I recently replaced my trusty Forerunner 230 with Fenix 5 Plus. Not sure if it was an upgrade, though... Oh yes, the watch is shiny, it can pay and play (music), has a lot of built-in activities and functions that I missed (like following uploaded track, that required some IQ app in Forerunner), but the basic functions made me sad.
First of all, the battery drain. I read the other thread about it - I suffer the same. But it was equally bad with both 13.0 and 12.0 firmware. During activity it drains roughly 9% per hour, which is fine by me. But the drain during normal usage is just sick. It discharges after about 60 hours. Even with little to no activities. Two days + one short running training (40 mins) and one bike ride (an hour), and it's dead. My F230 could last for at least a week, with daily short trainings. And up to three weeks once, when I didn't train due to injury.
Second, the current pace is anything but even roughly correct. During a very steady run at, let's say, 5:00 km/min it shows everything from 3:30 to 6:30. I didn't expect miracles, those things are unstable due to lots of variables, but that's just plainly wrong. My F230 was miles ahead (pun intended) in terms of accuracy. Choosing 1-second interval or different GPS setups (GALILEO, GLONASS) just doesn't fix anything. Weirdly enough, the track itself is very fine, just the pace is all over the place.
After many years I'm used to (slowly dying since Under Armour acquisition) Endomondo. Tracks synced from my F230 showed quite nice pace graph there. Now it's disaster that quite precisely corresponds the pace values during the run. Endo lacks the elevation data as well, which was shown when I was running with F230. Interestingly, the graphs are slightly better (smoother) when viewed in Garmin Connect.
Example of graphs; two very similar trainings (Cooper test), on very similar routes: piteq.info/.../garminwatches.png
I bought used SDM4 footpod (because there are nothing newer from Garmin to measure pace?) to test things out - well. It's WAY more accurate than Fenix' GPS and on par or slightly more accurate than F230. Weird thing is that when I set my training in Connect, and define required paces, Fenix continues to warn me based on GPS pace, not footpod one. Which is annoying, because of above mentioned accuracy issues. Read: it beeps and vibrates every damn 10 seconds until it finds out I'm running slow/fast enough.
I tried to contact the customer service in my country, but it's nothing it was before - I had several Garmin devices and never had any issues with service, now it takes AGES to get any reply :(
Anything I can do to fix things? Is Fenix 6 series better? Does it support footpod as well?
