Active Calories Recorded on an Instinct Solar or Instinct Solar 2 Not Adding Up Correctly in Garmin Connect Mobile App

Oh that’s interesting - I will log a ticket too on the active calories - maybe they respond quicker the more tickets they have. I’ve also been using it for sleep (though turned the oxygen bit off or rather I never turned it on!) and it’s definitely getting more accurate for sleep recording the more I wear it. I suspect there’s a lot the watch does that I haven’t figured out yet. Will be interesting to see on the apple event day on Wednesday whether they announce a rugged version of the Apple Watch (I can’t quite see it as design is so important to them) but I honestly can’t imagine ever going back to something that runs out of battery so quickly all the time. 

Are you still experiencing active calorie discrepancies? I’d like to think the more people who let them know of the issue they would act on it but who knows? What’s funny, and I’m not sure if this has anything to do with it, is that my activity data (runs, walks, strength training, etc…) gets logged in my apple fitness app as well as connect, and the numbers are all over the place. I wonder if that’s causing some issues? Ultimately the issue COULD be that the watch is right, the daily summary is right, but the activity stats are wrong, which is why the numbers from the activities do not add up correctly. I’ve developed apps before and that’s a simple fieldx + fieldy = sum of x+y that an app should easily be able to handle, especially an app developed on behalf of a company as big as Garmin. 

I just started wearing the watch to bed for the heck of it just to test out some things. I turned the pulseOX feature on for sleeping because of a suspicion of sleep apnea. Obviously I would NEVER self-diagnose myself with a wearable, but it was still interesting to see what my saturation level was throughout the night. Turning that on definitely decreased my battery by half, but I don’t plan on leaving it on forever, just to play around and test it. That said even with it on I was still at 10+ DAYS, which is insane compared to my Apple Watch which barely lasts 10 HOURS if that. 

I also just ran on the treadmill and tested both devices against each other. Heart rates were about the same (Garmin was 1bpm higher at times but never lower than AW), distance was about the same, but calories were substantially higher on the Apple Watch but that’s an algorithm thing and I personally think the AW might be a bit high. 

I’m still getting used to wearing a watch to bed lol but it’s getting easier. I figured it’d be easy to accidentally press buttons but that hasn’t happened (that I know of). Yeah I think Apple is just very cognizant of their market and will just stick with that. Knowing them they MIGHT come up with a slightly “updated” outdoors/fitness watch to compete that is essentially the same thing as a regular AW with a rubberized shell or something at twice the price. Who knows?! Aside from the weird calories bit I don’t regret the switch and don’t see myself going back to Apple for watches. I don’t miss the color touch screen or a lot of the other fancy stuff that I really never used anyway. 

Yes I found the treadmill use pretty accurate. I just checked my fitness app (apple one) and it’s not making the rings go round. When it logs a run, so I did one that burned total calories (455) of which 387 were active (on Garmin) - on apple that seems to record as total 455 and active 455. The only way I could see my calories (in the apple ones) is the Health app but that doesn’t seem to have total calories in the way the rings did (but it seems to have ‘active energy’ and ‘resting energy’ which is different to Garmin). 

i don’t remember to turn on the walk function all the time (in Garmin) and it is picking it up but when it does that, it doesn’t tell me what the calories are so I’ve sort of accepted the total isn’t correct. Next weekend I’ll do another one where I remember to record them all. Last time I did that, they didn’t add up so I’ll take some screenshots this time if that’s the case. Trux seemed to think it might get more accurate as my heart rate recording did so it will be interesting to see if it has. 

I found the same exact thing with the apple fitness and health apps. My guess was that because the fitness app is an apple app and the rings are designed to work with an Apple Watch that those wouldn’t work with my Garmin. I was actually surprised that the Garmin workouts even saved to Fitness or Health (more so Fitness). I’m also hoping that as I wear the watch and sleep with the watch, wearing it close to 24/7 it’ll start adding up correctly but I’m not going to hold my breath. Just seems like a math error in the app code to me. My watch doesn’t seem to catch that I’m taking part in a walking activity like my Apple Watch or yours does but it could be a setting. That doesn’t bother me too much though because I usually remember to start the activity on my own anyway. 

Ok here’s an example of my active calories not adding up - 7 September I did 3 logged activities. Active calories for each one 163+166+82 = 411

have just attached the total and one of the activities but you get my gist! It’s just not adding up. 

Active calories for the day 342

Yup, mine is still doing it too. I thought I either had it figured out or they fixed something but I just went on a walk and the active calories didn’t add up even close. Lately they had been off but only by about 10ish calories. I just went for a walk, came home, added up the active calories from my walk with my daily active calories and the total was off by 70 calories. Still not the worst it’s ever been but my god. Seriously. Get some developers that can code simple addition. Love the watch, hate the software (not all of it, mainly just that it can’t add right), not impressed by the QC or development team at Garmin. They’re too big to have an issue like this. 2+2=4 guys, ALWAYS. 

Here’s another example…you can add up the “active calories” from just the two activities yourself and see that they should equal 600 active. But when you look at the app it’s much less, and that doesn’t even include the “active” calories from just walking around and living. The active calories from the activities ALONE should equal 600 active calories. So in actuality it should be OVER 600 active. Even the “daily summary” can’t agree on how many active calories I should have because even this is often off. I’m VERY frustrated at this point. Apple just announced the “Ultra”, which is their version of an outdoors watch. While I can’t afford the $800 for a watch, the one I have should be able to do simple math. Garmin are you watching?

That’s exactly what mine is doing. Who did you email? I followed about 10 pages and still not sure I’m telling the right people. I see they are on Twitter - might tell them there too. It’s not hard is it. Like you say, must just be an odd bit of code that it’s not working. 

I reached out to “support” via a form on their website and heard from them about 3 business days later (I refuse to spend hours waiting on hold on the phone so waiting for an email was fine). The support rep ask for some screenshots since the form I used to submit my problem didn’t allow for images. She then responded saying that I had a valid issue and that she was “escalating” my ticket and sending the screenshots to the developers but couldn’t tell me if or when they’d get to it (very reassuring). I’m sure the more people who complain the better but I personally question their dedication to fixing the problem. It’s CLEAR we’re not the only two experiencing the problem so it seems to me it’s worth taking a look at. I’ll attach her response in a second. For some reason the option to attach an image isn’t showing up in this reply. 

Read my above reply but here was our final correspondence.