# Is the heartrate monitor continuous? **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussion\ **Created:** [January 2, 2026, 7:44pm UTC](https://forum.repebble.com/t/is-the-heartrate-monitor-continuous/105 "2026-01-02T19:44:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![sugar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@sugar](https://forum.repebble.com/u/sugar)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2026, 7:44pm UTC](https://forum.repebble.com/t/is-the-heartrate-monitor-continuous/105/1 "2026-01-02T19:44:19Z")
I’m looking for a new smartwatch after my fitbit died and I’m keen to check out the Pebble Time 2! I see it has a heartrate monitor, but I can’t find the specs or anything more detailed beyond that it just has one. I’m _not_ actually looking for a fitness or sport watch, but I _do_ need continuous heartrate monitoring to help me manage some of my health conditions. I can’t find any more detailed specifications other than “has heartrate monitor.” Can someone help me find more information? Thank you so much! ---
**Author:** ![Den\_in\_USA](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex033/user_avatar/forum.repebble.com/den_in_usa/32/238_2.png) [@Den\_in\_USA](https://forum.repebble.com/u/Den_in_USA)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2026, 11:33pm UTC](https://forum.repebble.com/t/is-the-heartrate-monitor-continuous/105/2 "2026-03-14T23:33:54Z")
I wear my old Pebble Time during the day and wear my FitBit Versa 3 all night to monitor my resting heart rate and SpO2. I have a Pebble Time 2 on order which has heart rate and SpO2 sensors. I don’t see why it can’t have continuous HR monitoring or even realtime SpO2 reading by pressing a button. Sorry that I can’t confirm that for you. ---
**Author:** ![clach04](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex033/user_avatar/forum.repebble.com/clach04/32/107_2.png) [@clach04](https://forum.repebble.com/u/clach04)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2026, 1:03am UTC](https://forum.repebble.com/t/is-the-heartrate-monitor-continuous/105/3 "2026-03-15T01:03:02Z")
Opening up Pebble Health (so two up button presses) will give you the last heart rate. For me just now that reading is 6 mins old, and then a few secs later it updated to current. You can use a watchface that shows heart rate more frequently. Depends on your definition of continuous. I don’t know the battery impact of running a heart rate monitor on PT2 but I’m willing to bet you won’t get anywhere near the documented one. I never ran my P2HR HR monitor all the time. I would not use a Pebble of any generation for medical monitoring which it sounds like you need? The safe recommendation here is to skip the pebble. But if this is casual fitness with approximate heart rate, you’ll probably be mostly happy. ---
**Author:** ![chiraag](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dbc845/32.png) [@chiraag](https://forum.repebble.com/u/chiraag)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2026, 3:11pm UTC](https://forum.repebble.com/t/is-the-heartrate-monitor-continuous/105/4 "2026-09-13T15:11:58Z")
> [@sugar](#): > > I can’t find any more detailed specifications other than “has heartrate monitor.” Can someone help me find more information? To follow up on this: The current options for heartrate monitoring with the Pebble _in the background_ (so while you’re not actively tracking e.g. a workout) are: every 10 minutes, every 30 minutes, every hour, or never. The default is every 10 minutes. So in order to get realtime monitoring, you’d have to either find a watchface which constantly triggers the heartrate sensor or use the Health app on there to monitor it constantly. I’m not sure if there are watchfaces which do realtime heartrate monitoring [edit: there _are_, in face, watchfaces which do realtime heartrate monitoring], but if you find one it should automatically sync to the Pebble app on your phone (which you can then sync with other apps through Google Health Connect or Apple Health). ---
**Author:** ![WitheringWallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cc9497/32.png) [@WitheringWallaby](https://forum.repebble.com/u/WitheringWallaby)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2026, 5:52pm UTC](https://forum.repebble.com/t/is-the-heartrate-monitor-continuous/105/5 "2026-09-13T17:52:24Z")
It doesn’t function continuously unless you’re doing an activity or workout. I will say that the HR monitoring is not very reliable for me over 100bpm. So if your managing a health condition and that would matter to you FYI. ---
**Author:** ![chiraag](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dbc845/32.png) [@chiraag](https://forum.repebble.com/u/chiraag)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2026, 6:29pm UTC](https://forum.repebble.com/t/is-the-heartrate-monitor-continuous/105/6 "2026-09-13T18:29:08Z")
> [@WitheringWallaby](#): > > It doesn’t function continuously unless you’re doing an activity or workout. In general yes, but you can enable watchfaces like [this one](https://apps.repebble.com/kymato_5733dc878a1b40b9b7978acc) which seem to sample much more frequently than the default ‘background sensing’ value.