Heart rate accuracy during exercise

[Buckb]

Same problem as many posted on accuracy during exercise. Comparing with chest strap on Garmin and Polar (alternate days) on elliptical. Chest strap and elliptical heart rate monitor are identical. Surge is much higher on average BPM, like 20+, and extremely high on max bpm, like 50++. With other exercises Surge and chest strap have wide variance. Have tried all the recommendations (3 fingers) and even underside of wrist. Only time tracked closely was when held hand on handle to minimize any movement. Been trying this since Christmas and very inaccurate foe exercise.

I see many on discussion board having trouble like me, and others saying works fine and/or after they made some adjustment in wearing or reset it worked fine.

Trying to determine if have defective Surge, or this what you get with the Surge. Several friends asked about it, and I really want to have it work, but can't recommend it at $250 at this point.

I don't expect it to be as accurate as chest strap, but expect it to be within 5 bpm avg without huge swings in max bpm that put me in the heart attack range.

Solutions ? Defective? or flawed design?

[zalph]

I do a lot of HIIT work on an elliptical stepper, where I hold on to the rigid/stationary handles.  (As opposed to the supposedly-heart-rate-sensing handles that swing back and forth with each step.) I do get fitbit readings, but they still lag significantly behind the readings I get from a chest strap or from my $40 LifeTrak Core watch from Walgreens.

Meanwhile, when I do a steady 20-minute run on a treadmill, the fitbit does somewhat better. In spite of my arm motion, the fitbit will appropriately register that I'm at 90% of max HR at about the right time.

The difference is that on the treadmill, I just keep running at my chosen pace until the time is up; on the elliptical, I'm doing a two minute cycle (120 seconds) of sprint-40-then-recover-80. The fitbit, because of its "algorithms", just doesn't track peaks and valleys in my heart rate bpm.

So while I don't doubt your experience, sorry to say I can't corroborate it either.  (Many variables in play, I would say.)

Maybe I should do an experiment where I cover the whole fitbit with some black tape; the trouble is that the readout that I see on the watch during my workout doesn't necessarily make it back to the smartphone app.  (Many times I have noted a high BPM reading on the watch face of my fitbit (let's say 152 bpm (96% for me at my age), only to find that the highest rate reported by the app is e.g. 148.  (There's a big difference, to me, in the level of pain it takes to get from 148 to 152 -- so yeah, I hold a grudge against my fitbit over this.)  (And it's not just that I reached 152 and the fitbit lowballed it -- but my beef is that the fitbit app knew or should have known that the watch face displayed to me a higher number, and the app still failed to report it!)

To give the fitbit some credit -- it does keep track of my HR all night while I sleep.  (I get readings as low as 38 bpm many nights (I do cardio)).  That was the fitbit's strength -- at least, until they started showing idiotic "sleep insight" tips recently.  (My sleep went to hell -- as will anybody's -- when I got a bad head-and-chest cold during the last week or so.  "Sleep insight" tips have been shouting encouragement that I should maybe think about adding some exercise to my routine.  Feh!)

[Hovis26]

I have exact same issue on surge. It’s my 4th one. Other three became defective and replaced during warranty. I think it must be a poor design or Fitbit purposely cause this issue to happen. Either way, next time it’s a different supplier I’m afraid. Shame as I love the Fitbit app and ease of use