My Garmin Epix "mis-behaved" only part way into a ride and after repeatedly getting daft reading under these circumstances I got the cheap Polar Chest monitor *(till unsure why as HR reading was not of great interest).My Wahoo TickR is only about 1-2 bpm out from a chest trap and my Garmin Epix 2 is almost on par with the TickR armband with just a little more lag. I’m happy to use either of them.
What I was often finding was the Garmin Epix would read sensibly until maybe 15 miles when I'd notice surprisingly low HR readings eg 60-70 bpm. So I'd start really pushing it, legs burning a bit and breathing hard and maybe the Garmin would move low 60's to high 60's HR. So I got the Polar chest running at the same time and the Grmin was just wrong. 1st maybe 15 miles of ride they both matched fine, on rare occasions when I check around the house or on a walk they matched close enough to be fine, just some distance into ride that this significant error was pretty well always happening.
One (non-medic) commented that they had seen similar with a wrist HR monitor and that it was the wrist monitor only reading every other heart beat - but that person was not a medic and I have no reason to believe or disbelieve their comment.
Reason I returned the Epix (after a few months) was more because it started recoding me having one of two snoozes every afternoon and that Garmin Connect did not allow these to be deleted (and I never snooze during the day/evening). Plus I because more aware how many of the Stats Garmin Connect was providing were estimates based on what had become unreliable readings.
Ian
