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This would be great for those that have a hard time maintaining accurate high HR numbers from an optical sensor.
If they planned a high intense workout, they would be more confident that fitbit is counting their efforts. I am good with just seeing fitbit make a bluetooth chest strap that can be paired to a surge or charge HR for those times we need them. I have a Garmin already, but would buy another if it meant keeping my HR numbers accurate.
I would love to see this happen. The Surge HR works great for steady state training but has a real problem monitoring HR during any type of interval training. Please make a Fitbit HR strap or let me Bluetooth with my Polar H7.
Yes, excellent idea. The optical HR sensor is nice to have for sure, but it's just not nearly as accurate as a chest strap. I have a microsoft band but would buy a charge HR or surge in a minute if it allowed pairing a bluetooth chest strap (I have a Polar H7 too).
Why are the manufacturers all in such denial about the optical HR sensors? It does work to an extent, but come on, anyone who's used one can tall you they're infuriatingly inaccurate with many types of strenuous workouts. Chest strap is nearly always spot on.
Good on fitbit for implementing the optical sensor, it's a nice feature and I probably won't buy another fitness tracker without it, but not a complete solution to heart rate monitoring.
@Maxt121 Thank you for visiting the Feature Request board! The Polar H7 syncs to the Polar Beat app and can work together with Endomondo, Runtastic and a few other apps. I would like to know if you want an integration between the Polar Beat app or you want to sync the Surge to Polar's app or you want to sync the chest strap to Fitbit.
At first sorry for my bad english. It will be great if i can my Polar h7 ( bleuthooth) pairing with my charge hr. When i go to Sleep i set show clock off when i wake up i set it on. But it is much more easy when i can set a timer on for it. En the last one show the battery on te fitbit charge. Thats soms idees that make the fitbit beter i think.
@SilviaFitbit - I can't answer the question for @Maxt121 but I think the perfect scenario for me is to have the FitBit application on my Android / iPhone show the Heart Rate from the H7 and the step information from my Fitbit device during a workout and then show the HR information from the Fitbit device for resting / non-workout situations.
I currently have a Flex and was looking at upgrading to a Surge / Blaze, but after doing research, the HR monitoring with the Optical Sensors just isn't accurate enough for good zone training or peak / average HR monitoring. I might upgrade to the Blaze because of the nice Smart Watch like features, but the HR just won't cut it for me. Would be curious to hear what others think?
Yes adding a heart rate chest strap compatibility to blaze & surge would be perfect. The HRM on the surge is very unreliable & hard to keep track of your results. It's probably the biggest downfall on your fitbit products. Make it happen please.
I just reached out to Fitbit about this very thing. It would be awesome to have the watches accecpt ANT+ heart rate monitor straps. That way you could use optical HR for most of the day and then add a strap for more intense workouts. The Garmin 225 and 235 watches have this option, and I'm sure others do, too.
As another mentioned, it would be easy for Fitbit to allow existing straps to work with their watches and equally easy to make their own. I don't have one at the moment, so I would have no problem purchasing Fitbit's HR strap.
Another vote for chest strap integration. This request has been on the books for almost 2 years and the moderator feedback is consistently "sounds great", but there is no evidence that Fitbit is even considering it. This is really a must-have feature--either make a Fitbit chest strap or integrate with BLE/ANT+ as a standard, please.
I had to abandon my Fitbit Surge due to the non-integration with strap heartmonitors such as H7 from Polar. I moved to the new Polar M60, which is (of course), compatible with their's H7.
I would love to come back to my Surge, but until I can read a reliable heart rate during my run, I won't be able to.
I just wanted to add back to this thread that I have withheld an upgrade to the Blaze or Charge because this feature is missing.
I started doing Crossfit workouts and the HR max is even more important to me now and I have basically stopped wearing my Fitbit Flex and am now using the Polar HR app instead for my workouts and would much rather have the integration between the two instead of trying to work around limitations with the Polar HR application which is designed for aerobic workouts.
At least allow workouts logged with the chest strap heart rate monitors to sync over heart rate data along with the workout duration, type, and calories burned.
Sad to see such a strategic feature for FitBit being left out on an abandoned forum thread like this one.
I'm sure many many people would feel more inclined to buy a FitBit if it integrates with their current Polar heart bands.
Instead of taking advantage of a large installed based of heart monitors carved for years by Polar, Fitbit chosen the path of reinventing the wheel and recreating their own, limiting their plataform to their own devices. Such a retrograde and old mindset, on a company I would expect a more forward-thinking development.
Has there been any updates or progress on the Polar H7 or Polar Beat app integration? Manually adding the data is cumbersome and clunky through the fitbit app. The Polar Beat app or direct integration with the chest strap is the only way to accurately capture hrm data and calories burned totals. Please make this happen sooner than later. In a given week, it's borderline insane to have to use 4-5 different apps to keep track of health performance: Myfitnesspal, Fitbit, Polar Beat, and Runkeeper is starting to become just too much work to maintain.
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