Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Update: After 3 months of use I have to ding it another star. First off, the connectivity that was superb initially took a hit after an update. Now, if I get away from my phone for a few hours or so the unit will not connect back automatically and I have to turn the phone bluetooth on and off to get things to reconnect. I was so perplexed by this that I tried using my wife's phone, which is a different model than mine, and she has the exact same issue. As long as you stay in proximity to the phone the connectivity works. It is only when you are separated from the phone for an extended period that the issue occurs. Next - the battery life is getting shorter. Initially it was over 5 days easily, but now I am down to just over three days. My usage has not changed. To summarize the issues: - Extremely poor heart rate performance while exercising (works great at rest or with mild exercise, like walking) - Connectivity bug when separated from phone for a few hours, requiring you to cycle bluetooth on phone - Battery life is dwindling, from 5+ days to 3+ days ----------------------------------------------------------------- Original Review: The product is mostly good, but has a tragic flaw that is completely idiotic and will be a deal-breaker for many people. First, the good: The connection to the phone is the most stable of any other Garmin product - I rarely lose connection and if I do it reconnects automatically. The notifications work great and are quite readable. The battery life has been above expectation at 5 days at least, though I do not use the GPS. The HR is fairly accurate during rest or during light activity. All in all, the HR+ is a very nice bundle of functionality. The bad: As you will read elsewhere, the HR monitor is abysmal during moderate to heavy activity, especially if you sweat. There are times when my heart rate is over 180 and this thing reads 72. This would be OK if Garmin allowed you to pair with a chest HR monitor, but they don't. Let me see if I understand - Garmin makes ACTIVITY MONITORS, whose sole purpose is to monitor as much information as possible during activity. Garmin also makes chest strap monitors that pair with their Activity Monitors. Garmin knows this HR+ does such a bad job with its internal HR monitoring that they publish papers providing suggestions as to how you might get better results, but yet they block you from connecting to a chest strap monitor that might actually be able to provide you with accurate HR monitoring. Huh? I can see where this would be a complete deal-breaker for many people. Why spend this kind of money on a product that cannot provide one of the most important metrics during exercise? One other negative is the weather display. I have yet to figure out exactly where it is getting its information or how often the information gets refreshed, but the information does not tie to what the local weather is nor does it tie to any of the weather that is displayed on my phone. Right now, for example, my phone says that it is 85 degrees but the HR+ is reporting 72 degrees. This is one of those things that is pretty minor but is really annoying - why doesn't the Garmin Connect app have a weather section where you can customize location or update frequency? If Garmin fixed the HR issue and allowed users to connect to a chest strap, this would easily be the best product in the marketplace and I would gladly give it 5 stars. However, with the absence of this functionality they have literally crippled what should have been a truly excellent product and made it only attractive to people that want a step counter or light activity tracker, and the price is too high for a device with such limited functionality.