Garmin smartwatch owners have spotted a new, unannounced heart rate feature
Quicker recovery stats
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Owners of some of thebest Garmin watcheshave found a pleasant surprise hidden in the latest software update: an improvement to the Recovery Heart Rate feature, which means it’s now able to run in the background.
Previously, Recovery Heart Rate – a measure of how quickly your heart rate goes back to normal after exercise, measured in beats per minute – would need a couple of minutes to configure itself after you ended a workout.
That’s no longer the case, according to a post onReddit(viaGadgets and Wearables).Garminhasn’t mentioned the change, but it seems it’s being spotted by those withForerunner 255andForerunner 955watches on their wrists.
This is part of the recently issued software version 18.22 update for Garmin watches, though it also seems possible that it might be some kind of beta test, which would mean the new functionality wouldn’t show up for all users.
More watches, more updates
There’s still room for improvement with the Garmin Recovery Heart Rate feature – as mentioned byNotebookcheck, the reading is still given separately for each activity, making it difficult to get an overall idea of your recovery ability.
According toGarmin, a faster heart rate recovery is indicative of better fitness. If your heart rate slows down to less than 12 beats per minute within a minute of stopping an activity, Garmin says, then you need to check in with a doctor.
Garmin continues to impress with both the frequency of its software updates and the number of features it manages to pack into its wearables to begin with – see ourGarmin Forerunner 165 reviewfor details of the latest example.
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However, it’s unusual for a new feature to be introduced without it being mentioned in the changelog for the relevant update. If any more light is shed on the mystery of the background Recovery Heart Rate reading, we’ll let you know.
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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.
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