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Is there a reason why I would leave elevation corrections disabled?

In Garmin Connect, underneath my device (Edge 830 in my case) on the right side, it has a setting called "Elevation Corrections" and the pop-up states:

Elevation Corrections are calculated with data from professional surveys instead of the data from your device. If your device has a barometric altimeter, Elevation Corrections are disabled by default.

My Edge 830 does have a barometric altimeter, so the corrections are disabled. But wouldn't the elevation data from professional surveys always be more accurate than the barometric altimeter data (which is affected by variations in barometric pressure)? Why would I want to leave the elevation corrections disabled, just because my device has a barometric altimeter?

0 trux over 5 years ago

Yes, in certain situations, the Elevation Correction can result in worse accuracy than the data from the barometric altimeter. For example when you ride near tall buldings, under dense vegetation, in strongly accidental terrain, or on strongly inclined slopes - in all these situations, either a small deviation of the GPS position of given point can give a big difference in elevation, or the GPS position may be that inaccurate, that the elevation may be then very different too.

Common accuracy of GPS devices of this type is around 15m under good conditions. When the conditions are not ideal, it may be worse. If you ride near a wall, or near a steep slope, the few meters of difference of the position may result in hundreds of meters of difference in the topographic elevation. In such case, the barometric data will be indeed more accurate.

0 lytleric over 5 years ago in reply to trux

Good point; I hadn't considered that the GPS location data could wrong. Guess I was assuming that my position was always accurate, but as we know that is not always the case.