Heart rate monitoring, optical or electrical?

[Paul_p]

Is the regular heart rate monitoring on the charge 5 performed by the same old optical sensors as previous models or by the ECG sensors?

[Wibby]

Hello @Paul_p 

I just checked the manual and it says it has an optical heart-rate tracker in the specs.  I don’t know if it’s a different type to the ones in previous models or not though.

Mine seems to work quite well most of the time.

[Paul_p]

Thats disappointing, I'll have to keep wearing a chest strap as optical is pretty useless for anything other than resting heart rate

[alexthecat]

I use a chest strap if I'm doing intervals. If I'm doing steady-state cardio and not seeing rapid changes in my heart rate, the Charge 5 seems to be consistent with my chest strap. I haven't seen a difference of more than 1 or 2 BPM.