GPS Accuracy

To be honest I wouldn't say that the F5X was necessarily worse than the 935, I think both watches struggled quite a bit here. For some parts they are right on top of each other but most of the time one watch shows you on the road and the other sends you through houses and then 300m later it's the complete opposite. To be fair near the water in the beginning of your run the F5X went a bit crazy but later on it caught on quite okay.

Also I think some of us in here have somewhat high expectations of a GPS device the size of a wrist watch..

there looks to be much more jitter in the f5x track ? 200m more. Along the side of the river there should have been a clear view of the sky. The great thing about comparing the 935 to the F5 is that most of the hardware and the GPS smoothing algorithms should be the same.

You also have to remember that many of us have been using GPS watches for many years and we know EXACTLY what accuracy to expect from them. And the point of doing direct comparisons like this is so you can see that some watches are worse than others.

I've been holding off upgrading my F3 to an F5 and based on the evidence so far I'm not convinced that garmin have addressed the GPS issues that the F3 has (IMO!). They've sold so many Fenix watches I'm not sure that they actually care that much.

@jminar: Well, given the accuracy of gps the f5 does pretty decent yeah, but I compare it to other garmin devices which simply give a more smooth, proper, well formed path (imo). Comparing the 935 with the F5 it's pretty obvious the F5 is more wriggly right? The 935 isn't perfectly straight, but way smoother compared to the F5.

So yeah, I hope/expect the F5 to also be able to do that. All the wriggling adds up, it indicates a less stable signal (or worse handling of the signal) and given other watches do better I would really like the F5 to be up to par.

No, the F5 isn't bad... But it's worse then plenty of other devices.

@WEBVAN: Sure, see attachment. I think it's just a matter of unzipping and copying the .prg file to the phone in the APPS folder (connecting the watch to your pc). Guess that's the only way atm as I just did this quick and dirty for myself. It's largely based on the PositionSample sample in the sdk btw.

Pressing the select button resets the counters in the app (in the beginning when signal is worse the distances add up quickly and that allows you to set it back to 0)

there looks to be much more jitter in the f5x track ? 200m more. Along the side of the river there should have been a clear view of the sky. The great thing about comparing the 935 to the F5 is that most of the hardware and the GPS smoothing algorithms should be the same.

@jminar: Well, given the accuracy of gps the f5 does pretty decent yeah, but I compare it to other garmin devices which simply give a more smooth, proper, well formed path (imo). Comparing the 935 with the F5 it's pretty obvious the F5 is more wriggly right? The 935 isn't perfectly straight, but way smoother compared to the F5.

So yeah, I hope/expect the F5 to also be able to do that. All the wriggling adds up, it indicates a less stable signal (or worse handling of the signal) and given other watches do better I would really like the F5 to be up to par.

No, the F5 isn't bad... But it's worse then plenty of other devices.

Sure, along the river there's more jitter where there shouldn't be any, that's what I said in my post too. But for the rest of the track I wouldn't simply assume that smoothnes means accuracy. And since the 935, just like the Fenix series, has only just been released and has been "tested" by consumers for the last one or two weeks, doesn't mean that the distance is correct. All we are seeing is 6.2 and 6.4, without knowing wheter the track he ran was actually 6.2 km, or if the 935 measured 6.29 and the F5 6.40, leaving 100 meters , or maybe even 6.20 and 6.49. And this is the thing I was trying to say in my original post: run the same track with the same watch 100 times and you will see deviations, run it with 3 different watches and you will see even more deviation, simply because there are way too many factors as to why a GPS track might be good or bad.
Also as long as we haven't seen the inside of any of those watches I wouldn't assume that they are practically the same. Simply because everyone says that the 935 is a F5 in a plastic case doesn't mean that it really is. And looking at the DCR Review of the 935 under Sport Usage you can see that Garmin has tweaked the 935 software at least a little bit from the Fenix Series.

You also have to remember that many of us have been using GPS watches for many years and we know EXACTLY what accuracy to expect from them. And the point of doing direct comparisons like this is so you can see that some watches are worse than others.

I've had my fair share of GPS watches too, but to be honest when I started out running with GPS I never looked at GPS tracks as close as I am doing it now, simply because I knew that those devices were not perfect and I didn't expect them to show me on the right side of a two lane road. On my run yesterday with my F5 it once showed me run 3m next to the road through some gardens, but 15min later I can perfectly see where I ran around a car that unexpectedly drove out of a side street. Would that be a good or bad GPS track then?

Single incidents don't make a track better or worse... the overall trend does.

One thing to note as well is that the tracks are better at higher speeds, on the bike my F5 seems to deliver just about perfect tracks. When running they are still ok overall, but they start to jitter more and there are more deviations from the route. When just walking/hiking though it's just pretty bad and all over the place.

Anyway, we all have different demands and what might be just fine and perfect for one isn't necessarily fine for the other. I might be above average picky about this, but still. I've seen what products can do and it just annoys me that a new and high-end product like this doesn't seem to match those others.

I hate that I love the watch in all other aspects so much :P Otherwise it would be a no-brainer and I would swap it for the 935.

Could anyone post some walking/hiking tracks, please? Because of terrible hiking tracks and even walking in perfect conditions (my Edge 800 and FR 630 did much better), I had to return my F3. My F5 is on it's way and if the history repeats and Garmin didn't improve in this regard, it will be quite "amusing".

I think one got posted last week (by FlipStone I believe) and it looked terrible but it was with v2.40/GPSv4.20 and v2.72/GPSv4.22 has improved things a bit but the problems remain compared to other watches, including it's "sister" the FR935 still on GPSv4.20. As FlipStone said the faster you go the better the track will look because the "jittering" will be spread out on a much longer distance (think distance covered by second). The predictive algorithms will work better too.

@FlipStone - thanks for the PRG, installed on my F5 (no more room on my FR235 but I guess it would work too?). It's too bad Garmin no longer let you record a good old NMEA file to look at what signal the chip is working with.

Anytime :) Think it should work on the 235 as well, haven't actually tried it on my 735xt yet. Only issue I can think of is lines not fitting (or perhaps some connectiq api being used not (yet) supported on the 235). I'll give it a shot this evening with the 735xt to see what it looks like.

Could anyone post some walking/hiking tracks, please? Because of terrible hiking tracks and even walking in perfect conditions (my Edge 800 and FR 630 did much better), I had to return my F3. My F5 is on it's way and if the history repeats and Garmin didn't improve in this regard, it will be quite "amusing".

About hiking tracks, well... I mainly gave it a try walking the dog a (small) round and this is what it looks like:

http://www.mygpsfiles.com/app/#ueuCXXUH

Now that is including standing still or very slow walking but it's just... blegh.

Doh, it really doesn't look very well. It indeed reminds me of how F3 worked for me when released. Hiking is very important for me and if dedicated outdoor watch like F5 can't produce similar quality tracks like any other "generic" device, then alright - I won't bother - bye bye F5, welcome FR935. Hopefully my F5 comes before weekend, so I can test it.

Thanks.

Could anyone post some walking/hiking tracks, please? Because of terrible hiking tracks and even walking in perfect conditions (my Edge 800 and FR 630 did much better), I had to return my F3. My F5 is on it's way and if the history repeats and Garmin didn't improve in this regard, it will be quite "amusing".

Here you go mate! No complaints here.
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1652098293

Here you go mate! No complaints here.
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1652098293

That one looks pretty fine indeed!

What were the settings used here, smart or 1sec and gps only or + glonass?