I am considering the purchase of a fitness tracker watch - Fitbit, farming, etc.
Thought I would check with the collective wisdom here.
Is there a particular make/model that is more suited to paddle sports.
Obviously some measure of waterproofness would be desired.
I would also want heart rate info.

I have twice had the FitBit Surge. That is the unit with GPS.

They just have not been reliable. The GPS works for somethings but does not work for others. I do a lot of nordic skiing and the reports just are not accurate. They are accurate for biking or for hiking. I contacted customer service and they agreed and replaced it, but the second one doesn't work in the same way that the first one doesn't work.

The Surge also is not as water resistant as the other models. The surge is much larger, which is a pain sometimes.

I do like the software. I really like the heart rate monitor (which is also available on non-gps units). l learned a lot about being active etc through looking at workouts. I also like the records so that I can look back at last year at this time.

I have not found the "notifications" of texts or calls to be that useful. I know that others use it a lot though, so maybe its just me.

I was going to change to Garmin, but got some reports that they too had some problems, so I have kept using the Surge. I do like most aspects of it but don't like the large size or that it doesn't work as accurately as described.

The problem is that the wrist heart rate monitors are not accurate if you are exerting with your arms or moving them a lot. So they are good for running and biking but not so good for sports with more variety of motion or using arm muscles. I'm guessing that includes paddling. The Fitbit manual says that you get better readings if you move it up toward your elbow during exercise. But for me, it then slides down. I will try to dig up a review that went into all of this. After the review, all of the companies contacted the author and basically agreed that he was right.

I use an Apple Watch and have extensively tested it while playing squash. At high heart rates and lots of motion, it would often give a much too low heart rate. With a heart rate strap, I get much different results. I now use the Apple Watch but with the readings coming from a Polar strap. That is very accurate. There are some great apps for the phone that give useful graphs of heart rate.

For less active exertion they will do better. You can give it a try and sometimes take your heart rate and see how close it matches. Of course, it will come down a bit while you take it. It also depends how accurately you need it. For actually using heart rate to guide interval training it needs to be accurate and give rapid updates. For general tracking, you may not need such accuracy.

I have a Garmin watch and when I used it in the BWCA paddling, it pretty much indicated 0 steps when paddling

Anything that gathers heart rate at the wrist is giving you garbage heart rate data. If you want heart rate, buy an actual fitness watch (a forerunner is my choice) and wear a chest strap. Heart rate is only useful if it's accurate, otherwise it's a novelty.

Here is an article about the accuracy of wrist based monitors with increasing exercise from the Cleveland Clinic . It shows a lack of accuracy as exercise levels increase.

I have found that my Apple Watch is pretty good at rest when compared to the pulse measurement done when I have doctors appointments. But that is just sitting.

My experience with the Charge2 is that it's fairly accurate at rest and at very modest levels of exertion, but not very accurate or reliable at higher levels, which is when I really need accurate information. It often fails to even give me a reading at those levels.

It's good when I'm sitting in the chair at cardiac rehab or walking moderately on the treadmill holding on. It's not so god out hill walking or trail walking with my arms swinging and my heart pumping.

In the past when I ran with a HRM with chest strap, I never had those problems.

Another study:



decent accuracy of wrist monitors

quote 3Ball: "Another study:



decent accuracy of wrist monitors "

Unfortunately the news article doesn't state what sort of exercise levels were involved.

Here is the actual study.

The subjects sat, walked, ran, and cycled but all in a lab setting on a treadmill or exercycle. Those are activities that are reported in other studies to be among the better ones for those devices. They also seem to have spent little time at high exertion levels and the report says that the accuracy declined at the higher levels. So, I think the results are reasonable. The devices are ok at moderate levels of exercise but the accuracy declines at higher levels. You can also see the faster decline of the heartrate monitored by EKG in the graphs. That is important to me but the faster update may not be important to everyone. Whether they are good enough just depends on what you are doing and how accurate you want things to be.

For me, I'm still wearing a chest strap during intense exercise.

Well after some research I finally settled on a Garmin VivoactiveHR. It is waterproof for swimming, has a GPS (was interesting seekin the track I took as I paddled around the lake today), and most importantly an app for paddle boarding which seemed to record my paddle strokes pretty accurately.
Gave me total strokes, average strokes per minute, distance, calories burned. And synced my gps route to my farming connect iPhone app.
Looks to be exactly what I was looking for.
I double checked the measurements with my Garmin Inreach Explorer+ and they seemed pretty accurate.

I also bought the Garmin Vivoactive HR this last winter and really like it. The HR monitor is within one or two bpm compared to the monitors on the equipment at the gym I go to, and the gps works great for paddling, biking, etc.