Fitbit Sense and Heart Rate

[mperry9701]

I just bought the Sense and noticed the heart rate monitoring is way too low.  My Ionic was much more accurate.  Has anyone else noticed this?  

[BlueMountain]

Steveo57.

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@steveo57 wrote:

Fitbit  engineers need to work on the Pulse 2.0 heart rate algorithm and make it match The Polar chest strap or more closely resemble it.  It appears that it monitors fairly well it just lags on the way up and down  .  Once it levels out it is seems pretty accurate it is just laggy.

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Disagree. Starts off wrong, ends wrong, everything in between is wrong. During an hour long high intensity workout, it mostly just sits there between 86 and 98 bpm.

[BlueMountain]

Clearly it was released too early, before it was ready.

[Dgreener]

I have the exact same problem. I had the ionic and during any workout it kept up very well with my changing heartbeat. This sense seems to have no sense whatsoever that I'm exercising. While I'm doing extremely heavy exertion like jump squats with dumbbells in my hand it thinks my heart rate is less than my walk around heart rate. Strangely enough though if I go for a run it seems to have no problem. Maybe it has to do with the movements combined with the heart rate sensor or something but I get zero credit for being in my heart rate zone when doing calisthenics and the like. Quite annoying.

[Dgreener]

It's not about variations it's about the sense not picking up on the fact that we are exercising. My heart rate on the sense rarely varies more than a few beats above basic walking heart rate regardless of how intense the exercise I'm doing is. On the other hand when I go for a jog the heart rate seems accurate for some reason.

[kaylesx]

I'm having the same problem. My resting heart rate seems accurate enough, but the HR during exercise is clearly off by at least 20bpm. It always stays in the 100-105 range no matter what I'm doing - and for me, that's a regular "standing around not doing anything" rate. Somehow I can be on the stationary bike with a supposed HR of 100, and then get off and end my exercise, and have it jump up by 15+ bpm. Not sure why this thread is marked as solved.

[Giampi71]

 I had the opportunity to try the Sense and found the HR sensor completely off, both during normal day tracking (with AZM increasing while watching TV for example) and during my runs.

Below is the comparison between my Polar Vantage V (associated with H10 chest sensor) and Sense. The run was an easy session hence the Sense values are completely wrong ('m a 50 year old man with max HR around 170)

[faytoury]

My sense is sometimes doubling my heart rate twice or three times daily since the last update , before that was working fine .

[Guy_]

It seems heart rate is unusable and also Active Zone Minutes as a consequence.

It is so erratic now, that it tells you nothing except if you are not moving for a fairly long period of time.

The original Versas were far more accurate and consistent.

[BlueMountain]

I called support. They insist its the new algorithm and has been proven by various heart studies and is more correct than everything else. I think that's just a part of their script. I have returned my FitBit Sense. Rather than waiting for them to resolve their issues which I was willing to do, I have reverted back to my Fitbit Ionic, and purchasing a Garmin product. Fitbit will lose me eventually (and permanently) as a lifetime customer and advocate. Done.

[sousbee]

My "walk" exercise mode hr is always 10+ points higher on the high spikes i have doing heavier yard work etc.  Today my regular heart app said 101 reached at 12:25pm.  I was expecting to see 120 on my exercise app, but it didn't show at all.  So the discrepancies I was noting I based on more frequent measuring on the exercise app cuz these spikes don't last 5 minutes and don't possible register the highest hr reached on heart app.  Now, I don't know whats up.  Will continue with my usual and report back on changes.  Versa 3.  I month old.

[hwally]

Exact same issue here, I’ve had it for 2 weeks and experiencing the same, runs it seems to be ok but workouts is completely off. When I’m mid workout it struggles to get over 90bpm in a hiit but when I stop

it and have finished my hr is higher for 10mims after testing. Did you manage to fix this or Fitbit help out?

[mperry9701]

I took it back. Sorry!

Sent from my iPhone

[Dgreener]

That's the exact problem I continue to have. Today I did an extremely
intensive workout including push ups, pull ups and weighted jump squats
with 35 pounds in my hand. For most of the work out my heart rate did not
exceed 90 BPM according to the sense while I am certain in reality it would
have reached well into the 140 to 150 bpm range.

I'm now going to go for a jog in which it seems to have no problem
recording my heart rate in the 150 bpm range along with GPS tracking. I
think that has something to do with artificial intelligence however. I
believe that when it senses bigger gyroscopic movement it turns on the GPS
automatically to see if you are running and when it confirms that you seem
to be running it must use some other method of measuring heart rate because
it doesn't make sense that it can measure heart rate accurately while
running but not when doing push-ups and pull-ups and the like.

In any case it's very annoying and I don't understand why this has not been
addressed somehow. I will also note that I have a lot of freckles on my
skin and so maybe that has something to do with it. Otherwise my skin is
very pale so who knows. Maybe it's a gingerist watch LOL.

[Mladen90]

I don't have big issues with my HIIT workouts. 

Just 2 examples from few days ago 

 

 

3 possibilities in my opinion:

1)watch too loose

2)looking at the rest heart graph where spikes are not shown

3)real issue with the watch and it would be better to consider a replacement? 

 

[jh064]

6 years with fitbit and the Sense pushed me to Garmin, which I'm going to buy Saturday.  More disappointing than the watch is their failure to even acknowledge a problem.

[sousbee]

 

 

My issue is it hits 137 while I'm doing hard work chores on the "walk"
exercise mode, but day-long HR never reaches above 113. Also the exercise
numbers don't match - see attached. (I was testing the exercise mode so had it on overnight.)  I'm trying to see if it can capture arrhythmia while sleeping.  It may not work for that but it doesn't seem too dependable on the whole...

[BCPacificRunner]

I’m having the same problems as everyone else. I’ve been a distance runner for a decade and was a competitive swimmer from grade school through university, the Charge 2 was great and then I went to the Apple Watch but went back to Fitbit this Christmas for the app which I love way more and I hate how short the battery life is on the Apple Watch - my heart rate isn’t being clocked anywhere above 100 while on hard cardio runs or on the elliptical, but will come up to 130 as I walk around after during a cool down. 

My Charge 2 and ape watch also have also always had me with a ~48-50bpm resting heart rate and this new Fitbit sense has me at ~66. 

Really disappointed but glad to see it’s not just my product. 

[sousbee]

Update.  Watch face on exercise mode said max hr was 141 for last tracking session.  Fitbit app on cell phone (attached) says max rate isn't even in the fat burn or cardio or peak rates even while showing 6 and 5 minutes in those zones.  Also graph shows no higher than 79 bmp.  I did not do much yesterday, my ♡ app says max is 96 which is usually 15 beats lower than the exercise app records.  So I think this watch is breaking down?

 

[Mannbrad]

Mines opposite. Works ok for casual walk. When I go to brisk jog it shoots up 20 to 30 higher than it should be. Comparing it to a polar H 10. This Fitbit heart rate monitor is unpredictable, unreliable, and I cannot and will not train using it. This is my second one, I was thinking it was a hardware issue. FITBIT....... CAN U FIX THIS ISSUE OR NOT??

[Mannbrad]

Mine DOES NOT measure accurate when jogging or running. It is constantly 20-30 bbm higher then my polar h10 chest strap. Very very disappointing fitbit!!! There is lots of competition in this segment of the marketplace!! Are you going to be able to fix this with a firmware update?!?!?!  If not this is going back to retailer in exchange for a garmin or polar.