Inconsistant Results: Workout/Activity/Exercise

I have an Apple Watch that is giving very inconsistent results. Perhaps someone can explain the differences to me? Yesterday I went for a long bike ride (130 minutes) and set the workout app to Outdoor Biking. I also wore my Polar watch and my Polar heart rate chest strap (which does not connect to the watch) to see if the results were consistent. I also used MapMyRide app on my iPhone 5s to verify speed/mileage. At the end of the ride, MapMyRide told me I had ridden 28.05 miles and the apple watch told me 27.95. Close enough. The Apple Watch and the Polar Watch said I had biked for 130 minutes. Both watches and mapmyride are set with my "statistics" Female, age 51, 5'5, 147lbs.

Now for the inconsistency: The Polar Watch told me I had burned 830 calories with an average heart rate of 124. The Apple Watch told me I burned a TOTAL of 559 ( Active 371 Resting 188) with an avg heart rate of 124. Why the calorie calculation difference? Any biking calorie calculator (adjusted for weight and biking speed) will also show that your burn a minimum 500 calories/hr, although they don't take into consideration heart rate. How can the Apple Watch calculation be so much lower?

Finally, the Activity App said at the end of the day, I only had "Exercise" of 65 minutes, but the Workout shows 130 minutes? why wouldn't the Exercise be at least the same as the Workout, if not higher given other activities (like walking the dog) throughout the day?

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on May 3, 2015 7:52 AM

62 replies

Jun 8, 2015 6:58 AM in response to bevaroo117

bevaroo117 wrote:

Just want to echo what ChangedtoGSIII said above, I wholeheartedly agree. Winston Churchill and Apple themselves "don't understand the frustration of those of us who have Garmin/Polar watches with chest-strap HRMs."

Just because I point out something is incorrect doesn't mean I don't understand your frustration, clearly the fact that I can set my treadmill to 5 mph and earn no credit for exercise in the activity app is not right. I do feel however it is important to correct incorrect statements made by posters because they are simply unhelpful and misleading. It isn't correct that calibration is only to help accuracy outdoors and this needed saying otherwise others may not calibrate their watch when they should based on ChangetoGSIII's incorrect statement.

Nov 15, 2015 5:52 AM in response to Winston Churchill

I have given up using apple watch for exercise data entirely. I tried everything. I think it is a software (or, god-forbid, a hardware) problem. maybe they will fix it in version 3.0

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Inconsistant Results: Workout/Activity/Exercise