Heart rate accuracy

[dude]

I've had my Ionic for a month, but it has been reporting some worryingly high heart rate values when running, over 200 on several occasions.

On Tuesday I went running with two other monitors. My old Surge, and a Garmin Forerunner 220 with chest strap.

This is a comparison of the results:

As you can see the Garmin and the Surge were in very good agreement. So much so that the traces are almost indistinguishable, if I turn off the pink I can see the orange underneath. The Ionic is very erratic, diverging from the other two by up to 50bpm on occasion.

I wear the Ionic in the recommended position, and tighten the strap one notch when running.

I don't think this is good, have I got a faulty unit?

I will try again today, with just the Surge in addition, the Garmin strap is horrible.

John Cooper

[bbarrera]

known issue since the first units starting shipping back about 4 months ago (Oct 2017). 

[dude]

OK, it's broken. I thought it was a cadence lock, but it is all over the place when running. This does not look like it is normal at all. Has anyone had a replacement due to bad heart rate sensing, did it improve?

[sephirothagu]

Did you put them on the same wrist? If so, the high up one always get better HR in my experience.

[dude]

No, the Ionic was on one wrist in the optimum position, and the Surge on the other. The Garmin, when I wore it, was higher up, but that uses a chest strap. I was careful that the Ionic was not compromised.

I started doing this because the Ionic was giving me over 200 when it was the only monitor I was wearing.

I have never had over 184 and that was a half marathon on a hot day and I nearly collapsed at the end.

Max HR 184

[fitblit]

Try flipping the ionic around so the face is against the inside of your arm. If you still get sporadic readings it's probably faulty. If you get a good reading it's probably the position you normally wear it in causing problems.

I flip mine around for sleeping, otherwise I don't get good enough heart rate data for the "detailed" view.

[MikeR417]

John,

I have seen the same issue with my Polar H10 chest strap, but not as bad as yours.  I have no solution!

I was wondering what you are using for plotting and combining the plots?  I would love to have a better graph of my fitbit Ionic data.

Thanks,

Mike

[dude]

---

wrote:

John,

I have seen the same issue with my Polar H10 chest strap, but not as bad as yours.  I have no solution!

I was wondering what you are using for plotting and combining the plots?  I would love to have a better graph of my fitbit Ionic data.

Thanks,

Mike

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I am surprised a chest strap has issues. My Garmin, although inconvenient, has always given consistent results.

I used MyGPSFiles to do that comparison. I have also been experimenting with using Excel to plot the TCX values alongside values downloaded via the Fitbit API, but have not had very good results because the API only gives numbers by the minute.

[dude]

Fitblit

That's strange, the Fitbit advice is that wearing it on the inside is not good. I would not accept that as a solution anyway.

[fitblit]

Yeah, I wouldn't consider it a solution either. Just a way to test if the sensor is capable of giving a good reading, or if it's faulty.

[CoopKill]

Has there been any input by fitbit on this issue? 

[mjjones13x]

John, apparently they have not fixed the problem in two years, I bought a new Ionic 4 to replace a Charge 2. Same issues as you described during a run, excessive heartbeat in the 180's (actual HR 120's) then drops into the 50's then all over the place. But some days are fine, I have worn it per suggestions, doesn't seem to be an issue. Charge 2 never had any problems. Have your problems been resolved? And before anybody asks it is not AFib. 

Mickey

[dude]

It got better after a few firmware updates, but I got disillusioned with FitBit after trying to ger run cadence out of them. It is never going to happen because they record steps every 5 minutes only, so I have gone to Garmin.