Apple Watch scores as the most accurate pulse meter among wrist wearables in a study

posted by Daniel P. / Oct 13, 2016, 6:08 AM

Apple Watch scores as the most accurate pulse meter among wrist wearables in a study

There are plenty of gadgets out there that measure your heart rate now - from the one-off pulse readers on phones like the Galaxy S7, to wearables that constantly follow your heartbeats. Their accuracy, however, is not created equal. It seems that measurements vary widely, according to Dr. Gordon Blackburn, a director of cardiac rehab at the Cleveland Clinic.

The team there pitted the Apple Watch against popular competitors like the Fitbit Charge HR, Mio Alpha and Basis Peak (yep, the hot one), and all of those against the gold standard of an electrocardiogram machine, making the 50 or so test subjects walk, run, or simply rest.

It turned out that the Apple Watch was 90% accurate on average, while the other three lingered in the low 80s. The difference, however, stemmed not from the resting heart rate, but from the one measured during physical activity, where the Apple Watch was much more on point. Obviously, it pays off that Apple developed a proprietary system using two light guides that are compared by software to adjust for movements and vasculature changes.

source: Time

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13 Comments

1. Bankz

Posts: 2531; Member since: Apr 08, 2016

Apple watch. King of wearables!!!

posted on Oct 13, 2016, 6:23 AM 9

4. sgodsell

Posts: 7209; Member since: Mar 16, 2013

Time clearly doesn't know it's head from its @$$ in this matter. The Polar M600 kills the Apple watches with its heart rate monitor, and it has six lights on the back of it. It even supports heart rate target zones, which Apples watch is completely missing. It's even swim proof and can track swimmers as well. More paid Apple propaganda.

posted on Oct 13, 2016, 7:32 AM 8

10. sgodsell

I just read the full articles including the ones that time referred to. They used 4 wrist worn heart rate trackers including Apples Watch, and they also used a chest strap heart rate monitor to check the accuracy. The chest strap was a Polar H7. Yet they never used any of Polars wrist based heart rate monitors and smart watches in this study. They also never tried any Android Wear devices or Tizen devices for that matter. This just confirms that this is more hype and propaganda PR crap to pump up Apple.

posted on Oct 13, 2016, 4:36 PM 3

2. BradyCrack

Posts: 835; Member since: Dec 29, 2015

The apple watch 2 is certainly a nice upgrade. But i wont be getting on till we get cellular data on it. Overall im impressed, certainly an improvement over the quite awful original Apple Watch.

posted on Oct 13, 2016, 6:28 AM 2

3. strikerchooooo unregistered

Well, good morning. What did you expect, jeesh.

posted on Oct 13, 2016, 7:00 AM 0

5. Nopers unregistered

Weird that the law suit against them for the biometric tech just sort of went away, I'm almost certain that was a shake down and Apple quietly settled it.

posted on Oct 13, 2016, 7:34 AM 2

6. Bankz

Or maybe apple actually won?

posted on Oct 13, 2016, 7:51 AM 3

7. Ultimodrew

Posts: 59; Member since: Aug 14, 2015

If they won, then it would have been in the news. Phonearena certainly would have picked up on that news story.

posted on Oct 13, 2016, 8:11 AM 4

8. Macready

Posts: 1817; Member since: Dec 08, 2014

A title that doesn't cover the test and only serves as propaganda for Apple. They only tested 4 (...) wrist wearables in a sea of wearables out there. Meaning, this tells us nothing about the other 95% of wearables. On top of that, the accuracy of the Apple Watch was pretty much the same as the Mio Fuse, both scoring 91 out of 100 (for a 95% accuracy). But of course, that wasn't mentioned either.http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/article-abstract/2566167 A better title would be: Apple Watch and Mio Fuse score better than 2 other wearables for heartbeat accuracy, but still worse than a chest band.