I’ve been using my brand new Fenix 5x Plus watch while on holiday. My main sport is running but I have competed in Ironman and SwimRun races and need a watch that can deal with both running and swimming effectively. I previously used a Fenix 3 very happily. The 5x plus is disastrous when it comes to open water swimming. No matter whether I use GPS on its own or with GLONASS or Galileo, the track bears no resemblance to the actual swim. Generally it records less than half of the distance. I have tried waiting for five minutes before starting to swim but that makes no difference either. I swim a normal front crawl stroke and I’m swimming in clear salt water with gorgeous blue skies above me. Considering I’m using Garmin’s most expensive watch, I’m very disappointed. Support suggests I attach the watch to a float or put it under my swim cap, both of which are either laughable or offensive depending on my mood. Is anybody else having similar issues?
I own a forerunner 935 since June 2017. During last summer (2017) the accuracy of gps, during open water sessions was excellent. This summer (2018) when i tried to use the open water swim mode, the gps of my watch is either dead or in most of the cases, my sessions are full of zigzags and broken lines. I tried everything such as gps at normal mode or gps+glonass/gallileo, smart recording or every second, the result was always the same. Obviously one of the recent updates created that mesh. I ended up to use my old 920xt while swimming. It is at least unacceptable such a poor performance, from such an expensive watch, without any official explanation from garmin.
I just bought the fenix 5 plus and experience the same issue on my first test. I swam about a third of a mile and the watch recorded 75 yards and a nonsensical track. However, I was hoping there might be a workaround that would approximate distance by counting strokes. Is this possible?
Just received my 2nd 5+ and went for an OW swim last night. Same...exact...problem. My 3 year old Fenix 3 is 100x better in tracking my OW swims. For an $800 US watch, this is completely unacceptable. If no fix in the next 30 days, I'm sending it back for a refund.
I have put off buying a Fenix until Garmin fixes their swim accuracy. I learn my lesson about Garmin the hard way when I purchased the Vector 3 pedals. The first runs wouldn't even work with a Garmin 1030 edge computer. I asked my local bike dealer why Garmin doesn't do a better job of beta testing and he laughed and said Garmin uses its customers as beta testers. I will never buy anything from Garmin when it first comes out. Why deal with the headaches?
Have to tell you that the Fenix 5X Plus is just awful for OWS. I am very happy with the data from the pool but the GPS in the OWS is a complete mess - and v2.30 does not fix the issue
bought a fenix 5 plus (sw 6.00) for swim tracking. while pool swimming seems to be working great, OWS is a joke. went for a 1km swim, the watch recorded 12 meters... haven’t used a garmin watch before, but I’ve read good things about OWS on older garmin watches.
Would be interesting to get information of the GPS chipsets used in these watches. My F735XT has been nothing but a surprise in the OW for such a tiny GPSr and such a short window to actually get fix - to be honest: I have no idea how they pulled it off. Wasn't able to give my F5+ a spin but the overall consensus seems to be very negative. I suspect this is more an antenna/metal body/chipset issue in which case it won't be fixable via software updates. Then again, the fact that the 935 used to be alright (plastic body) but it appears to be broken right now points to software playing some role here, so maybe there is hope.
DerDembo latest software updates to 935 and 5+ seem to have fixed the OWS accuracy issues if you look at some of the other threads on here - as far as I can see they are sw problem not antenna based otherwise you would expect GPS issues on most activities not just OW swimming
There is a difference between the 5+ and the 935 but not unreasonable. The 935 producing a cleaner track and probably closer to true distance than the Fenix 5+. Note that my wife has the 935; I have the 5+. Course is from the shore along a buoy line and return. Measured distance of 2km, but you need to allow for fluctuations in start point due to tides.
