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Fine grained measurement units control in Garmin Connect

Basically, in our Garmin Connect profiles we can only set the units globally as a group. There are 3 choices, Metric, Statute and Statute UK. Whereas on the activity tracker (in my case fenix 5 plus) we can set the units categorically. For instance, I can use metric units for everything except weight, which I set to lbs. The issue with not having this fine grained control on the Garmin Connect side is that it greatly limits your ability to track progression with certain activity profiles.

SCENARIO 1:
I do weight training 6 times/week. With me being in Canada and using the metric system, Garmin Connect is configured with the only viable metric option. However, there is a major downside to this as all my sets and weights for each exercise are converted to kg on Connect, despite having the watch ask for lbs. Now when you go to the gym here in North America the machines have weight plates that go up in 5 lb increments, NOT in kg. Which means that in order to track progress using Connect itself I would have to convert the kg value to lbs manually each time which is tedious.

SCENARIO 2:
This is an extension of problem number 1, the workout creator on Connect only allows using metric units for strength workouts when it is configured as such. So now I cannot input the correct weight for the session without going through tedious and time consuming conversion processes. The kg value is useless on an American made machine and I would not know how much weight to put on if for example I have 18.15 kg used last session. So I have to log with pen and paper.

Thank you for reading this, please vote for this issue (I'm surprised that Garmin didn't think of these use cases as a great feature is really limited due to these omissions).

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0 Dr Phil over 6 years ago

1kg = 2.2 pounds. 1 lb = 0.456kg. Not difficult to do the maths in my head when required. And for me 1kg = 2lb = 1kg is close enough.

Edit: My vote as requested (sort off) why bother? It's not hard to do the mental gymnastics. I can only think of the holy horrors for Garmin if they go down the road of pampering to every minority desire.

0 rob-tech over 6 years ago

It's not about difficulty, as anyone can do the simple conversion, it's about covering a common usage case which should be taken care of. I don't think it's unreasonable to be able to override a unit categorically given that the watch supports the necessary features itself, and that this is a common scenario. Why make the user do an extra step when they should just look at the activity log and know immediately what weight to put on?

Given the price of the hardware and the presence of many more advanced capabilities why omit something so basic in the online platform/companion app? Not everyone lives in the US, so setting the units to statute would override distance, temperature etc. which is not acceptable.

I'm a software developer and consider this to be a usability annoyance as it's one extra unnecessary step.

0 ASmugDill over 6 years ago

Thank you for reading this, please vote for this issue

There is no voting mechanism, and this isn't really the official channel for directly lobbying Garmin for changes, but since you asked, I'm going to say that from my perspective as a fellow Garmin customer and device user, I don't think fine-grained control is important or something to which users have any claim of entitlement.

Oh, and just to be clear, I don't live in North America.

0 WillNorthYork over 6 years ago

My 2 cents:

- As a Canadian I have the same problem. Officially we are metric, but for historical reasons (I think), we informally use imperial units for things like height and weight. If someone asks me my height I will answer in feet and inches, even though my ID has it in metres, and even though all the science I did in school was in metric (as it should be). Similarly, if you talk to people who are old enough, they still think in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. However I don't know anyone of any age who grew up in Canada and who would say "he's 1.83 metres" instead of "6 feet tall".
- It's a good thing for me that the watch allows mixed units, because I def need my runs in km (nobody talks about run distance/pace in terms of miles around here), but I do I need my strength training in lbs. Thanks Garmin!
- It's annoying for me to look at past workouts in GC/GCM and see all the weights in kg, but it's not the end of the world
- It's also annoying for me that the body weight entry in GC/GCM is in kg, but since I get that synced from a different app, I guess I don't care
- The fact that Garmin allowed mixed units on watches tells me that they recognize mixed units as a valid and useful use case. They had to do extra work to enable that! The fact that it's not in GC/GCM tells me they didn't bother to finish fully implementing that feature, perhaps because not every watch even has enough features (like strength training) to warrant having mixed units. Having a half-done feature is almost (but not quite, in this case) worse than not having it all, because the latter scenario is more defensible. "Nobody wants that feature! Except on the watch itself...." Ironically, it's much like how Canada never fully went metric (and due to geographic and cultural proximity to the US, maybe never will).

