The Powerbeats Pro 2 are the best way to instantly monitor your resting heart rate, but it’s not perfect.
Although the Powerbeats Pro 2 were meant to track your heart rate during workouts, the irony is that it is more accurate and better at tracking your heart rate while at rest. The more your body is moving, the more likely the sensor is moving around in your ears and stops taking measurements, leading to frustration.
Don’t take my word for it. Many reviewers have bashed the heart rate functionality, including DC Rainmaker:
In fact, what we quickly realize is that Beats is very clearly prioritizing accurate data over inaccurate data. Which is to say, when it appears their confidence level is low, they cut-off all heart rate data entirely. Literally, transmitting nothing (no value). I could see the logic in that if it happened rarely, but in reality, it happens constantly….
The thing is, doing more tests is kinda pointless. It’s clear that any movement (even on a stationary bike) quickly leads to either dropouts or inaccurate heart rate. And outdoors running, it’s even worse. Ultimately, I don’t see any value in the heart rate sensor in this product, because it’s simply not good enough to be useful, even for casual use.
For resting heart rate, (huge emphasis on resting), I found the Powerbeats Pro 2 to be very useful. This can be beneficial for people who can’t wear an Apple Watch due to allergic reactions to fitness bands or having wrist tattoos preventing proper operation of the heart rate sensor.
An even greater group of people that can benefit from this? People with heart conditions who are probably taking medications that affect heart rate.
I’ve dispensed my fair share of prescriptions that affect heart rate, with some of those drugs being among the top 50 drugs prescribed in the United States. This is a decent sized population that includes people with other health conditions such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Having too low of a heart rate is dangerous and can increase the risk of falls due to reduced blood flow to the brain. The Powerbeats Pro 2 allows these people (and anyone else) to easily check their heart rate on demand and have the data sent to their healthcare team for analysis.
It is surprisingly much faster to get a heart rate reading on the Powerbeats Pro 2 versus the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch requires you to open the Heart Rate app on the watch and it gives you live readings right away, but it takes time to get that data transferred in a logged format on the iPhone. I didn’t time it, but it was easily over 5 minutes. With the Powerbeats Pro 2, it starts reading and logging your heart rate within seconds. Crazy.
If you go into the Health App, you can monitor your heart rate by simply going into the Heart Rate section and seeing your latest reading. (I made a shortcut at the end of this page to make this a simple one-click process.)
Results show up within seconds when using your Powerbeats Pro 2. You can even get more detailed information such as Range, Resting Rate, and Walking Average by clicking on “Show More Heart Rate Data.”
To see every single heart rate data point logged on your iPhone, go to the Health app > Browse > Heart > Heart Rate > Scroll all the way down to “Show All Data.”
Here are some other things you need to know to make sure your resting heart rate is being logged:
You have to have both earbuds in place for the heart rate function to work.
After you start getting readings by going to the Heart section (as shown in the image above), you can go to any part of the Health app and your readings will be taken in the background. I went to browse the Medications section of the Health app, and it continued to log readings in the background.
You can get 5-6 heart rate readings per minute.
Heart rate monitoring only works on the iPhone if you are in the Health app. The moment you leave the Health app, it stops taking readings. When you go back to the Health app, your heart rate readings will resume. This is a huge downside, but at the same time, the readings do come in quickly if you just need to monitor it for a few minutes at a time. Hopefully Apple can update this in the future to allow for less frequent readings and not being tied to staying in the Health app.
You can play media through your Powerbeats Pro 2 while logging your resting heart rate. Simply start your podcast or media of choice, and go back to the heart rate section in the Health app.
If you force close the Health app, you will have to go back to the heart rate section to start logging your heart rate. Use the shortcut I created at the bottom of this article to get there in a single click.
You cannot take heart rate readings if your iPhone is locked.
Heart rate monitoring does drain the iPhone’s battery and makes it warm. The Powerbeats don’t get warm and you can’t tell anything is happening. Not a huge deal if you’re only doing it a few minutes at a time, but hopefully this is addressed in a future firmware update.
The Powerbeats do emit a green light when measuring heart rate, but others will only notice it in dark environments.
Resting heart rate accuracy is similar to the Apple Watch, which is very accurate overall.
It’s funny how Beats is marketing this as Heart Rate monitoring for workouts, when it does a better job monitoring your resting heart rate. This device is genuinely better for older folks as a health and accessibility device than it is for athletes as a fitness tracker.
If Apple could tweak the device to take recordings outside of the Health app and fix some of the battery drain issues, I would call the Powerbeats Pro 2 a sleeper hit device for resting heart rate monitoring. You still won’t be able to track your sleeping heart rate like an Apple Watch, but it is better than nothing.
To make it a bit easier, here is a quick shortcut to get to the Heart Rate section of the Health app with a single click: