VO2 max - is the comparison with people who use Garmins or for the population in general?

This is more of a Garmin Connect question than Garmin Express. Moving thread.

I don't think Garmin has data on everyone, just users of their devices. But I find that small differences in VO2 Max make big differences in "fitness age". I wouldn't be surprised if you quite rapidly get to 50% or better. Also not sure how they calculate some of these measurements.

Thanks for asking that question. Was trying to get that answer myself. 59 as well. Not to toot my own horn but mine says 54 top 1 % and I’m sure that’s not correct for everyone?

TL;DR my educated guess is VO2 Max comparisons are against the general population, not Garmin users.

I can very easily accept that I am among the lower 35% of Garmin users, but find it more difficult to accept that I'm in the lower 35% of everyone.

Given that Garmin users would probably tend to be more active then the general population, the latter is actually better for you then the former.

EDIT: I thought about this and realized my conclusion above was backwards haha. Sorry :/ 

4814359 said:

I don't think Garmin has data on everyone, just users of their devices.

But they have access to standard tables for the population distribution of VO2 Max. My guess is that as far as VO2 Max goes, they're comparing us to the general population, not all Garmin users.

This table is also in the manual for most (all?) Garmin watches:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/fitness/whats-a-good-vo2-max-for-me/

If you look at your VO2 Max in the Garmin Connect mobile app (not website) and tap Help, it says

Vo2 Max data used with permission from The Cooper Institute.

which suggests that this data is used to compare you to others of the same gender and age range.

It also says "Your VO2 Max is [your value], which is excellent for [gender] ages [your age range]". I assume this refers to the general population.

On the other hand, if you click on insights [https://connect.garmin.com/modern/insights] in Garmin Connect website, it explicitly says that you're being compared to other users (for steps, running distance, speed, etc.). Same as if you click on Insights in the app and press the info button -- the help text explicitly says that you're being compared with other *users*.