All consumer-grade heart rate monitors have issues. Chest straps are pretty good. The optical captures from wrist (Google Pixel watch, etc.) or finger (Oura ring) are quite a bit less accurate.
Iâve generally just tolerated itâtaking the reported data with a grain of saltâbut sometimes it would be nice to get good data. Today I did a little experiment with my Google Pixel watchâtightening the strap at the midpoint of my runâand found that it seems to give me pretty good data this way.
What you see is my warm-up, followed by 1 mile out and then 1 mile back. The HR shown for the âoutâ phase (averaging maybe 180 bpm) is ridiculousâwhat itâs capturing is not my HR, but rather my step rate.
In the second half my HR goes from about 160 to slightly above 170 (gradually rising as I get tired), and thatâs probably just about right.
(The standard formula for estimating your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age, which would give a max HR of 156 for someone of my age. But thatâs clearly wrong for me. I pretty regularly see peak HRs of just over 170 that seem entirely legit. I assume that my genes and my training history just give me a higher max HR than typical. Sadly, it doesnât make me faster, as you can see from my average pace for this run. I was running literally as fast as I thought I could maintain for 2 miles.)
Anyway, I think I can recommend tightening up the Pixel watch band as tight as tolerable, for getting the most accurate data.
