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How accurate is the Apple Watch ?

venomx999

venomx999

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 26, 2017
143
20
Uk
I bought a cheap heart rate monitor watch and it doesn’t seem accurate
It’s saying I am burning calories even when I’m not moving and my heart rate is higher on the monitor than it actually is.. however I do have tattoos on my wrist

are Apple watches accurate for monitoring heart rate and calories ?
 
Last edited:
venomx999 said:
I bought a cheap heart rate monitor watch and it doesn’t seem accurate
It’s saying I am burning calories even when I’m not moving and my heart rate is higher on the monitor than it actually is.. however I do have tattoos on my wrist

are Apple watches accurate for monitoring heart rate and calories ?
Click to expand...

I think mine is. Just set a daily goal and follow it, and it'll measure accordingly. I heard from a friend that you can burn calories without moving due to something called the "basal metabolic rate" or something like that. Basically, it's your body burning enough calories to stay alive. Not sure how accurate that is, though.
 
I have a series 5 watch and find it to be pretty accurate. As long as you calibrate it. My wife and son also have series 5. We do a lot of hiking in the mountains and gym when they are open. So far the watches have been almost dead on with the readings.
 
The Apple Watch will also recognise you burn passive calories and will include them in both daily total and workouts. It will report total calories and active calories for workouts though.
 
The watch is too generous for me with active calories. 5'10" 190lb and I have 400-500 active calories after any routine day without any workouts on my series 4. My wife's series 3 is less generous...crediting her with about 200 active calories for a fairly calm day.

Considering that you need about 40 minutes of full on high intensity interval training to get 500 active calories, there's no way I burn that much passively getting mail, walking up and down the stairs 10 times a day, taking out the trash, etc.
 
Heart rate is very good, probably best in class.

Calories are weird. So, the watch can't calculate your metabolism, which can be variable based on certain issues. So, for instance, heavier people often have higher metabolisms (moving all that weight) but some have higher weight because of issues that cause weight gain such as hypothyroidism.

You do burn calories while sitting in a chair and even when sleeping so the watch should capture that.

In my experience with the watch, which I sold because of battery life, calories were ballpark good enough, heart rate was really good and GPS overstated by about 2 to 3 percent.
 
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Exercise credit can also be hit or miss. For many activities, you have to get your heart rate up for it to count.
 
zubikov said:
The watch is too generous for me with active calories. 5'10" 190lb and I have 400-500 active calories after any routine day without any workouts on my series 4. My wife's series 3 is less generous...crediting her with about 200 active calories for a fairly calm day.

Considering that you need about 40 minutes of full on high intensity interval training to get 500 active calories, there's no way I burn that much passively getting mail, walking up and down the stairs 10 times a day, taking out the trash, etc.
Click to expand...

Aside of anything else related to the AW comparing you and your wife is not a good comparison as men and women always have completely different calorie burns anyway even for pretty much the same activity .... it’s always a laughing point when my wife and I work out together ..... female calorie burn is always lower.
 
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I have compared my Watch 3, 4 and 5 to my Garmin Forerunner 235 and then 245 models wearing both on the same wrist and then one on each wrist at the same time and the Apple watch was basically the same in terms of heart rate and GPS distance.
 
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My Apple Watch pulse monitor perfectly matches my Peloton chest strap, my Scosche arm band and my treadmill's chest strap (don't recall maker). So they're all accurate or exactly equally inaccurate.
 
igrover said:
I have compared my Watch 3, 4 and 5 to my Garmin Forerunner 235 and then 245 models wearing both on the same wrist and then one on each wrist at the same time and the Apple watch was basically the same in terms of heart rate and GPS distance.
Click to expand...
I have also done the same. My Garmin is old so it doesn’t have heart rate, but DC Rainmaker is a site where the guy reviews and tests all kinds of GPS watches and he said the AW heart rate monitor was probably the most accurate wrist based monitor you can get. There’s still a margin of error though.

As far as distance and pace, my series 4 can be weird. I feel like my series 3 was actually more accurate. Both are LTE versions. I do the same race every year that is 9 miles and last year my Apple Watch measured me at 9.25! Not acceptable! The course is wheel measured so I know the Watch was way off. For a 10K (in the same town) it read 6.33 miles for a wheel measured 6.2 course. I’m usually in award contention so this bugs me. It doesn’t start getting long on me until over 4 miles or so (so it’s fine for 5K’s and mile races which I do most often).

My series 3 was far more accurate on the distance. I did the same races with it. And even for a longer race (half marathon) it was very accurate.

I do wish they would improve the GPS.
 
Sometimes it can be off, like I'll switch to the heart rate monitor. Maybe showing 46 before syncing up. So if I see a number that looks too low, just wait a moment.
 
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