Hi,
Recently I’ve noticed that my setup is reporting erratic heart rate for short periods of time during a ride.
I’ve got an Elemnt and a Roam. I’m road riding without aero bars (although this has happened during an off road ride).
There’s a period of no heart rate reported followed by a period of lower-than-should-be heart rate.
I can see when this happens because the LEDs on my roam are set to heart rate and it goes to one blue LED. I’ve not correlated this to any particular position on the bike. It’s always a decent percentage into the ride.
I’ve been back through my workouts and can only see it happening since 29th June 2024.
Traces added for illustration.
Has anyone else had this issue? Does anyone know what’s happening and if there is anything I can do differently to fix this issue?
I’m on my second replacement Rival, thinking it was a hardware issue.
Half of my workout for strength training, the HR is super low or N/A. I’ve tried multiple positions on the wrist, varied levels of tightness of the strap, cleaning the sensor, nothing. Same thing on the replacement.
I tried the stair climber and about ten times in a ten minute session, HR was N/A.
Optical wrist HR readings are always lower quality especially during strenuous exercise and especially when doing strength with lots of arm movements and flexing.
I’ve not had problems with Rival HR dropouts, but the HR numbers are always off on any exercise watch I’ve used (Rival, Garmin, Apple). I use a chest strap for any exercise when I want reliable HR readings.
I would have thought that you were correct about optical wrist HR readings being inferior, and my Venu3 watch does not correctly report my heart rate when I am cycling indoors or out - unless I tell it I am cycling/indoor cycling. If it thinks I am in a cycling activity, the watch and my Polar H10 chest strap usually agree within 1 bpm. I don’t know if they increase the HR sensor power for the activity or if there is an algorithm to correct the reading, but it seems pretty accurate.
I’ve not been riding much in the last few weeks due to a house move but my first decent one yesterday. Repeat issue. It seems to be mainly triggered by a pause in the ride. I went to the meeting point, but got a message from my riding partner that he was going to be 10 mins late. I decided to do a few laps of the estate to test my recently tuned front mech. Heart rate showing fine. I stopped, paused the ride, when I restarted low heart rate readings for about 5 mins. Then it sorted itself out and was fine for the rest of the ride.
I’m not too worried about the absolute accuracy of the heart rate, as long as I know which zone I’m in. It’s these drop outs that are annoying.
Thanks for your replies.
Since the watch starts reading OK, then stops and starts again, I don’t think it’s a dry skin or placement issue @jmckenzieKOS .
@dannyg my problem sound like yours. Are you getting a working heart rate at all? What about at rest? What situations, if any, are you thinking you are getting a working heart rate? Do you run with it? Mine is flawless for running.
@emacdoug what workouts do you do with yours? Do you cycle, run, gym?
Another interesting point. When I cycle with my watch alone, it seemed fine. It’s when I send the heart rate to my Roam that the issues arises. During dropouts the low or missing heart rate is accurately sent from my watch to my Roam (i.e. the low heart rate is shown on my watch as low or none) so the connection is fine. If the issue is because of a ride pause, how does the watch know that I’ve paused the ride. I thought the watch just “broadcast” the heartrate to any device that will listen and there is no feedback. I might be wrong though.
I’ve used my Rival mostly for cycling, strength, yoga, walking, and a couple of runs.
I previously used my Garmin mostly for running but then for a lot of cycling, yoga, strength, and walking.
They’re usually somewhat close to the reading my chest strap gives me, but do tend to read on the high side.
I used them primarily for 24/7 HR readings and RHR (from my Garmin, since Rival still doesn’t do RHR). For exercise I almost never used them as my main HR source unless I forgot my strap because of the known accuracy difference. Tho in a pinch they were usually fine.
But I never connected them to my Bolt or my PC. I would just record my workouts on my Rival itself. Especially for strength and yoga.
@DrAndyPerry As far as rest goes, whenever I look down at my watch, it seems to be working. I usually use record workouts with my Rival using the built in HR sensor when I strength train, run, or stairstepper.
Especially during strength training, it seems to work fine in the beginning I notice, then sporadically it just tracks lower, until I get intermittent N/A readings.
I’m a Wahoo fanboy, but this Rival? POS I think. I even had a replacement from customer support, same exact issue.
I used the Rival for almost two years before switching to Garmin. While I appreciated the user experience, the sensor technology was not up to par. Erratic heart rate readings and frequent sensor dropouts were common, especially during arm movement. My biggest issue, however, was with GPS accuracy. It could take an unusually long time to establish a fix, and in some cases, the GPS module didn’t work at all, leaving the watch to estimate distance using only the accelerometer.
I would love to try out a Rival V2 with improved sensor technology, but this is not going to happen.
