Especially on small circles like 200m track. Look on the image! Actually, it is the worst image I ever seen on Strava! Compare my new 5 plus (on the top) and iPhone (bottom). Even cheapest Android costs 10x less than Fenix has much better GPS performance. Even my old Vivocative HR had MUCH better tracks. Now I shame to publish my runs from my 700 euro device, they look just terrible. I can't understand how Garmin was able to make a product with SO bad performance of its MAJOR feature.
до покупки F5+ пользовался 735,проблем с GPS не испытывал, решил взять F5+ и пожалел, через раз получал трек (вид занятия бег) как на картинке обведённой жёлтым, дико бесило, но нашёл причину плохих треков…
The reason why I publish this is my hope that eventually Garmin will hear us and finally will improve GPS performance. I have read that Polar made great FW GPS-related improvements so now they works nearly…
Are you in Russia? What latitude are you at? Have you tried GPS + Glonass instead of GPS + Galileo?
I ask because Glonass is supposed to have an advantage at high latitudes because the satellite orbits…
Those loops are slightly bigger than yours, at around 800-1K circunference whereas your's are 200m? I'd say there's some possible hardware fault there as even allowing for GPS's inherent errors there's no way it should be that random. Seeing the spikes, it almost looks like it's either tracking position at a reduced interval or you're very very fast!
I'll browse through my activities but I don't do much loops as I tend to distance, which as you saw, seems to be better tracked....
Phone's are hard to compare to for many reasons, especially using AGPS - but the fact you have tested another wrist-born GPS and found it ok does suggest either a hardware fault ot some weird GPS software bug.
Also note mine's in a very very open area. So GPS reflections etc arent an issue. Although there is some tree cover, it doesn't seem to be an issue here.
As an aside, and merely for testing purposes, have you tried the beta 2.51 GPS update to see if that's any better. It mentions open water swimming, which is a challenge in itself. But the improvements may be relevant to you.
I'd also second trying some 200m loops elsewhere to see if there's some weird geographic anomaly that's affecting the Fenix adversely and it alone. There's one area by me I run, that has quite a density of HT power lines. People claim they shouldn't affect GPS but my tracks in that area are always terrible. You can see on the trace where I enter the area as I seem to become a very drunken runner, and then when I leave the area it goes ok again....
I know it sounds a bit pointless, but that way you can go back to Garmin and say look "I tested it here, and here and with this and that and it's still terrible". Because, yes, thats frankly terrible tracking...
Here's the 'power line' area I was talking about - thats about 500-800m long IIRC, and as you can see the green line is the path I ran. The tree cover isn't as bad as it looks there, there is good sky visibility but the area is always bad for me. It's a shame as I love the area..
And one last thought here.
As the Fenix is marketed more as an outdoor recreation watch, I'm wondering if it's tailored to long distance tracking rather than track - and the forerunner series may be better at those short circles type runs because typically it's a runners watch and runners do track! I'm not excusing it, I'm just wondering if the Fenix's software is more geared to long distance, long time scale tracking ... The proof of the pudding is seeing if someone with a modern Forerunner has done these sort of size tracks and found them better...
At least that way perhaps, armed with these tracks, you could pressurize Garmin into exchanging it for a Forerunner 945 IF you find that someone with one can do that sort of track and have nowhere near as bad a track!
In fact, as you're getting a dearth of replies for someone to show their 200m tracks, perhaps pop over to the FR945 forum and ask if anyone has 200m track traces there? That would probably answer the question?
