Difference between run time and moving time

fwiw DC Rainmaker has recommended enabling per-second recording for years. I don’t suggest blindly following him (or me), but try it out for yourself and see if you have any issues.

He does say that there’s no battery life impact, which is contradicted by the Garmin support article. According to him, smart recording typically records data once every 3-7 seconds. I can def see how there might be a battery life impact if the watch is writing to storage roughly 5X as often, in per-second mode. I don’t know if the average end user would notice it (especially compared to all the other things which have a greater effect, such as choice of satellites and music).

It is worth nothing that UltraTrac reduces the recording rate for GPS points to once per minute and it is advertised as having a big effect on battery life — enabling UltraTrac quadruples my battery life estimate compared to All + Multiband.

I did notice that flipping between 1-second and smart recording mode does not change my battery life estimate, although that may just be because the watch isn’t smart enough to take it into account.

FlowState said:

As I said, I think this is a mostly outdated concern. It may have applied to Garmin watches from 10+ years ago which had a tiny amount of storage, but modern Garmins should have more than enough storage for lots of large activities, especially if they support maps and or music.

My FR955 (which supports maps and music) has 32 GB of storage. A 30-minute running activity recorded with per-second recording takes about 230 KB. (This includes data from an external Stryd sensor and HRV logging.) So let’s say per-second recording takes about 560 KB per hour for me. I could record 1700 hours of activities and it would use slightly under 1 GB of storage. Even with all my maps and music, my FR955 still has about 13 GB free, so I could theoretically record over about 20,000 hours of activities without ever syncing.

I did notice that newer watches seem to only keep so many months of activities, as opposed to saving all of them indefinitely, but I doubt they would start auto-deleting activities that had not yet been synced.

The related garmin support article has this to say:

https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=s4w6kZmbmK0P6l20SgpW28

Why Should I Choose One Option Over the Other?

When choosing which option to set your watch to, you will have a few things to consider:

• Battery Life

• File Size

• GPS Accuracy

The more data points your watch records, the smoother and more accurate your track will be. The trade off for this is that it will consume more battery life, as well as more space in the device's memory. If you need a longer battery life or need to make sure you have more space for a longer activity, you will want to choose Smart Recording. If you want more accuracy and a track that follows your movement based on points that are recorded more often, you will want to choose Every Second Recording. 

Yes, it does mention the file size concerns, and it mentions battery life concerns. But it also mentions a more accurate GPS track. It might be *possible* that this would affect moving time calculations in Connect, but I doubt the difference would be dramatic. And I doubt it would guarantee that moving time would be equivalent to run/walk/idle time, since those are 2 different algorithms. 

Personally I would just enable it for the more accurate track

Very clear, thank you! Another question: how can you see the size of the recording? Is there a way to cooy the .fit files from the watch? I never thought about it, but could be interesting analyzing it. Anyway I have a Fenix 8 so I shouldn't have any memory problem.

FlowState said:

fwiw DC Rainmaker has recommended enabling per-second recording for years. I don’t suggest blindly following him (or me), but try it out for yourself and see if you have any issues.

He does say that there’s no battery life impact, which is contradicted by the Garmin support article. According to him, smart recording typically records data once every 3-7 seconds. I can def see how there might be a battery life impact if the watch is writing to storage roughly 5X as often, in per-second mode. I don’t know if the average end user would notice it (especially compared to all the other things which have a greater effect, such as choice of satellites and music).

It is worth nothing that UltraTrac reduces the recording rate for GPS points to once per minute and it is advertised as having a big effect on battery life — enabling UltraTrac quadruples my battery life estimate compared to All + Multiband.

I did notice that flipping between 1-second and smart recording mode does not change my battery life estimate, although that may just be because the watch isn’t smart enough to take it into account.

So what GPS mode do you suggest? My first interest is accuracy and not battery life.

The easiest way to get a copy of an activity FIT file is to export it from the Connect website:

- open Garmin Connect website (works best on a computer or tablet, although it will work on a phone, too)

- navigate to the activity of interest 

- select the gear icon (top right of screen) and select Export File

This will download a zip file containing the original FIT. 

You can also browse the watch’s files and folders using a computer:

- completely close Garmin Express on your PC or Mac (including the icon in the system tray / notification area)

- connect the watch via usb cable

- in Windows, use File Explorer to view files on your watch. In Mac, use a third party app such as OpenMTP

> what GPS mode 

I like to use all+multiband for running although I admit it’s probably overkill. I never run for more than a few hours so the battery life hut is not a problem. I did notice that it cuts my battery life estimates in half compared to the default setting of GPS only. 

I guess the reason I use the most accurate satellite setting is bc ive had problems with bad tracks in the past.

Something I’ve noticed with Garmin watches is that the green “GPS ready” ring may appear very quickly but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a good gps fix. A lot of times I’ll see the green ring, but when I look at the pace field, it fluctuates wildly while I’m standing still. And if I look at the map, it shows me at the wrong position, and it shows me as moving (but again I’m standing still). 

So to get the best possible gps fix:

- I wait for green ring 

and

- I wait for the pace field to settle to 0:00

If I press START as soon as I see the green ring, it’s pretty certain that the beginning of my activity will be messed up (unrealistically fast paces, too much distance, bad track)

FlowState said:

> what GPS mode 

I like to use all+multiband for running although I admit it’s probably overkill. I never run for more than a few hours so the battery life hut is not a problem. I did notice that it cuts my battery life estimates in half compared to the default setting of GPS only. 

I guess the reason I use the most accurate satellite setting is bc ive had problems with bad tracks in the past.

Something I’ve noticed with Garmin watches is that the green “GPS ready” ring may appear very quickly but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a good gps fix. A lot of times I’ll see the green ring, but when I look at the pace field, it fluctuates wildly while I’m standing still. And if I look at the map, it shows me at the wrong position, and it shows me as moving (but again I’m standing still). 

So to get the best possible gps fix:

- I wait for green ring 

and

- I wait for the pace field to settle to 0:00

If I press START as soon as I see the green ring, it’s pretty certain that the beginning of my activity will be messed up (unrealistically fast paces, too much distance, bad track)

I always wait few seconds too before starting the activity after the GPS is ready. Anyway I'm using the Auto mode on my Fenix 8, it seems the best one from what I've read.

FlowState said:

It seems to be the best compromise between battery life and accuracy, but you have to trust the algorithm which determines the optimal GPS mode. Even if this algorithm works great, it seems that there would always have to be some small lag for the mode switching, since the watch first has to determine that conditions have changed, then it would have to change the GPS mode.

Since, like you, I don't care that much about battery life, I prefer All + Multiband, although I recognize I'm probably going overboard.

Totally got it, thank you!