way too high if it reads my heart rate at all!

What should I do to resolve this problem?

Thank you very much for your help.

[AlejandraFitbit]

Welcome to the Forums @Wills66. Your heart rate may be affected by any a number of factors at any given moment. Movement, temperature, humidity, stress level, physical body position, caffeine intake, and medication use are just a few things that can affect your heart rate. Different medical conditions and medications can also impact your heart rate.

For improved heart rate accuracy keep these tips in mind:

1. Experiment with wearing the tracker higher on your wrist during exercise. Because blood flow in your arm increases the farther up you go, moving the tracker up a couple inches can improve the heart rate signal. Also, many exercises such as push-ups cause you to bend your wrist frequently, which is more likely to interfere with the heart rate signal if the tracker is lower on your wrist.
2. Do not wear your tracker too tight; a tight band restricts blood flow, potentially affecting the heart rate signal. That being said, the tracker should also be slightly tighter (snug but not constricting) during exercise than during all-day wear.
3. With high-intensity interval training, P90X, boxing, or other activities where your wrist is moving vigorously and non-rhythmically, the movement may prevent the sensor from finding an accurate heart rate. Similarly, with exercises such as weight lifting or rowing, your wrist muscles may flex in such a way that the band tightens and loosens during exercise. Try relaxing your wrist and staying still briefly (about 10 seconds), after which you should see an accurate heart rate reading. Note that your tracker will still provide accurate calorie burn readings during these types of exercise by analyzing your heart rate trends over the course of the workout.

I hope this helps, see you around. 

[Lord_Dean]

Mine is wildly inaccurate.  It started out pretty good, but now, it's so bad as to be considered worthless.  I went for a hike yesterday, and the blaze reported 80-90Bpm consistently while my actual was more like 120.  Same problem today.  

I'm going to try to return it, and try a chest strap or other.  

[FerdinandFitbit]

Hi there @Lord_Dean. Good to see you in the Fitbit Community!

I'd like to know if you tried the suggestions that @AlejandraFitbit gave above. Using your band a little tighter when exercising will help increase the accuracy as if your arms move a lot, the tracker might have problem keeping contact with the skin and therefore, this will affect your heart rate readings.

Let me know how it goes!

[amiele77]

I too, have been having these issues. If it even shows a heart rate, I found that during my workouts it was showing just two dashed lines. Yes, I have cleaned it after each workout. Yes, I am wearing it 2 fingers above the wrist bone. And no, I'm not wearing it to tight. It actually slides down as I'm working out. I have contacted Fitbit and was given a replacement and am currently having the issues again with the replacement. I bought mine in March of 2016 and it worked fine for a long time, I can't help but think that maybe some new update is interfering with something.

[DGressette]

Am I hearing this correctly....

to improve heart rate readings, Fitbit suggests repeatedly stopping my workouts for 10 seconds so the Blaze can catch up??

Wow. That is pretty BS. 

[schmict]

Yep...sounds like a solution when all the other canned answers are not working.  By the way...further increase accuracy by stopping every 10 minutes, then working out without moving your arms!

[SemmaRoberts]

My heart rate monitoring has stopped completely. I used to see a flashing light but there is nothing now. Also there is no active minutes recorded now even when I have been  actively walking at a high speed for over 30 minutes. 

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[FerdinandFitbit]

Hi there @SemmaRoberts. Happy to see you in the Community Forums! 🙂

I'm sorry you're having problems not seeing the lights on the heart rate monitor flashing. I'd say that the reason you're not seeing active minutes recorded is also because of this, because they rely on your heart rate to determine the amount of time you're active.

Now, have you tried by any chance to restart your tracker? You can easily do this by pressing the left and lower right buttons for 10-12 seconds. This will make your tracker to reboot and after that, see if the lights on the monitor work. Also, swipe to the last screen on your Blaze to access the Settings, tap on it, go down to Heart Rate and make sure that it's set to either On or Auto.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more help!

[Chefinferno]

Same for me!  Both stopped working after the update!  Did everything all the posts said to do, and still nothing.  Both worked fine before update.

[SemmaRoberts]

I ended up with a replacement as the company was not able to get the heart rate monitor to work

Sent from my iPad

[TerryFit]

Hi  

i Just want to add to your comment that I have had the Blaze for over year and started to get inconsistent HR readings and periods of no reading since the last update.  

[Kirbee]

My blaze was fine until a recent update too. Now it is so inconsistent and yes I have tried the advise above.

