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]

Hey, thanks all for the feedback and for the update.

Since all the troubleshoot you have tried so far didn't work, I recommend keeping an eye on your inbox for further assistance.

Catch you later. 

[gmorrell]

ok

[Wilkovian]

Hi Alejandra,


Thanks for escalating this. I have had an email from Fitbit support but so far they've simply suggested the same things;


1. Move the device further up your arm
2. Change the settings for the heart rate monitor part from 'auto' to 'always on'


I have emailed them back thanking them for taking the time to come back to me but pointing out that we have all already tried these methods and found that they don't negate the problem.


I'll keep everyone posted as to what (if anything) happens next, but thanks for at least having them acknowledge that we're having issues.

[schmict]

Hi

I also received the same "escalation notice".  I will be interested to see if there is anything different, so far same old...same old recommendations and series of questions asking how it is worn and so on.  I am sure this is not going to suddenly preform like I thought it would. It might be OK for wearing all day for overall movement and averages, but that is not why I bought mine, which was to track my heart rate DURING exercise...specifically to know when I am in the right zones, and it is pretty much garbage when it comes to that.   I am done and selling mine for a chest strap.  Which if I did my homework and wasn't sucked into their marketing I would have purchased a strap in the first place.  Like I said I was never really interested in all the other measurements, besides, I know their resting heart rate is inaccurate,  and why should anyone believe their sleep stages? The step counting and floors are also all over the place at times.

[phatbitzr]

I got my Blaze as a gift, so if it didn't live up to promise, I am not going to have a fit(bit).

But I still want to utilize the features I find useful as fully as possible, which include continuous HR monitoring during cardio exercise, specifically riding stationary and moving bikes.

What I see is the Blaze gradually slipping down my arm due the tapering of the forearm toward the wrist bone.  So I wore a wrist wallet that kind of forces the Blaze to sit higher up.

The other thing I noticed is due to the tapering of the arm, the Blaze is looser on the end closer to the wrist, thus the sensor not sitting flat against the wrist, leading to loss of HR reading.  I just double up on one of those 1/4" rubber band and have it go over the side of the Blaze that is sticking up, and since that might force the other side to stick up, I pull the rubber band under the wristband and loop it around the clasp, over back to the side closer to the wrist.  I wished they had wrist straps that used multiple bungee, which is a common way tech divers wear anything they need to be on their wrist, be it computers, compass, slates, etc.

Those 2 mods (especially the 2nd mod), I almost never miss my HR.  Of course, when doing indoor cycling, I still wear my chest strap and compare HR against each other.  The times where the HR reading might go bonkers are usually when I go really intense and maybe the amount of sweat is too overwhelming where I cannot get the watch to track my HR properly by doing a back & forth twist or shuffle of it.  I would need to wear terrycloth wristband above the watch to resolve that.

I also have the watch record skiing as an all day activity, and the watch is pushed flat behind my jacket's wrist gaitor all day, so I don't know its progress.  When the activity is sync'd over, I never noticed a segment where the HR is missed.

I haven't tried those methods with running.

I've been using chest strap forever, and it is not without its faults, I lose connection sometimes (when I am too far away and/or when watch rotates away on handlebar), it also slips down when running, losing its connection.

[schmict]

It depends what you use it for, I suspect if you are a cyclist holding onto handlebars and not moving your hands around it might be OK.  I move my arms around pretty forcefully during routines, do hiit, and martial arts, and it just don't cut it.  The new chest straps have memory and don't require a phone or a watch until you synch.

[TerryFit]

I have been reporting this crazy issue (which caused me to get rid of my Blaze some 7 or 8 months ago) and your comments simply echo mine. 

It's pretty obvious "no one is listening"... what does that tell you about the manufacturer?

The sad thing is I really like Fitbit and would buy another immediately if there was evidence through user comments that they have a model that addresses these legitimate concerns about accuracy and does not resort to telling users to push the device up the arm to improve accuracy.

[Bnice]

I’m with you on this one!

[Wilkovian]

Must admit, it's becoming very frustrating.


I'm considering switching to a Polar device for both all day tracking and more specifically excercise.