- This is the feature request forum, not the feature demand forum, and I'm pretty sure nobody even implied that users are entitled to anything that's posted here. From the very existence of this forum, I can infer that Garmin at least wants to give the appearance of slightly caring about what users might want. Having said that, I agree that there's no voting mechanism. It would've been interesting if every request came with a poll, but I imagine nobody would vote and/or it would be too easy to spam fake votes for features nobody wants. OTOH, maybe this forum is Garmin's oh-so clever way of getting users to stop bothering them directly about features that they won't implement. In that case, anyone who puts themselves in Garmin employee's shoes should be encouraging even more posts here.

- Yeah, I bet nobody outside of Canada (or some other place with mixed units) is gonna think this is an important feature, that's a no-brainer. Similar to how I don't care that "stones and pounds" were removed from GC, but I noticed that it bothered some UK users. I didn't jump onto their threads and say "Doesn't bother me, I don't even know what stones are!" Then again, OP did ask for feedback (or at least, votes).

0 rob-tech over 6 years ago

My 2 cents:

- As a Canadian I have the same problem. Officially we are metric, but for historical reasons (I think), we informally use imperial units for things like height and weight. If someone asks me my height I will answer in feet and inches, even though my ID has it in metres, and even though all the science I did in school was in metric (as it should be). Similarly, if you talk to people who are old enough, they still think in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. However I don't know anyone of any age who grew up in Canada and who would say "he's 1.83 metres" instead of "6 feet tall".
- It's a good thing for me that the watch allows mixed units, because I def need my runs in km (nobody talks about run distance/pace in terms of miles around here), but I do I need my strength training in lbs. Thanks Garmin!
- It's annoying for me to look at past workouts in GC/GCM and see all the weights in kg, but it's not the end of the world
- It's also annoying for me that the body weight entry in GC/GCM is in kg, but since I get that synced from a different app, I guess I don't care
- The fact that Garmin allowed mixed units on watches tells me that they recognize mixed units as a valid and useful use case. They had to do extra work to enable that! The fact that it's not in GC/GCM tells me they didn't bother to finish fully implementing that feature, perhaps because not every watch even has enough features (like strength training) to warrant having mixed units. Having a half-done feature is almost (but not quite, in this case) worse than not having it all, because the latter scenario is more defensible. "Nobody wants that feature! Except on the watch itself...." Ironically, it's much like how Canada never fully went metric (and due to geographic and cultural proximity to the US, maybe never will).

- This is the feature request forum, not the feature demand forum, and I'm pretty sure nobody even implied that users are entitled to anything that's posted here. From the very existence of this forum, I can infer that Garmin at least wants to give the appearance of slightly caring about what users might want. Having said that, I agree that there's no voting mechanism. It would've been interesting if every request came with a poll, but I imagine nobody would vote and/or it would be too easy to spam fake votes for features nobody wants. OTOH, maybe this forum is Garmin's oh-so clever way of getting users to stop bothering them directly about features that they won't implement. In that case, anyone who puts themselves in Garmin employee's shoes should be encouraging even more posts here.

- Yeah, I bet nobody outside of Canada (or some other place with mixed units) is gonna think this is an important feature, that's a no-brainer. Similar to how I don't care that "stones and pounds" were removed from GC, but I noticed that it bothered some UK users. I didn't jump onto their threads and say "Doesn't bother me, I don't even know what stones are!" Then again, OP did ask for feedback (or at least, votes).

Yes, I agree with you. This isn't the end of the world and no one is demanding or feeling entitled to this. I just think that the feature feels half implemented and the other part of the platform could be improved to be more inline with the watch capabilities, we can agree that it would be a great improvement in our usage case.

Garmin probably does consider some of these threads when guiding strategic product development or getting ideas about where they should focus their efforts in the future, as some of these ideas were implemented (whether they came from the feature request forum is another matter).

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

+1 for this feature

Lift weights in pounds, spend the rest of my life in the metric system (running, swimming, etc). I imagine there are many others in this boat as well.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Same issue - very annoying