Mountain biking (and rough activities) w/ Apple Watch?

[imwjl]

Hi,

Can any of you report how the heart rate monitor works with mountain biking where the watch will jiggle for hours on one's wrist?

Does the watch GPS and phone GPS work together to make an overall more accurate track when you do sports?

Did I make the right interpretation that my wife could leave her phone at home and still get her health app data continued if she had the Apple Watch?

I'm not yet sold on the watch for me. I think my wife would like it if she got reliable data. Where I'm going is she would never buy it on her own. Her birthday's coming up.

Thank you.

 

[StraightlineBoy]

I'll try to address your points in order...

Your Apple Watch should never jiggle if you want it to read your heart rate, you need to wear it snug so it doesn't move on your wrist. If worn correctly it would be fine for rough activities and would track HR. That said optical HR on your wrist is always less accurate than a chest strap. This applies to all brands. No one has yet produced a wrist based HR reader that is as accurate as a chest strap. Some people will have greater success than others with it.

No. If you have your phone and watch together the trail will default to coming from your phone. There's no clever combining of signals done, but generally the trail from one device or the other will be pretty good.

The Apple Watch is more limited in function without an iPhone nearby but it can continue to record HR and a GPS trail. It depends what you want to do with the GPS trail at the end of it as to whether the Apple Watch is the Best Buy. Also consider a Garmin if health and fitness and recording GPS trails are the primary goal.

 

[StraightlineBoy]

One other thing to consider is that the Apple Watch screen is near unusable when even a bit wet which is a consideration for outdoor activities. Most Garmin models (except the FR630) use physical buttons for things like start and stop which work 100% of the time.

I'm not saying don't buy an Apple Watch, I like a lot of what mine does but I've reverted to my Garmin for running outdoors lately

 

[imwjl]

Thank you for the replies.

I'm interested to know more about why or how it is unusable when wet. I thought the button would operate most functions. I don't want a chest strap HRM so might have to own the a watch to know if it's a good HRM.

Now am curious to know if the brightness makes that much difference because I'm sure my phone will be with me most of the time.

Thanks again.

 

[StraightlineBoy]

The issue with it when it gets wet is if you need to interact with the screen because it becomes fairly unresponsive in a way that I've not seen before with the iPhone. If you've started your workout and got music playing it's fine, but if you want to change things you'll need to dry the screen which isn't as easy done as said in some environments. The physical buttons will switch apps but don't operate the on-screen functions (as far as I can tell)

Yeah the HR stuff does vary from person to person and you'd have to try one really to see how well it works for you. Here's a link to a study that backs up what I'm saying https://the5krunner.com/2017/01/04/heart-rate-monitor-reviews-you-cant-test-just-one/

Maybe the thing to do is buy one, test it and return it within a couple of weeks if you find there's deal-breaking issues for you.