I’ve just finished a rather sweaty indoor bike/turbo session. Sweaty because today is hot, it was an endurance session going into Z3/Z4 at times (if that means anything to you, if not it means ‘fairly hard’).
I had the Microsoft BAND in ‘bike’ mode (silly really as there wasn’t much of a GPS signal indoors 🙂 ).
Anyway, the purpose was to see how the HR tracked to a high quality Garmin HR Chest Strap.
Well, non scientifically, they tracked to within 1bpm of each other for the whole hour regardless of level or sweat. I got up to just over 167bpm in a few sprints at the end but I was only really looking at both HRs up to the 160bpm mark.
Over the coming days I will be doing a bit more of a detailed analysis to verify this but it looks good so far.
EDIT: Some real world tests not as good.
Last Updated on 13 January 2026 by the5krunner
tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors.
