Certified 10k course yesterday and Fenix 5 gave me 6.24 miles. Probably started 30 feet from the start line. Track looks like where I ran. So far 100% improvement over the F3 for me that probably would have been 5.9 or less.
Thanks for those. There isn't a lot to choose between the tracks, except quite late on when you're coming south down Horn Link Way, when the F5 veers about 30m to the left and back again. Poking around Google Street View suggests you're running past a 10-storey building there, so it has some kind of excuse :)
Yes pretty good track from the F5 but that huge "bounce" which is typical of reflected signals not being filtered (multipath) is of concern and I've seen a lot of it myself. With the FR935 and the F5 now likely using the same software (is the GPS version on v4.22 on the FR935 too?) it's likely that the F5 software is working with worse signal due to the casing making for some bad choices from time to time.
While not a big deal if you're running in the countryside (except if you happen to run near a wall), for someone like JuliusCes running in an area with "tall buildings with mirrors/glass" it's likely to be a deal breaker...
FR 935 is really good but a little too plastic to be worn to work. The F5X is very close to it GPS-wise but it still has orienteering and mapping functionality that is head and shoulders above the FR 935.
I thoroughly enjoyed navigating my way to the end point of my hike with the F5X yesterday. I intend to keep both at this stage.
FR 935 is really good but a little too plastic to be worn to work. The F5X is very close to it GPS-wise but it still has orienteering and mapping functionality that is head and shoulders above the FR 935.
I thoroughly enjoyed navigating my way to the end point of my hike with the F5X yesterday. I intend to keep both at this stage.
Yes I could see sticking with the F5x in spite of the odd GPS glitch but the F5 adds nothing to the FR935 feature wise. Besides some are now suspecting that the larger form factor has allowed Garmin to use larger antennas than on the F5/F5s for better GPS/BT/ANT performance...
Anyone got both an F5 and an F5x to run comparisons in multipath environments? ;-)
Tracking MTB on twisty trails in the woods is very good.
As I mentioned I would do in my post yesterday, I'm happy to present the results of 2 laps of the 8.5 mile MTB trail through twisty trails in continuous dense woodland; for anyone who's interested.... ;). The woods in question are a pine forest, so the time of year makes no difference to foliage spread/density. For the first lap I had the Fenix 5 on my right wrist using WHR, Fenix 3 on my handlebars (standard Garmin Silicone mount) using HRM Run and iPhone SE Strava App in the top pocket of my Camelbak backpack using my Scosche Rhythm+ OHR (positioned on my upper left arm, sensor on my biscep). For the second lap the Fenix 3 and Fenix 5 swapped places, so the Fenix 5 was bar mounted; both watches now using the HRM Run, as the Fenix 5 obviously couldn't do WHR on the handlebars! A comparison of all six tracks is at the mygpsfiles link below and I've added the Garmin Connect/Strava links to individual activities at the bottom. Fenix 5 on 2.72 beta with (2.42 GPS) and both watches set to 1 second recording with GPS+GLONASS.
http://www.mygpsfiles.com/app/#wfI5tITa (note this tool does recalculate distance from the GPS track presented, so will vary from the individual links at the bottom)
Conclusions for GPS Accuracy? As far as I'm concerned, the Fenix 5 GPS tracking and distance accrual is performing just great in these conditions. I'm particularly impressed that there's little lost in tracking accuracy (and nothing lost in distance accrual) by having the watch on my wrist vs on the handlebars. Distance accrual is surprisingly similar on all devices (8.40 to 8.63, so 2.7% variance across all 6 devices, but the F5 is almost identical for both laps). I really was expecting a much greater spread of distances in the circumstances, given the 3 Strava segments that capture this same route range from 8.2 miles to 8.7 miles ( https://www.strava.com/segments/13865475https://www.strava.com/segments/12992278 and https://www.strava.com/segments/11667589 ).
HR tracking was also surprising, given this is a very bumpy trail that I was doing at speed (set a Strava PR on Lap 2) on a hardtail MTB; so I was expecting the F5's WHR on lap 1 to be all over the place. If you filter the mygpsfiles link for the three lap 1 tracks, and select to see heartrate (y axis) against duration (x axis) in the auxiliary chart, you can see there are a few places the F5 WHR (and Scosche to a lesser extent) struggle. But they are not massively off and do recover so that for 80% of the ride the HR of all three sensors pretty much align. Like I said, this is much better than I expected; I'm really impressed!
