Ionic Reading Elevated Heart Rate After Update

[SunsetRunner]

Since the 3.0 update, my Fitbit Ionic seems to be doing a really poor job tracking heart rate.  For instance, this morning my Omron pressure cuff and Kardia EKG strip agreed that I have a heart rate around 50. The corresponding Fitbit heart rate was about 70. I have also see what appear to be run-away heart rates where the Ionic increased my heart rate for five minutes to more than 160 bps while walking the dog. This happened twice, and has not happened before. Normal for me is a max of about 120, and the extreme rates could be confirmed excessive by manual pulse check. During weightlifting routine I have also seen the Fitbit way out of sync with manual check. There appears to be a problem here. I monitor heart rate for health and assistance in managing my workout routine. It is not nearly as helpful right now.

Moderator Edit: Updated Subject for Clarity

[SantiR]

@SunsetRunner Welcome to the Fitbit Community! Thanks for taking the time to report the situation you are experiencing with Ionic heart rate readings so far since the update. Thanks for sharing all of those details regarding this.

In this case, please try performing a restart on your Ionic. This should refresh its inner components and should help you out with this. 

You could also try turning it off and back on. This should also refresh it.

You may already know about this, but wrist placement is very important to get accurate readings. Please check them here and confirm if you are wearing it that way.

Hope this helps. Keep me posted! 

[SunsetRunner]

I have restarted, and alternately shutdown and checked placement. None of these seems to make a difference. I don't know if it's more reasonable to expect that the last firmware changed something for the worse or the watch itself is not performing as well as before. I do know that these random rate elevations (watch always equal to or greater than actual heart rate often by 20 beats or more) are bogus because I can compare to Kardia device which not only gives a heart rate read-out but also a basic EKG. In other words, I can observe that Kardia is registering actual well-formed beats.

[Ricksiconic]

I am still having same problem did anyone come up with a fix?

[AntJB]

I've had the same issue for over a month and all I get is reset the watch which does not fix the issue

[mnguyea]

I see similar results with excessive heart rate compared to the OH1 arm band. I'm doing abs showing 89 bmp for instance but the Ionic says it is 120bpm! Their documentation says to wear one finger above the wrist and trying 2 when exercising. I will try and see if that improves any but  seems to be a bit annoying that you have to adjust every time (or remember too) before working out to move the tracker or during HIIT it might slide down.