Which is currently the best validation study about the accuracy of consumer grade sports sensors?

Last Updated on January 30, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

According to our own little experience, it is the paper:

Accuracy of commercially available heart rate monitors in athletes: a prospective study:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31555543/

• it is the second paper in which the cardiologist Dr. Milind Desai from Cleveland Clinic in Ohio is last author.

• The first paper was:

Variable Accuracy of Wearable Heart Rate Monitors during Aerobic Exercise

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28709155/

• According to this table, it is also the center with the highest research grant which we know which studies this topic, according to the following table:

Comparison of papers & research grants of the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport Magglingen SFISM to papers & research grants of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio

• it show data on a treadmill with speeds up to 15 km/h, which can be seen in the following protocol list:

90.3 Summary of the testing protocols of different studies

• is the explanation that they did not choose higher speeds than 15 km/h, that they had problems with ECG movement artifacts? This would fit with the information we have from the g.tec medical support about ECG movement artifacts.

g.tec medical knows of no manufacturer who can manage ECG movement artifact

• therefore, the best scientifically validated sports sensors we currently have is the Polar H7 chest strap which was compared to a clinical ECG device, with an accuracy of 98 %, followed by the Apple watch 3 with an accuracy of 96 %.
• The papers of Dr. Desais group also show a table of different devices and a ranking.

• A paper of the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports in Magglingen

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004219/

showed a signal quality of 99.6 of the Polar H10 chest strap for sporting activites. But since the paper of Dr. Desais group used other methods and devices, these two papers cannot be compared directly.

According to our own little experience, the second paper of Dr. Desais group is also the best paper about consumer grade optical heart rate monitors.

We personally cannot follow that Rob ter Horst Postdoctoral Researcher at Center for Molecular Medicine in Vienna & YouTube Creator takes the Magglingen Paper about the Polar H10 as scientific validation paper of his studies, and ignores the papers of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. By doing this, he harms the development of new studies in this field.