Inspire 2 MASSIVELY underestimating heart rate

[Blumenkraft]

Hello,

The main reason I bought a Fitbit was to track my heart rate and check which training zones I'm in for moderate continuous and HIIT training.

I have found that the heart rate reading when I'm exercising seems very inaccurate. For example, I'll walk to the gym (quickly up a hill) and during the walk it may read 125bpm, when I'm putting in effort but haven't broken a sweat. So far so good. Then on the treadmill or cross trainer when I'm doing HIIT and bouts of intense exercise at around 8/10 RPE, it will say around 110bpm when the readers on the machine say anything from 150 - 170. I know I am working WAY harder than when I walked up the hill, so this is mystifying to me.

When I'm doing longer but less intense workouts it reads around 30 - 40bpm less than the sensors on the stationary bike at the gym.

I am wearing it correctly as per the instructions on the Fitbit site.

Please advise as to what I should do. The Fitbit is pretty useless to me if it's not reading close to accurate heart rates.

[Blumenkraft]

So I'm guessing from this radio silence that I've wasted my money?

[Katzstrax]

Can't even get a heart rate reading from mine

[lizvocal]

I've had a LOT of complaints about the heart rate monitoring of fitbits in general, but I agree the Inspire 2 does not accurately track the heart rate.  I never get up to my peak zone now.  But the heart rate measures of sleep cycles seems to work ok.

[DrSteveBrule]

@BlumenkraftSounds like it might be defective, mine usually reads within 5 BPM of my treadmill's ECG grips. Check out the return and warranty policy: https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1126.htm

@KatzstraxThis sounds like a settings problem that happens often with a recent firmware update. To fix it, check the two main settings that can disable heart rate tracking:

First, make sure your Fitbit is set to On Wrist. To do this, access the secret settings by holding both side buttons for about 2 seconds. You should see Water Lock pop up, scroll down to the bottom of this list and make sure it says On Wrist.If it says On Clip, tap that and change it to On Wrist.

If that doesn't fix your heart rate tracking, there is another option in the regular settings. Briefly tap both side buttons until the screen turns on and shows your main watch face (time, etc). Scroll up until you see the gear icon with Settings under it. Tap that and the first option should be Dim Screen, the second should be Phone GPS and the third should be Heart Rate. Make sure Heart Rate is set to On.

[Blumenkraft]

Thanks, sounds like I might have to return it. My husband has just got an Inspire 2, and we went to the gym together and did similar workouts the other day. His said 72 zone minutes and mine said around 12. No way was I slacking that much!

I did a very intense cardio workout yesterday and although it did register a high heart rate of 182bpm for a moment, most of it was still much lower than I would have expected for such an intense workout. It would read 110 but when I felt my own pulse I could tell my heart was beating almost 3X per second. I had followed advice I saw elsewhere to officially start an exercise on the device before starting the workout, and this seems to help sometimes but not always.