Apple Watch Ultra Heart Rate During Workout

Just got off the phone with the health team who say that the bone in your wrist can interfere with the heart rate monitor and so I should try putting the Ultra Watch two fingers from the bone.

This is part way up my forearm and is weird, verging on uncomfortable and definitely a design flaw in my opinion.

I’ll see it makes any difference, but it’s annoying and disappointing.

Having complained about my ultra for about one month after buying it regarding the failure of reading my heart rate during my running exercises I somehow managed to keep the sensor running by doing these two steps: first one I fastened firmly the watch band on my wrist and second , before starting to run, pressed the side button and waited not only for the gps location but also for the heart rate to be steady ( heart picture to be fully red)! I don’t know if this help others but it worked for me! For enabling this feature you have to go to settings -> workout and then enable precision start option!

Hope it helps!

Although I don’t have an Ultra, I’ve experienced this problem on my Series 3, 6, and now 8. My hypothesis is that it occurs when I’m doing high movement activities such as gravel biking, mountain biking, and as of today pickle ball. Typically, I’ll look down and see that it is trying to take the heart rate unsuccessfully for several minutes. As someone else mentioned if you stop or slow the wrist movement it is able to catch on and get the reading again. Sometimes, I leave the workout app and actually go to the heart rate app which ‘resets’ the measurement. This works about 80% of the time to get the measurement on track.

Interestingly, sometimes it works fine throughout workout… haven’t figured out what triggers it. I usually as about half have posted have issues in the middle 50% of the workout, not at the start.

The watch is still a bit temperamental even after the recent software upgrades, although maybe it has improved slightly. Here are 2 contrasting heart rate profiles, both where I just went out running without any special precaution about how I wore the watch. Of course the weather was similar, cool and I tend to wear the same clothes and repeat similar tracks although these are of different lengths. The first image shows that the watch never managed to sync to my real heart rate until maybe after 9km. The second it was as usual not synced at the beginning but soon settled down. Conclusion... I wear a tennis sweat band to keep the watch further up the wrist to keep a more reliable track of my heart rate.

I share your frustration. I use the Apple Fitness workouts on ATV as well, in particular, rowing. No matter what I do, the Ultra loses connection fairly early and often. Fed up with the problem, I tried pairing my Garmin HR strap to my watch and then did a workout. Not a single problem. Yes, it's not ideal since we all paid crazy amounts of money for the Ultra, but until Apple fixes this, I at least have a work around.

Non sei l'unico ad avere questo problema. Io ho lo stesso problema con il Watch 8 sia con WatchOS 9 che con watchOS10. Ieri sono stato in Apple store e mi hanno detto di provare un nuovo allenamento dopo aver resettato l'Apple Watch senza recupero da backup. Se il problema persiste lo riporto in assistenza e me lo sostituiscono.

I had around 30 runs since my last post without a hickup in heart rate. Things that I do is make sure watch so snug around 2 finger width above wrist bone.( if you have the ocean strap use it as it stops the Watch from slipping down). Next I changed the workout heart rate zones from auto to manual and just have one zone covering the whole range zone1 max=240 . Hope this helps

My Ultra one frequently would just stop working during a workout for no reason other than when I increased intensity of my workout. I even had it replaced through Apple care. I eventually got it work most of the time by moving it up a little higher on my wrist and/or using a sweatband I found on Amazon. Now whether it was a software issue or a hardware issue I don’t know. I bought an Utra 2 and so far have not experienced the same problem I still make sure it is a little higher on my wrist and doesn’t slide down during my workout and I don’t have to use the sweat band. I also clean the back with alcohol before I workout.

So i seem to have found a fix. I shouldn’t have to do this in my opinion but every time before i go for a run i take the watch off clean the back of it clean my wrist and turn watch off and on and its been perfect. Bit of a nightmare but seems to have stopped messing around

So after a lot of annoyance, I have finally gotten the watch to read heart rate consistently during workouts. The trick is to wear the watch on the inner wrist during workouts and it reads HR consistently. Worth a try for y’all too !

Unfortunately WatchOS 9.5 doesn't fix this problem.

Here's two activities (cycling) over the last two days where no reading was shown for some time:

And here's one (hiking) where at the beginning of the workout a high heart rate is shown that suddenly drops to "normal" though I have started to pump up the heart rate:

So problem still exists. I am afraid it is a hardware issue.

I found that if I wear the watch close to the middle of my forearm and tighten the band, it works. But, during my run I have to keep making sure it doesn’t slide down.

I agree this has to do with the weight of the Watch which causes too much movement around the wrist.

I have updated, but haven't had a run yet. I will note that after moving the watch further up my arm the problem has gone away, but it is annoying to have to push it to a slightly unnatural position to record my heart rate without issues...

Same problem here with my Ultra: At start of the run (native App) it takes about 5-10 minutes to get a reading. Afterwards the reading is unusually high (~160-170bpm, it should be 110-120bpm). When I then take the watch off and on again it usually works. I run with a Garmin watch simultaneously, no problems there...

So it is definitely not connected to too much hair.

Hi,

Omrishpigel: Your answer is totally incorrect.

Simply stopping or holding your forearm to your chest while running will restart your heart rate and this shows that this is a software problem that Apple has been unable to fix for years while a simple $100 Garmin does the job.

It's terribly frustrating to have a watch at this price unable to take correct measurements.

All is said.

Best regards.

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