Fenix 5 Plus determination of floors climbed

Today I had something strange, I had to climb a tower with in total about 20 meters height difference.
I climbed this tower (spiral staircase) two times and the alitmeter seems to be following it quite good.
When I look at the number of floors climbed it displays 4 whilst my iPhone and Android phone both displayed 12 floors.
For some reason the detection of the number of floors climbed seems to be a bit off, the only thing I can imaging is that the spiral staircase was split into two sections so it is 4 flights of stairs in total but the number of floors is not correct. I don't know what altitude difference Apple uses to determine a floor.

Top Replies

Former Member over 6 years ago +1

Forget the stairs climbed feature in the Garmin watch... i does not work realiable at all!
It's more of an overpayed random number generator...
Even worse... it's not repeatable and gives different results…

All Replies

0 tmk2 over 6 years ago

In addition to altitude change, the F5 needs to detect that you are walking to detect stairs. If you climbed the tower holding the handrail, or had otherwise engaged your watch-wearing arm into anything else than natural walking swing, then that might have skewed the results.

0 Dr Phil over 6 years ago

A Garmin 'floor' is 10' (3m)

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Forget the stairs climbed feature in the Garmin watch... i does not work realiable at all!
It's more of an overpayed random number generator...
Even worse... it's not repeatable and gives different results each time you repeat.
And yes, i use to walk stairs up and down and not crawl or fly... hello Garmin!

0 RobKenjiwhe over 6 years ago

I walk up to the 21st floor at work every day, and back, and it counts pretty good, the same number always. Only stairs down is rubbish. I mean 21 up and 15 or 17, sometimes 18 down is no good. Up is perfect though. And yes, I swing my arms during the process.

0 JSRUNNER_ over 6 years ago

Forerunner you seem to be unlucky - most of the time the floor count matches for my office stairs although it has the occasional wobbly. It does always seem to record a couple less down than up though - like yesterday where I had 59 up and 57 down.