Suunto Race S too high HR
-
I have a new Suunto Race S that shows way too high HR readings during exercise. I compare it to my garmin w/wo a chest strap which are pretty similar. Also just exertion based it’s 30-50 beats too high, i.e. unsuable. Is this a common problem and any way to fix it? Right now I regret buying the watch.
-
@David-Kleman same problem for me. HR is only accurate for me during total rest (Sleeping, sitting still…). As soon as I move my arm or even only my fingers (typing on a keyboard), the HR increases slowly and locks to higher heart-rates. Sometimes even double the actual one. It almost instantly recovers if I take of my watch and put it back on or it slowly recovers over time if I do not move at all for approx. 1 minute.
Not only the sensor is bad but also the algorithm seems to favour fast increases above fast decreases. Therefore, misreadings due to movement (high values) seem to establish quickly but correct (low) readings afterwards are ignored and HR recovers to correct values too slowly again which makes the bad accuracy even worse. I tried everything that is recommended for OHRs and never had these problems with my previous forerunner and vantages which were spot on for normal daily use and light activities like hiking or steady and slow running under easy conditions.
Therefore, I never even dared to try the OHR during exercise since I anyway always use a HR strap during sport. As OHR readings during sleep are accurate, I in the end decided to stick with the Race S as the new Garmin alternatives are way too expensive. As daily tracking is so bad, recovery and resource metrics might not be as accurate as supposed but I see these metrics anyway more like a fun gimmick.
But before ordering I never expected the OHR reading to be a problem during normal daily tracking as this was never an issue with any other watch from other brands over the last years. Probably would have not ordered it had I known that before. -
@David-Kleman I bought a new strap, which was more stiff, helps for me.
With original strap, running was reasonable, during cycling the watch would just not measure after a while.
With new strap, better results at least.
Some people in this forum shave some hair where the watch is.
-
@David-Kleman I generally don’t trust HR from the watch for any serious considerations. I agree with @brave_dave I have the same experiences with HR.
I mainly use it for GPS, recording my daily routes, speed, Altitude and distance. Even SPO2 is not that accurate; it shows 92-94% and the actual monitoring system goes to 96-98%.
-
@withManish Out of curiosity, I measured O2 level on watch and device same time, same hand and here are the results.
The watch takes quite a long time to measure the O2 level compared to the device. Out of 5 attempts, once it came to 98% otherwise always around 85% and the SPO2 device is 96-98% at 44 meters altitude.
Once I got alerted about keeping my wrist and fingers stable, that is good, but it should prompt before it starts measuring, so the user is careful at first hand.
I raised so many concerns about the software glitches and user interface customisation, but not sure about the engineers whether they are here to read and reply or just we are just taking help from each other to find solutions.
-
@withManish yes, you are right. They should focus on the important stuff and make it reliable, implement really important functions and fix bugs. They could easily do that using their big community that is more than willing to help to identify and test stuff and that for free. All this useless and inaccurate stuff like sleep stages, body resources, recovery time etc. that are known to be not at all reliably measurable with smart watches are just a waste of time, money and other resources.
Garmin started with this whole pseudo-scientific approach to have new selling arguments and to sell their watches totally overpriced by pretending they can measure everything. That’s why I left them. Everyone now tries to copy that bull**** and therefore waste money and time on implementing similar stuff, leaving important things behind.
I really like my race s as all comparable alternatives for me are too big, too heavy, don’t look as nice, need to be charged too often or are way too expensive for what they actually reliably can do.
So race s is best for me as there is no better alternative but still there is a lot of room for improvement with things others do better and that are definitely easily doable by Suunto. And yes, OHR and OHR algorithm is one of them but there are several other software related drawbacks…I hope they realize that there is a big target group of serious athletes spread over all brands that are neither really happy with Garmin, Coros, Suunto, Polar or Apple because they just want good functioning and solid equipment without breaking the bank…but no one offers this package.
-
@withManish Why don’t you measure your index finger with a watch?
