The wrist HR monitor is useless for intense workouts, Ionic must support external BLE HR monitors.

[Nicome]

Hello,

I've owned a Ionic for a couple months now and I have moderately unhappy about it but I still wear it everyday because there are a few things that I really love (like the great sleep tracking).

My biggest frustration is the HR monitor I bought the Ionic because it was presented as a big leap forward in that domain. In my experience this has not happened. The Ionic totally fails to monitor my HR accurately during intense rowing sessions. I understand that this is actually hard because of the way muscles activate in the wrist during rowing but, this is not an excuse because there is an easy fix for it:

Support external BLE HR monitors to connected directly to the Ionic and use this as the reference HR during the workout.

Yesterday, I did a fairly intense cardio workout at 170-180 BPM for one hour. This is a comparison of what the Ionic observed compared to my Polar chest HR monitor read, the Ionic read makes 0 sense:

Ionic viewPolar with Elite HRV measurement

Using the external HR monitor would solve my problem and allow me to have accurate information in the app and a better calorie count estimate. Because the Ionic said 427 calorie burned whereas the Concept 2 erg said 850...

I could also have accurate monitoring when I'm actually rowing in a boat with my watch but not with my phone.

This looks like an easy win feature that most people doing instance workouts would value.

[SunsetRunner]

Interesting dichotomy; your thread is titled “the onboard hr monitor is useless” yet go on to say you love the sleep tracking, which uses the onboard hr monitor. 

That said, there are loads of threads requesting external BT support, and the feature has been suggested in the forum. You can vote for it here Feature Suggestions

[Nicome]

Fair point, I had a hard finding a tittle that wasn't too long. After some thinking, I've updated it to be more representative of my experience 🙂

[Nicome]

Also, my request is specifically targeted at HR monitors, not just general Bluetooth device pairing. I want my chest HR monitor to replace the on-board wrist monitor when it is connected the watch.

I'll look through the feature requests tomorrow and see if I find that one in particular. If not I'll create it, I wasn't aware of that part the fitbit community.

Thanks for the suggestion 🙂

[bbarrera]

---

@SunsetRunner wrote:

Interesting dichotomy; your thread is titled “the onboard hr monitor is useless” yet go on to say you love the sleep tracking, which uses the onboard hr monitor. 

---

Its not, for several reasons related to how Fitbit's optical HRM on the wrist works: 

- basic sleep tracking relies on tracking movement patterns (not HR)

- sleep stages uses movement patterns combined with HR patterns

- tracking HR at rest/sleep is more accurate than tracking HR while exercising

- accuracy issues while tracking HR while wrist is under tension (rowing, free weights, etc)

So far Fitbit has not been interested in allowing use of external HRMs / chest straps, rebroadcasting of HR to other devices, importing of HR/GPS, and exporting activities without GPS. All of those have been discussed and suggested since the launch of the Surge, over 3 years ago. Having been here for almost 5 years, there are a lot of enhancement requests that Fitbit chooses to ignore. 

[Nicome]

Do you know if there a rational behind not supporting it? It seems like an easy win to fix the flawed onboard monitor...

[bbarrera]

@Nicome All guesses on my part. First off I suspect Fitbit doesn't think its flawed, just look at the marketing messages for PurePulse. Second, Fitbit's emphasis has always been on keeping things simple. Just look at the overly simplified mileage estimate and that you can't get Dashboard to tell you how many running miles per week/month/year. Its just miles, inclusive of activities (running, power walking) and the non-activity steps you take around the home, office, etc. Ease of use is a priority, and Fitbit is selling against the use of chest straps. As a result, Fitbit seems willing to sacrifice accuracy in favor of keeping things simple and easy (HRM on wrist).

[indianwin2001]

Fitbit is selling against the use of chest straps. As a result, Fitbit seems willing to sacrifice accuracy in favor of keeping things simple and easy

And that will cost them customers. Serious training needs accuracy for HR training and NO wrist-based optical sensor can keep up with interval training.

[Nicome]

It sure is going to cost them customers, I'll jump ship eventually if this does not get supported...

I was planning to buy some fitbit stocks based on my experience with the Ionic because maybe they had something to turnaround here. But, after a couple months with the watch this is just not cutting it so no stocks for me 😉

[indianwin2001]

Uh yea, based on a couple of wall street reports I have read,hold off on the stocks. Lol