Ionic Heart Rate Accuracy

[Kat_W]

Has anyone else noticed that the Heart Rate sensor is very inaccurate?  Currently my Ionic is showing that my heart rate is in excess of 120, while at the same time my pulse ox machine (a medical device) is saying it's 82.  The Samsung health app is inline with what the pulse ox is saying.  I'm not sure if I have a defective Ionic or if others are having the same issue. ( Note: Sorry if there are any spelling errors, I am tryping around my cat, who has decided to sit directly in front of the screen)

Moderator edit: edited title for clarity

[Denodan]

I found the samsung gear sport much better and accurate than the vivofit 3 and build quality and screen miles better

[Mark2018]

Hopefully somebody knows the sampling rate of the hear rate sensor.
Maybe to slow for fast actions 😉

But we will never know that.

I'm not sure that OS 2.1 will fix that problem with the accuracy.

Regards,
Mark

[fluxx]

I love the passive always on screen of the Vivoactive, it's much like the screen of the last Pebble Time. In terms of build quality you're right, the Gear Sport delivers more. I just don't like the Samsung Universe, to take full advantage of the ecosystem you either have to install 3-4 apps or get a Samsung phone right away.

Considering the HR sensor of the Ionic, I still don't believe they can fix it with an update. It's not the sampling rate, it's the fact that they went with three sensors but only one LED. They want to win the game with the SPO2 sensor but forgot about the basics of HR measurement. They can't get enough light into the skin to get reliable information all the time. Just get in a dark room, and compare how a Fitbit Charge 2 (2 LED) or a Vivoactive 3 (3 LED) light the room and then in contrast the light coming out of the Ionic. It's simply less light. 

[Mark2018]

Yes, that's why I 'd like to see the signal stenght of the heart rate sensor.

But I have had a 30 Euro Tracker with also one light and it shows my sleep stages.  But I don't like there app design. Just data no graph.

That's why I still with Fitbit.

They can't show where the data is missing. I learn all raw data comes from the tracker and the calculation will be done online. So I  assume there is the problem!

Regards

Mark

[YFG]

Is there anyone on this thread that can help with DRM and transferring music from iTunes to my Ionic? DRM seems to be preventing me from transferring a lot of my music.

[0hwell]

Your trying to transfer music that has digital rights management enabled on it. Must be music you downloaded a while ago. You may have to go back to iTunes and redownload new copies of the music with the DRM removed. I think they quit using DRM a while back.

[YFG]

My ISP just upgraded my WiFi to 5g. I see Ionic only supports 2.4g for music transfer. Is this being updated anytime soon? Or even better-music transfer being made simpler?

[BamIAm]

@fluxx, returned my Versa today for precisely this reason.  The single LED setup is way too finicky to get a consistent, accurate HR, even at rest.  I'd be sitting still, the Versa nice and snug, and I'd still get 40 BPM spikes intermittently.  Restarting it, pulse would display as normal. 

Decided I'd rather have the $200 back and go on using my Blaze and Charge 2.  When they wear out I'll probably go with Garmin.  They seem to know what they're doing.

[fitblit]

My issues with heart rate accuracy seem to be gone. I push the watch higher up on my arm when lifting and that seems to help. When running or biking the HR is fine.

[erikkai]

Yes the placement is super critical. Also try wetting your wrist under the arm right before a workout to help improve accuracy. When I do that plus wear higher and tighter for exercising, I find the Ionic’s readings match my Polar Heart Rate strap.

Sent from my iPhone

[DaveEuph]

Similar issue to many respondants. I've recently changed from the Surge to the Ionic. The resting heart rate is unchanged, however when I go for a run (usually for about one hour) the Surge reported my heartrate in the range 135 to 145, which seemed about right to me. Two runs with the Ionic showed my heartrate in the range 185 to 195 - which seems implausible (I can comfortably talk to people while I'm running - i.e. I'm not overdoing it). It'd be interesting to see if FitBit have anything to say (I tightened the strap for the 2nd run - will try the other wrist for the next run). I have some time to decide whether to return the Ionic.

