Some thoughts on Ultratrac mode

I have similar experience with UltraTrac (sic!). I used it last year during a long run (68km) and it completely drained my battery after getting stuck at some point. The watch freezed ater ~50km and within ~30 minutes it completely died. I couldn't even find the right way to bring it back to life after charging the battery after the run. The standard combination of buttons pressed for the hard reset didn't work  I've found somewhere a different method and that helped. Garmin's helpdesk didn't even know this solution.

Last weekend during 80km run it looked a bit better with UltraTrac (several updates since the last try). This time the watch survived without extra charging on the track. The only issue was that it showed over 100km instead of 80 ;) I've also noticed a strange behaviour when using the track navigation. The watch killed the navigation addon at some point. Anyway, I was happy that it survived at all, that it didn't freeze the watch ;)

Next moth I'm joining 100km run and this time I'll just simply use a standard navi with heart monitor off + a small power bank. Shame on Garmin with Ultratrac mode. I guess the Chineese with their Xiaomi can do it better.

I've noticed this oddity with navigation on long runs as well. After a deep dive on the issue, it appears that you won't have any navigation after the first 200 course points (ie turns) - next to useless for even a half marathon on a trail let alone an ultra.

forums.garmin.com/.../200-course-point-max-exceeded-final-79-points-will-not-be-shown

Just completed a 141 km ultramarathon using ultratrac and the GPS accuracy was way off. On climbs the positioning bounces all over the place which resulted in completely inaccurate D+ reading (twice the actual D+) The recorded activity came up with 23 km more than the actual route. This needs to be looked at and fixed by Garmin. Otherwise this mode is useless and this was one of the main reasons I switched to Fenix 5s

Adding my experiences with UltraTrac mode which are more or less the same with the rest of the F5+ owners: this mode is totally useless for me (I sincerely have no idea what the use case is that justifies it's existence given how inaccurate it is):

* Recorded a full 80K race with UltraTrac - the F5+ tracked 96K instead

* Tried following a cource on the map on the F5+ with UltraTrac on. This was impossible; it would just show me off course and complain all the time

* Tried it for a long distance hike (>14 hours per day), useless again, most of the time showing me off track or in the wrong place alltogether

I have like other owners resolved to using the full GPS+Galileo tracking and carrying a power bank but F5+ does not make it easy for me to charge while on the go.

I sincerely love my F5+ but UltraTrac inadequacy along with the unfriendly charging cable are major annoyances. At least with my old F3 I knew that UlraTrac was untrustworthy but charging it while on the move was really easy. 

Hm. This one doesn't look too bad indeed!

Man, Garmin needs to fix the notifications in the forum.

Garmin please fix this feature! The competitors have reached this step yet, you have to improve it if you don't want to lose a bit of consumers

I keep reading about this issue, and obviously there are enough posts to warrant some Garmin activity. However, I just finish 700 miles of the AT, using this mode, and tracking each day. I had good results. The data even matched up pretty well with the maps and AT Guide. Not sure why I got a different outcome. 

The introduction of the Fenix 6 makes me and I assume you even more adamant that this needs addressing. The 5xPlus was not a "minor" release and it needs fixing. A backport of the battery modes is definitely possible and a must-have too.

We should start looking at the fenix 6 maybe. 58 DAYS of gps, sampled once an hour.