Understanding of Calories burned read out on new fitbit alta hr?

[Parkersspace]

3 questions about the dash and read out based on my observations explained here.  I've had my fitbit HR all of 1.5 days and I'm trying to figure it out.  So I had synced it with Myfitnesspal but now I've removed the sync with it and MMR cause I wanted to see what Fitbit said I burned not the MMR best guess which is always way lower than strava.  So today I did a 2 hour ride, I can see my average heart rate during the ride was 138 peaking just over 160 and being in aerobic 72% of the time with only 2% fat burning,  and  fitbit with no activy logged says I burned 1990+ calories so far today. Strava's best guess my ride at just over 1000 calories burned, so the fitbit total for the day at this point, sounds good; now if I input my bike ride with the start and finish time and don't input a calorie total, the calories burned graph goes level for the entire duration of my activity and drops me to only 1521 calories burned for the day.  If I put in a total it takes what ever I say. 

1.  The heart rate graphs show accurate heart rate data still but it seems it is no longer used for the calorie total when an activity is put in? 

2.  The fitbit app uses an algorithm that overrides the heart rate data?  It obviously doesn't know that I was on single track with lots of hills and basically doing HIT but am I understanding this correctly? 

3.  It seems if I want it to report calories based on my HR I can't input an activity or sync with a 3rd party app or it just gives the calorie read out from the app or an algorithm?

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @Parkersspace! 

I'll gladly answer your questions:

1. The HR data is definitely used for the calculation on how many calories were burned. What is important to note in the situation you described is that the tracker did not log, or recognize, any specific activity and as such, it created an estimate with the information provided (as if you were walking the entire time).
2. When you manually logged the activity for that time period, the calculations will be adjusted to better reflect the activity you indicated, using the information that was recorded by your Alta HR.
3. It would depend on the 3rd party app. However, I would say that the best way to go would be to do your activities, then manually indicate what type of activity it was so that the information from that activity is the one that is shared with other apps.

I hope this clarifies the situation. If you have any further questions, please let me know.