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distances in connect & device all 5-20% short, vs basecamp and google maps

If you assume like I did that Garmin's methodology for distance is sound, please read on. This is not a problem with the GPS or waypoints themselves. To be fair I don't know whether this affects anything other than Hiking or Walking, which are important, but possibly why this hasn't had a lot of developer attention as yet. The issue is that Garmin's own waypoints when run through Google Maps, Basecamp, and Strava are all the same within a fraction of a percent, but widely off when viewed either on the Garmin device, Garmin Connect (browser) or the Garmin app (ios). All the hikes and walks that I have checked from yesterday back to 2017 are off by 5 - 20%. I have raised this with Garmin support and they do not as yet have an answer. Anyone else notice this or have time to have a look at one of your activities in basecamp, or google maps (export GPX from Connect, which Google will convert automatically), or strava (hikes/walks passed directly from garmin, i.e., not Strava's collected data points)? Many thanks.

0 ny10075 over 5 years ago

Finally found this in a FIT file. This is a screenshot of the end of an activity yesterday viewed in basecamp. Note lower left where Garmin indicates a total of 4.1 miles. Note also Garmin's total of 4.5 miles within the smaller window. 4.5 miles is correct. Unfortunately 4.1 appears on the watch, in the IOS app, and in Garmin Connect. 4.5 appears on Strava, Google Maps, and of course here in Garmin's own basecamp. This appears to affect every single activity of mine back to 2017, to one degree or another. Normally it's around half a mile for every 4, or 0.3 for every three, and was more than a mile on a 9 mile walk recently. Some of the discrepancies are smaller particularly on longer cycle rides so this could be limited to my device or a small number of devices, or just gone unnoticed if it mainly shows up on hikes or walks. Removing the last record of any activity, in basecamp, then corrects the total in the lower left, but this cannot be done on the watch and cannot be saved in basecamp or exported as a FIT file, back to the watch, so all of my activities for nearly three years appear to be off, most of them significantly and I cannot fix them myself. If there is some sort of adjustment going on in the software, the adjustment is incorrect. The data in the smaller windows as in the above example are correct within relatively tiny percent whereas the totals on the watch, connect, and app are way off.