All of the main sports watch brands appear to be switching to the wrist-based heart rate model (which is always optical and thus not the most accurate) but at least with the Polar ones you can pair them with a heart rate strap for the time you need it to be more accurate (which supercedes the wrist-based one whilst it's paired) so at least I know it'll be accurate whilst excercising.


I'm sticking with it for the time being, but I'm considering going back to a hip-based pedometer like the One and just using my chest-strap monitor when I want to work out. I can go back to wearing an actual watch during the day at least that way.


Unless they show some sign of taking these concerns on board and acting on them though I'm afraid my Blaze will be the last fitbit that I buy.


As I say, great company and I'd love to keep up with them and keep on buying the tech but I really don't feel like they're taking this info on board at all at a developmental level. Maybe I'm just not privy to that info and they're feverishly trying to solve all of these problems... but I don't have warm fuzzy feelings about it yet to say the least.


Simple things like a button lock feature or making it compatible with chest straps (and I feel like the hardware is more than capable of supporting those features right now with bluetooth connection etc.) would almost completely turn me around on it.

[schmict]

My thoughts exactly.  The only advantage to a watch is that you do get all day information, but if you don't have confidence in that information...then it is garbage. I would prefer accurate exercise information at this time .  I really think the only reason fitbit doesn't pair with chest straps is they don't want it to be so evident just how inaccurate their optical is.

[AlejandraFitbit]

Hey all, thanks for keep me posted about this.

It's great to know that our support team have contacted you and that you are working in a solution for the issue you are experiencing. I would like to know if you have heard back from them, have they offer you a resolution for this?

See you later. 

[Cyclemichaelj]

Thank you! I will try wearing it higher on my wrist. I noticed that temperature affects the reading. My bike rides this year have been in the mid 30’s F, or lower. 

It doesn’t look like Strava sync’s the heartate, unfortunately.

[blueavacado]

agreed...

[phatbitzr]

---

@Cyclemichaeljwrote:

Thank you! I will try wearing it higher on my wrist. I noticed that temperature affects the reading. My bike rides this year have been in the mid 30’s F, or lower. 

It doesn’t look like Strava sync’s the heartate, unfortunately.

---

what do you mean strava doesn't sync heartrate? Are you trying to sync your heartrate back from strava or from fitbit to strava?

[Cyclemichaelj]

What I mean is that my Garmin heart strap is giving me a more accurate heart rate than my Blaze is doing, during my road bike ride. When I look back at the stats of my Fitbit bike ride, the heart rate is at least 40 beats lower than my Strava average.

[Lord_Dean]

The support team contacted me, told me my device was out of warranty, (even tho I started in on this thread, what? february last year??!), they offered me a 25% discount off some other fitbit product.  Yeah.  sure.  I'll just buy a chinese mail order tracker.... probably with a 80% discount.  Probably work better, anyway.  

[phatbitzr]

When I wear the Blaze with some rubber band holding the side closer to the hand flat against my wrist, the heart rate is pretty accurate on a bike.  But with heavy sweat running down my wrist, the tracker would start to go wildly off at around the 45-50min mark.  Twisting the tracker around, sliding it up and down and wiping the wrist area sometimes help, but once I was frustrated that nothing was helping, so I poured water down my wrist under the tracker, and all of a sudden, I see my heart rate reading become increasingly accurate (I frequently also wear a chest strap as redundancy).

Does the drying of the sweat result in salt buildup on the sensor, causing wildly inaccurate heart rate reading?

[schmict]

Ok...SO for this 160.00 dollar item to do what it claims, I should wear a rubber band around it, hold onto handle bars...so I'm not moving my wrists, and then pour water down my arm once in awhile?

[tjbordel]

My HR monitor is beyond useless.

I've tried wearing it higher and lower, tighter and looser, none of it seems to matter.  Walking from my desk to a coworker desk it will tell me HR of 110.  I'll check on a blood pressure measuring device and it's closer to 80.  I'll do some intense riding on an exercise bike and the HR monitor on the bike will tell me 150, my blaze will tell me ---, eventually it will update and tell me 106 (while i'm still actually over 120).  I've given up hope on relying on this for accurate HR measuring.

[TerryFit]

I had same experience and got rid of my Blaze long time ago.