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My understanding from reading some posts is the heart rate monitor is turned off automatically while in a swim exercise session. I'd like it on. Thanks.
My understanding from reading some posts is the heart rate monitor is turned off automatically while in a swim exercise session. I'd like it on. Thanks.
You're not the only one who wants to be able to monitor their heart rate during swimming.
However, Fitbit's "Pure Pulse" heart rate monitor doesn't work submerged. It wouldn't be able to give you valid heart rate information while swimming, which is why it's turned off.
be nice to have a 200m (atm 20) tracker with pulse. my old reliable casio watch atm 20 i could take that thing swimming to the bottom of the diving pool, windsurfing, surfing ect no problems
also wile doing these intensive work out or fun be good to track your spo2 level to see how well your holding breath & preforming ect also being able monitoring spo2 for on going health conditions would be use full.
I have found that tightening the Ionic strap gives good enough heart rate reading. I am not looking for perfect, just a good indication of how well I am exercising. The occasional missed heart rate reading is not an issue for me.
At the very least give us the option to enable heart rate, not just make a poor decision for the device owner that they cannot have heart rate.
For example swimming in open water across a lake or at sea, I really like GPS/HR put on with swimming movement. If you allow a user to customize what data are used or not, also horseback riding and many other not mentioned sports are covered.
I want this feature as well. I understand that it's hard to get accurate heart rate during swimming, but I think that we could have a configuration to turn on recording possible inaccurate heart rate in swimming mode.
I don't think anybody has reported to have tried to get a heart rate dieting swimming. This would not be hard, simply put the watch in workout mode and go for a swim.
If I leave VErsa in auto detect while I swim, it detects I'm swimming, it tries to record HR, but does so incorrectly ...seems to record whatever my HR was when I started the swim and displays it at that same rate the entire swim, then when I finish it records the higher/accurate rate at the end......so it estimate calories burned inaccurately as well as HR....in swim mode if it could record HR w/ another-more accurate method.
Would it be possible to enable Fitbit Ionic to maintain heart rate while doing a water workout? Other watches do this and when Ionic is under water but not in exercise-mode, the data seems to be fairly accurate. Right now, Ionic keeps no heart rate at all, although heart rate does provide more accurate data than "guesstimates" like calories. Even if this data is not as reliable as usual, it would still be better than no data at all.
Also, Ionic only allows for 25m/50m laps, but many pools are shorter. (my gym is 18m for example). Maybe it would be possible to allow for custom lap distances to allow for more accurate data? I believe the algorithm would be able to calculate with any given distance.
I think Fitbit needs to do more to support swimmers in order to be competitive with other watches. It's one thing being waterproof so that you are able to swim with it but at the moment it doesn't seem to produce much in terms of useful data for swimmers.
The heart rate recorded if you use Smart Track rather than the swim app it good enough. I also agree that the lack of useful data from the swim app makes it clear that it was designed by a non-swimmer. We need lap times not calories uploaded to the phone, we need auto pause (for us older swimmers that cannot swim 1km continuously), we need a minimum of 1 lap not 2 for recording (for those of us wanting to do sprint training).
Most importantly, step count needs to be turned off when swimming. On Average the Ionic thinks I have done 800 - 1,000 steps per kilometre of swimming. From the postings in the community groups, it is clear a lot of the Ionics have this issue (but not all - it is due tot he natural variation in hardware and stroke style). This is a simple software fix that Fitbit does not want to do.
I want to add my voice of displeasure regarding the inability of my Ionic to read heart-rate while I swim. I am 64 years old and want to track this most important data in real time to help me better understand my fitness level and to report to my doctor.
I am disappointed that the Charge 3 cannot monitor heart rate while swimming as it was the only reason I was going to buy it. I already have a Charge 2 which I love and can enter swimming manually. I don't need a Fitbit to count lengths and distance - I can do that. What I can't do is estimate how good this exercise is by having my heart rate checked. When Fitbit produce a model that can measure heart rate during swimming, I will buy it.
Im very disappointed that the Charge 3 cannot monitor heart rate while it is in swimming mode. If you are not useing swimmingmode it will monitor heart rate, so there should not been so difficult do let it monitor the heart rate in swimming mode. Other Product like Apple Watch can monitor heart rate while swimming. I hope that this will be fixed in an update very soon.
I was disappointed to see this as well, as my Polar M370 did register heart rate during swimming. Was in cardio zone most of the time there, which seemed allright. Half an hour swimming resulted in almost 300 kcal on Polar, but hardly 30 kcal on Charge 3, so a good swim isnt really rewarded as exercise.
Please make this possible.
Edit:
Today (10-17) I had another swim. I don’t get why the exercise doesn’t even count as active minutes while I have been in cardio stage for some 30 mins.
If a swim session is manually started using the Charge 3, the heart rate tracker is disabled, presumably because the water reduces the accuracy. But if the swim is tracked using the auto-detect, the swim will still be logged and the heart rate data will be there. It clearly works fine, so the heart rate should not be disabled during a manually started swim session, or at least there should be an option for it.
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