[11of15]

I wasted more than $200 on this Fitbit blaze.  The main attraction for me was the heart rate monitor.  I figured I wouldn't have to use a band around my chest any longer.  Wrong.  After reading the fine print online, it makes no guarantee that the monitor works correctly during exercise.  Unfortunately a published fact I missed before buying this.   However, no matter what activity I am doing, it measures 10 bpm faster than my heart rate.  I'm taking a hammer to this thing tonight.  Lesson learned.   Congrats Fitbit, you stole my money.  I'll never buy anything from this company again. 

[RatedE]

That seems to be par for the course for most wrist-based optical heart rate monitors - not just Fitbit.  From what I've read it appears that (so far) the technology of wrist-based heart rate monitors has not caught up to chest straps in terms of obtaining an instant heart rate reading. 

[TerryFit]

These recent comments are probably all, true however my concern is more about what I think has been a change in the performance of the Blaze over recent months.

I have been happy with the Blaze (despite the lack of accuracy noted by many users).

At least until recently the difference in readings between Blaze and other monitoring were relatively consistent so I just made my own adjustment to what ever the Blaze summary showed. I was then simply looking for changes to my Blaze readings over time such as when I may have increased my exercise workouts or had heavy walking etc. or during periods where I could not do my usual exercising.

But now there appears to be more inconsistency in the Blaze readings for the Heart Rate... since it seems that the HR readings have a direct relationship to the Calorie calculations in Blaze then this is probably why I am seeing bigger differences in the Calorie readings lately on what were already huge differences between the Blaze and gym equipment calorie readings.

I may be wrong but I am suspicious of a recent software update or failing hear rate monitoring by Blaze. 

I have found FitBit Support helpful in the past in trying to answer my queries and they are trying to look at this concern so I will give them the opportunity to do their own diagnosis before I form any opinion.

The Blaze has been an important tool for me personally in monitoring my fitness improvements or need for improvements, and overall has contributed to a better fitness for me personally.

[Wilkovian]

Real shame this too. I had a fitbit Charge that I managed to crack the screen on and their customer service was phenomenal; they asked for an image of it and my receipt and then sent me a new one. 

In this case I think they're doing their best with what they have to hand and it's obviously a combined limitation of the optical heart rate hardware and the software. They're probably correct about the overall calorie burn during a workout being correct with the averages but as they say; you just can't rely on the blaze to be a workout monitor other than very vaguely. I tend to use if for flat cycling workouts and otherwise just for day to day walking and heart rate monitoring and for any kind of workout, especially the vigorous ones like kickboxing, circuits or weights I revert to my good old polar FT2 and chest strap. Unless I've forgotten to bring my FT2 to the gym or whatever in which case it'll do in a pinch for a vague idea of how I've done. The technology is still developing for fitness watches I guess and I'd imagine you'll find the same sort of discussions in forums for any of the optical-based heart rate monitoring watches.

I keep posting about this issue largely because I want Fitbit to be aware of it going forwards as a specific issue that they can work on and fix so behind the standard tech support answers (and I understand how difficult it is to sort these sorts of issues folks you're not miracle workers I know) I just hope this info is making it into their R&D departments and/or the people making the software updates. 

I have a LOT of loyalty to Fitbit; they're responsible for turning my life around (I got a huge amount fitter, healthier and happier with both my Fitbit One and then Charge HR - yes, I wised up with food choices etc. etc. but they really did make a big difference; I'll always be grateful for that) So I genuinely hope they can get this stuff together for the next generation of kit.

[TerryFit]

Thank you for your understanding of this issue I too am grateful for what Fitbit has done to my personal fitness and health but they do need to continue to work on this inaccuracy and inconsistency problem.

I have no doubt they are but it would be nice if they would share their progress etc with their users.

I seem to get so far with their support which is well meaning but then it seems to stop as it gets harder by the looks. I had a support person acknowledging my queries on this currently then it just stopped with no explanation. So here I am wondering if they cant answer me or don't believe me or they are just too busy etc

As a grateful user I don't wish to complain ( I am sure this accuracy issue is major for them and I have no doubt they must be addressing this) but I do want to help.  My humble message to  FITBIT, is "don't wait for us to point out these issues, keep us informed on what you are doing about them"

[RatedE]

Agreed - I think it will be a huge step for whichever company is able to come out with improved heart rate monitoring from a wrist-based device!

[lutzesp]

Hello!  I need help with my FitBit Blaze as well.  Hear rate monitor reads 75-100bpm ---with the watch OFF my wrist. Because of this, the past few days the watch has been registering calories burned at 2200-3000+ even as I have not increased my activity.  Thanks!