I’ve largely given up on heart rate chest straps since they only last a few months before becoming unreliable or chew through batteries at an unsustainable rate. I picked up a Rival watch on clearance and it does a pretty decent job unless it’s cold. But the biggest annoyance is that the watch seems to quit broadcasting my heart rate in the middle of a long ride - the most recent experience was during a 5 hour gravel event. There doesn’t seem to be any setting to change this. Anyone have advice? I’m enabling heart rate broadcast manually btw. This behaviour happened with my Wahoo Roam and now with my Garmin 840
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Wahoo just released a new rechargeable HR monitor. Was used by Carapaz and EF among others during the Tour.
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I’ve literally never had trouble with a chest straps. I’ve used the Garmin basic Ant+ for probably 20 years before migrating eventually to the version that also has Bluetooth. Ive gone through a couple but honestly not that many given daily use. Change batteries I don’t know, twice a year?
So . . . wonder what’s going on w your chest straps? Or am I the one whose having the outlier experience?
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I have one of the older Garmin straps with the integrated HR. It probably still works today. You could swim with it on as it was that water tight. Some other HR devices would stop working in a mild rainstorm. Guess they got the seals right.
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Same here. I bought two Garmin HR Tri bands and they’ve been rock solid since day one. Can’t remember how often I change the batteries but, as I alternate which one I use per day, it’s probably one battery per strap per year (which sort of matches what you wrote).
I had the opportunity to purchase second-hand the Garmin HR Swim strap, with similar performance, so now I have three. Ant+ is all I need and they all connect without issue to my Garmin FR920XT.
None of this helps OP but I do wonder what goes wrong for other people (everybody is different, of course).
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I’m not buying a new Wahoo chest strap. The TickerX has been hot garbage. I’m looking for advice on how to make my Rival work as advertised.
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I have a Rival that’s a few months old and I’ve used it for walks and runs and cycling with no issues. But nothing close to 5 hours in length. But whenever possible I always use a chest strap because of the better accuracy of a chest strap over optical HR on my wrist. Hence why I brought up Wahoo’s TRACKR. Wahoo has acknowledged some of their Tickr issues which is why they’ve created a brand new HR strap and not just upgraded the Tickr. My TickrX has been a workhorse for me for the past 3 hours, so I can’t say I share your chest strap issues, but I have seen plenty of users who have. So I can see the cause of your hesitancy to spend $89.99 just to “try out” a new chest strap - regardless of how much better it’s “supposed to be”.
Anyway, back to the Rival topic. I’ve also not been very happy with my Rival, either. I’ve had to ditch it a few times and switch back to using my Garmin. I’ve had two of them die within a couple months. The third one has worked fine since February. But I also rarely choose to use the HR broadcast feature because like I said I prefer the better accuracy of chest straps.
And all that being said and me taking too long to get to the point… The Rival * should * stay connected the entire time. There isn’t a setting to switch as what’s happening is it’s simply failing to do it’s job correctly if it’s disconnecting. You should submit a support request to Wahoo Support as it should not be doing that.
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I gave up on chest straps a couple of years ago. They’d last about 6 months to a year tops - no matter the brand. Assumed it was because I’m a heavy sweater.
Use power meter for bike and garmin fenix everything else.
I had my bouts with dozens of heart rate straps. So I wanted to pass along some info I’ve picked up. Hope it helps someone.
- These things are super sensitive and can continue to run 24/7 on surfaces that have vibrations as small as a human heartbeat.
I found that even on a desk in my garage they continued to broadcast chewing up batteries and wearing them out. I started storing it on a soft surface (Hand towel) works great. - I was not and am not good at keeping the snaps clean, but a dab of chamois cream or similar every few rides made a world of difference for connections and broken snaps (All Brands).
- Changing batteries, it doesn’t take much debris to break the sweat seal when re-installing a battery on any chest strap, a quick cleaning of the seal with a q-tip and a little vaseline works awesome. I think the new sealed rechargeable units solve this as well as the over tightening habit I have.
- Connection issues mostly went away with the corrections above but occasionally I would have to pull the battery, let it sit, then re-install. Not sure why but it works.
- I also love the E-bay deals where I can buy the batteries in bulk for cheap.
I have come back around to being a chest strap fan for these reasons and the accuracy. I am really looking forward to the new one.
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This is why the new Wahoo TRACKR is good because it’s rechargeable with magnetic connector. So no recharging ports and and no battery compartment to get sweat in. It will 100 hours on a charge which for most of us at 10 hours per week would be 2-3 months. So by the time the rechargeable battery starts to wear out you’ll have had it for a few years. If I can get 3 years out of a strap then that’s fantastic.
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I found a Garmin HRM dual on a good sale. Until reviews come in for the new wahoo HRM I’m not buying another. Track record is just too poor with the TickrX
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I totally get this. 
Took me a year to decide to try out the TickrX, which I now have used for 3 years. But it was hard to pull the trigger.
I have the new TRACKR and it’s been great. But it hasn’t been out for only a month, so I completely understand wanting to wait to see longer term suitability and reviews. They’re not cheap!
Tho, Wahoo support is top notch from all my experiences. But still. I get it.
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