Ionic's tracking of heart rate

[marcwilliams25]

My first Fitbit was the Surge, bought it for the GPS more than anything (track my hikes) I was so impressed by it that this year I thought I'd upgrade to the Ionic, got to admit that now it seems like a poor decision. The Surge seemed to track my heart rate during workouts quite accurately. It picked up on peaks where I'd push myself during a session. The Ionic is nowhere near as accurate in my opinion.

To give you an example, yesterday I just did a gentle 30 minute run on a treadmill, nothing really that taxing. When I synced my Fitbit apparently, my heart rate was in the peak zone throughout the 30 minutes. Today I did a "3 rounds for time" workout that had a 20 calorie assault bike as an element, after I finished it I couldn't get off the floor for about five minutes, I was totally gassed, when I synced my Ionic my heart rate was just seven minutes in the cardio zone. That can't be accurate

Moderator edit: Updated subject for clarity 

[SantiR]

Hi @Freeco, I hope you're doing well. Thank you very much for sharing all of the things you are doing about the heart rate. Thanks for sharing all of those results. I'm sure all of your posts are being very helpful for other users too. Please do keep sharing your progress and experience in this thread.

@lenny4d Thanks for your participation on this thread! You got a reply about this already!

@tomp2 I hope you're doing well too. Thanks for sharing your feedback on this thread. Also, thanks for sharing the workaround that has helped you to get better readings. I'm this will be also useful for other users. Please keep checking the posts on this thread for more workarounds and experiences that should help you out more. 

See you around! 

[Freeco]

On Sunday I did a session in Sports Training mode (random resistance at selected baseline) on my elliptical, with my Ionic loosened 1 notch but a little higher up my arm.
That didn't work out too well. It only measured 125-130bpm, while I certainly hit higher bpms during more the intense periods.

So yesterday I reverted to my previous MO: don't change the tightness, just keep it like day-to-day wearing, but slide it as high as possible up the arm until it's tight. And block the watch from sliding back down by putting a sweat band in front of it.

I got better results last time, but this time again it was reasonable.

Cardio workout targetting 158bpm

0-4min: warmup, elliptical at lowest resistance

4-40min: cardio workout, resistance varies to keep HR at selected bpm (I choose 158bpm this time)

40-48min: cool down, elliptical will gradually reduce resistance back to lowest level

It could have been better the first few mins of the workout... but at minute 12 the oHR seems to get its act together all by itself until the end.

So I'll just stick to this method I guess. It's not perfect (my Surge did a better job at this, without having to find out tricks), but ok.

[FredFornicola]

For some reason my HR seems to be the most accurate when I do outdoor activities. Not sure why but maybe I use the spin bike I'll set it to cycling instead of spinning and see what happens. I also noticed these 2 things:
1) 99% of the time when I'm strength training I forget to turn the activity on to monitor my session. I'll randomly look at my watch during my session for my HR reading and it's like some silly low number of 85 or something ridiculous like that. Manual pulse reading has me in the 130's.
2) When I'm spinning and my hands are down on the bars my readings are low. If I just raise my arm (watch side) to chest height and leave it there it will slowly climb to pretty much what I'm getting from a manual read. No change in positioning of the watch or tightness. Once I put my arms down again it slowly creeps down out of manual reading range. 
I get there are algorithms involved but this is too much variation. In none activity mode and someone has a spike in HR ( someone in Afib, anxiety attack, whatever) how will the Ionic adapt and will it be accurate in a more important event other than just spinning or lifting weights. I've been telling people for years that Fitbit's future is in health care and I still believe that but these simple things need to be fixed before success in that industry will happen.

Fred Fornicola