[YFG]

Return it...it won’t get better. The latest OS release is just as bad plus it appears the GPS took a quality hit with the update.
1. Start of my run HR reading is way too high
2. HR actually went down as I ran harder up a hill
3. HR sampling way off. I do intervals. My run ning HR showed up on my Ionic 30sec into my walk portion.
4. Light cloud cover-GPS loses signal constantly
5. I assume GPS is part of my pace measurement. It now shows a faster pace when I walk vs run-the measurement is very erratic.
I wish I could return my $300 Ionic but I’ve had it too long. I kept it hoping Fitbit would really focus on making it more reliable and accurate-but they have not.

[Piskins]

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

[BamIAm]

Tried an "open box" Ionic short term.  Installed all the latest firmware, unit appeared "as new" and seemed to be working great.

Tried a 3 mile walk on a known trail, GPS came back as 2.85 miles, pace was overstated.  Loaded the .tcx file into Strava, it corrected it to a little over 3 miles (of course)  Figured I could adjust my stride and calibrate it for the next session.

However, this morning I started having the "runaway heart rate" problem when at rest. It would repeatedly rise to 120 BPM, and then drop back to my normal 60 or so.  I had the same problem with a Versa.

Decided to send it back to the vendor for a refund.  I agree with a previous poster, the heart rate sensors on both the Ionic and Versa have a bad design, not enough illumination from the LEDs or something.  The software gets confused and doubles the actual HR.  

I think it's time to try a Garmin at this point.

[erikkai]

There’s some algorithm or something that makes the heart rate jump up at the beginning of some exercises. You can almost alleviate this weird behavior (have no reason why this happens) by wetting your wrist under the device like you would do for a heart rate strap prior to any exercise. Also make sure the band is tight and one to two fingers higher than where your wrist and hand meet.

This has eliminated 95% of the issues for me. I find it is as accurate as my heart rate strap. I’d still like Fitbit to update their OS that has caused this weird behavior.

Sent from my iPhone

[bmw54]

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@DaveEuph wrote:

Similar issue to many respondants. I've recently changed from the Surge to the Ionic. The resting heart rate is unchanged, however when I go for a run (usually for about one hour) the Surge reported my heartrate in the range 135 to 145, which seemed about right to me. Two runs with the Ionic showed my heartrate in the range 185 to 195 - which seems implausible (I can comfortably talk to people while I'm running - i.e. I'm not overdoing it). It'd be interesting to see if FitBit have anything to say (I tightened the strap for the 2nd run - will try the other wrist for the next run). I have some time to decide whether to return the Ionic.

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@DaveEuph: strange, I have the same history (Surge->Ionic) and similar issues with the heart-rate chart after running. It doesn't seem to correspond with my up-hill or faster paces during the run. In fact, it just seems to run steady in the 170 - 180 range. (which seems high).

Out of suspicion, I taped paper over my arm where I wear my Ionic and ran a standard 7.7 mile course yesterday. When finished, the heart-rate chart was identical to the last time I ran the course with Ionic directly on my skin. 

If ionic will accurately measure heart rate with paper covering the green light, I don't understand the official guidance of where and how snugly to place it.

[bbarrera]

It sure seems that at times, Fitbit has applied machine learning to HR and replaces real data with predicted data. The only official statements from Fitbit about machine learning are about sleep stages.

[seemebreakthis]

This reminds me of my post a while ago:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Ionic/Heart-Rate-very-variable-on-Ionic/m-p/2731224/highlight/true#M...

So there is some sort of proof that the Ionic does funny things with the real HR data.

[Ken_Smith]

 I’m having the same issue with my Ionic. Today I went to the track for a 3 mile run walk. It shows me at an average heart rate of 153 BPM, and a max heart rate of 180 BPM. 

 At 75 years of age, this is a physical impossibility. I would estimate my average heart rate at 120 to 125 BPM,  and my max heart rate at 145 BPM. 

 Even though my FitBit blaze was not accurate either, it was way more accurate than the ionic. 

Any suggestions?

[erikkai]

Not sure if you read through all of the posts but the easiest things to do to improve accuracy are ensure the watch is one to one and a half fingers higher than where your wrist and hand connect. Then before any exercise make sure to wet underneath the watch to improve the readings. Also make sure the watch band is tight enough.

These are the tips I have used and have found my readings to match my chest strap heart rate monitor perfectly.

Note that for some reason at the start of the first exercise of the day the readings climb for a few minutes but will return to normal. Good luck.

Sent from my iPhone