Apple Has Best Optical HR – err…… no it hasn't

A bizarrely scientific, yet incomplete, study by the Heart and Vascular Institute, Cleveland Clinic published through the American Medical Association  purports to show that the Apple Watch has the best accuracy of wrist-based optical HR. Or at least that is how it is being headlined by various tech publications on the internet. This is the first page:

Based on the comparators, that claim looks like complete nonsense to me. Perhaps I don’t know enough about optical HR?.

I don’t claim to be a scientist, engineer or expert in this area but this report has a whiff of incomplete pseudo-science about it. Unfortunately the report’s ‘findings’ are being distributed in super-reputable sources like TIME magazine. WAREABLE.com do point out a shortcoming, by the study not including TomTom.

The study authors compare the 2016 Apple Watch 2 to an: aging MIO Fuse (same as MIO Link); a Basis Peak that is now withdrawn from the market; and a Fitbit Charge HR. the latter being from FITBIT Inc ie the company being sued for allegedly having an inaccurate optical HRM.

That’s an unrepresentative sample  of optical HR technology if ever I saw one.

Well, to be fair, it is representative of something. Just *NOT* representative of the quality of optical HR units on offer in the ‘mass’ market.

I wonder if the authors heard of Garmin’s ELEVATE technology? Probably not as Garmin are a relatively niche company that no-one has heard of.

Perhaps they could have looked at Polar’s brand new 6-LED optical array in their M600? They obviously have heard of Polar as they use a Polar H7 chest strap as part of the ‘control’. Maybe the study took place some months ago, before the M600. Fair enough.

Perhaps they’ve never heard of TomTom either? No doubt the American authors don’t have any kind of Satnav in their car (Garmin vs TomTom) so they clearly wouldn’t have heard of TomTom either; Americans are renowned for NOT owning cars.

They probably had heard that Fitbit’s optical HR product is alleged to be ‘bad’ (it’s not, IMHO) because of a recent lawsuit in the US (still not resolved). I can’t think why they might have chosen this product to compare to. Can you?

I could quite accept that they had not heard that Epson do a fairly good wrist-based optical HR unit – although they would no doubt have used an Epson printer or two in their time. Similarly they may well not have heard of Samsung or Sony or Valencell. I’d let them off not knowing about Valencell and the fact that Valencell’s super accurate optical unit is in the Scosche RHYTHM+ – as well as their technology being in the Suunto SPARTAN later this year, although possibly a different physical Valencell sensor. Oh, and before you point out that the most accurate device, the Scosche, is worn on the forearm I can tell you it can also be worn on the wrist and is still pretty accurate in that or any other reasonable bodily location.

FWIW: If you search for “optical wrist hr” then the first page of my Google show references to: Valencell, Suunto and Garmin. Perhaps the authors had not heard of Google’s mystical powers either?

So here are some more points:

1. I have NOT tested the apple Watch 2’s optical HR accuracy. It could be absolutely perfect for all I know (it’s not). Below is an early test from the V1 device from dcrainmaker in 2015. AFAIK the optical hardware in the v2 product is the same as in the v1, although to be fair performance since then could be improved by tweaking algorithms in v2. Draw your own conclusions from the graphs. Dcrainmaker tests, show results as bad as the one shown immediately below and, in balance, also some with ‘fairly good’ to ‘good’ results

http://media.dcrainmaker.com/images/2016/02/image13.png

http://media.dcrainmaker.com/images/2016/02/image14.png

http://media.dcrainmaker.com/images/2016/02/image15.png

http://media.dcrainmaker.com/images/2016/02/image16.png

http://media.dcrainmaker.com/images/2016/02/image17.png

Image Source x5: dcrainmaker.com

2. To be fair there are plenty of not so good optical HR units out there. I’m surprised that the authors did not cast their net wider to include those; as that could have shown the Apple Watch 2 was even more market leading than they found (in their small sample of the market)

3. I am not sure which individual or company funded the study. Perhaps that can be clarified? As I have no idea. Or maybe it was being undertaken for the good of medical science? I’d love to know, I really would.

Gillinov declared no conflicts of interest according to Forbes.