Jason- I have a couple heart rate monitor apps that work very well. But I have a pacemaker/ICD. Before I had the device adjusted for a range between 50 and 120 BPM, it was set for a fixed 72 and the monitor was spot on never deviated as it should. After the EP MD reset it so I could exercise, get elevated BPM, it not accurately tracks it within that range. Before I suffered my cardiac arrest I suffered bradycardia, or abnormal slow heart rate. Typically I would function normally with a resting heart rate of 40-45 BPM. When sleeping it would track as low as 35. Exercise would elevate to 70-140 however. The EMT report says that when they got to me my heart rate was 15BPM and I was unconscious. In the Ambulance, in my driveway, they reported complete cardiac arrest and began CPR. Needless to say it was a close call. In ER they put an external pacemaker on me but I was in a coma for a half week.
Bradycardia is a serious medical problem but a pacemaker solves the problem.
Currently, I find the ECG in the AW4 too sensitive to electronic noise and difficult to get a good reading. However, when I do get a reliable reading it says sinus rhythm detected. I get the multi lead ECG reading every 4 months and so far my good readings have matched the medical device charts. When the bad reading happens it does not give a false positive or fail to detect AFIB, as compared to my 120 day full time monitor readings, it just says "inconclusive" ( My pacemaker / ICD records my ECG constantly and each night uploads the data to Medtronic with a home sending device connected to the cell phone network while I sleep). I don't know why my AW4 is so sensitive to noise, whether it may be my pacemaker interfering or whether it is the metal band I use as opposed to the non-metal band. I could test that last part but I wonder if other pacemaker patients also have trouble with reliable readings? Ok as I sit here I just tested it and got a perfect "sinus rhythm" chart at 70 BPM so this time it worked fine. I am 5 ft from my wifi router and surrounded bu computers with open cabinets so I doubt RFI is the cause of the noise when it doesn't work.
Oh, and I was not one of the volunteers in Apple survey. I have had surgery 2 years ago to ablate my atrial node as it was causing conflict with the pacemaker and sending me into atrial flutter.
Jason, I use an app called Cardiogram that monitors the heart rate constantly or measures it often with options to measure it constantly. It then displays a bar graph of the data for the past 6 hours.
