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two garmins, different step count

I have a vivoactive HR and my wife has a vivosmart 4. There is always a discrepancy in the number of steps taken when we walk the exact same route. Likewise, we are both the exact same height, so stride length shouldn't be an issue.Is there anything I can do to correct this imbalance? She previously had a FitBit model that always showed less steps than mine, so we switched to the Garmin to correct the issue. As well, on a recent walk one of use wore both watches and it still credited mine with more steps.

0 trux over 4 years ago

3916247 said:
Likewise, we are both the exact same height, so stride length shouldn't be an issue.

From your description it sounds you do have different stride lengths. Being of the same height, does not necessarily mean you do the exact same number of steps. Besides that, steps can be added due to some extra movements of the arm wearing the watch, or oppositely, some steps wont be counted if you for example push a baby pram, a shopping caddy, hold on the railing, or otherwise restrict the motion of the arm.

When testing both watches on the same person, make sure they are on the same arm, and close to each other.

Also, the sensibility of the accelerometer may differ among individual devices, but there is little you can do about it. If the difference is within a few percents, I would not bother about it. If it is more, you can try asking Garmin for a replacement of the watch that is less accurate..

0 3916247 over 4 years ago in reply to trux

the watches were on the same arm, not holding anything, right beside each other, etc. Over the course of 1000 steps my watch will get 100 more steps. So at the end of the day of 10,000 steps my wife is still at 9000.

0 trux over 4 years ago in reply to 3916247

Yes, that sounds already like a rather important difference. Now you just need to find which one is correct, and having replaced the one that reports wrong numbers. Or both of them, if they both report equally wrong results