Upgrading from F3HR to F5X

I will be upgrading. Either to 5 or 5X, have not decided yet do I want the mapping or extra battery life. Reasons being more pixels in the display, I am occasionally disturbed by the pixelation of F3HR screen, not often though. More frequent OHR sampling for 24x7 monitoring, for decent training any OHR is still pretty much useless so I only want it for activity tracking purposes. And more modern algorithms from Firstbeat that should calculate the training effects better (when using HR strap for activities). The details of the firstbeat changes have not yet been announced, but maybe in the near future. DCR did mention them though as something he had been discussing with Garmin.

I own the F3HR now. The watch is 10 days old, can have it for 20 days more and get my money back.

I am going to return mine to the store the next couple of days because I have had problems with the altimeter and the accuracy of the GPS from day one. I have tried everything that Garmin has suggested and other people on forums etc. to try and fix the issues. I got it brand new for a decent price and I really like it, but I can't have a new watch with alot of features that simply don't work.

So for me the F3HR did not live up to the specs it is "showing off" on the spec list!

But for my type of activites (hiking, running, navigation and general walking) I love the design, features, and options the watch has. Garmin (Norway) say that they will try to fix the known issues it has but I will rather just wait for the 5x and pay a little more $ for a (hopefully) more stabile and precise device.


There are 2 things that might make me want to keep the F3HR and hope Garmin will fix the issues with the alitmeter:

1. The price of the 5x...
2. The waiting time before 5x will be available...


All of the above things is just my personal opinion... :)

Outside the mapping, what will be the difference between F3HR and F5X ? I'm not very interested to mapping , but to measure the training effect. Will it be a real advantage with F5X ?

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But for my type of activites (hiking, running, navigation and general walking) I love the design, features, and options the watch has. Garmin (Norway) say that they will try to fix the known issues it has but I will rather just wait for the 5x and pay a little more $ for a (hopefully) more stabile and precise device.

What makes you think the 5x will be a more stable device? If any lesson can be learned from past experience with Garmin, the 5x won't be a stable device until at least 6 months after its release.

I am very skeptical as to the possibility of GPS/ALT performance improvement of the 5 compared to the 3, given that G pretty much denies that there is a problem in the first place. They cannot fix something they do not believe to be broken. So no F5 for me unless people report actual significant improvement.

I am very skeptical as to the possibility of GPS/ALT performance improvement of the 5 compared to the 3, given that G pretty much denies that there is a problem in the first place. They cannot fix something they do not believe to be broken. So no F5 for me unless people report actual significant improvement.

I believe Garmin has announced there to be issue with some watches on the firmware side regarding the baro & alti. And that there should be update coming soonish that hopefully fixes it.

What comes to GPS I have absolutely no complaints about the GPS accuracy, and on my unit also the baro & alti do not have the issue some people are experiencing. So to claim that F3 & F3HR all suffer from GPS or baro & alti issues is simply not true. Also it is not true to claim that all units work ok, so I am not going to make that statement. I'll hope the firmware will fix baro & alti for those who experience the issues.

I don't want to hijack the topic, I believe there is a gazillion of pages about this already. It is my belief that it is not the units but the users and their modes of operation what "causes" the problems with GPS and baro. I, too, would be happy with the baro and the GPS if I:

- did not use the unit near trees or in the mountains
- did not have a constant comparison to other units

I don't know if I agree with that. I use my F3 on "suburban" roads, on (tree-covered) trails (running), on other (tree-covered) trails (hiking), and in other various areas (many of which have mountains, a canopy overhead or both.)

The F3 isn't as accurate, in my experience, as my former 910XT. However, it's pretty good. Does it sometimes show a path that goes through someone's living room instead of down the correct side of the street? Yes. Did the 910XT does that less-often? Yes. Is it enough of a difference for me to consider it unacceptable? No, and the 910XT had its antenna on the inside of the wrist where it pretty-much always faced the sky, which (without a "chin" on a Fenix) is not possible.

I don't want to hijack the topic, I believe there is a gazillion of pages about this already. It is my belief that it is not the units but the users and their modes of operation what "causes" the problems with GPS and baro. I, too, would be happy with the baro and the GPS if I:

- did not use the unit near trees or in the mountains
- did not have a constant comparison to other units

Both of these are my use cases too. Although my comparison may not be as constant as yours and I might go to mountains (Cascades in my case) less often than you. In any case no complaints. And because of this good experience I am going to jump head on with the 5 line up. Knowing there will be bugs at start to tackle. I might keep my F3HR around for some time to fall back into if there are severe accuracy issues at launch.

What makes you think the 5x will be a more stable device? If any lesson can be learned from past experience with Garmin, the 5x won't be a stable device until at least 6 months after its release.

Yes that is true. But the known issue(s) with many of the f3hr (that has been on the market for a good time now) still not has been fixed then I hope the 5x will be more stabile after a few software tune ups

I might be wrong.... :)