Wrong, he says it give the best distance/pace accuracy.
So if pacing and distance is most important, then you should be using a footpod. Seems a cheap solution to get the best data
How do you know that the F5 isn't correct and your 235 is wrong?
Like I said before. My racing has been more consistent with my training given consistently slightly slower paces. I was routinely disappointed with race performances with the 910xt.
Anyway another run today and while the overall distance was very close 16.01 for the FR235 vs 16.02 for the F5, the F5 lost the plot (track has cut corners, early turns as analyzed on GE) for some reason between Lap 1 and Lap 2 where it lost 40 meters...but thanks to its usual "gain" over the FR235 it had caught up by lap 13. The end of lap 1 had four 180°s to change banks over a bridge. I would have thought that its gyroscope would have helped but it didn't. As a result the F5 gave me a pace of 4'59"/km vs the 4'46"/km of the FR235 (correct distance as measured on Openrunner), something that would really have had me worried during a race! So yes some are going to say that you shouldn't follow your watch during a race, that generally there are mile markers, etc...possibly, however why have to deal with this kind of inconsistency when you don't have to?
Is the duration of those two activities the same? Because if it is, that would mean that Garmin calculates avg. pace by dividing the total amount of data point values by the amount of data points, which is somewhat inaccurate since there might be faulty data somewhere in the set. But still, that would be the only possible explanation for why you got such different paces versus the total distances being quite similar.
Yes 100% simultaneous recordings to allow for a meaningful comparison and with autolap at 1km with a vibration that's why I went back to Google Earth to see what had happened at the end of lap 2 for which I got a timing/pace of 4'59"/km on the F5 vs 4'46"/km on the FR235. As it turns out the F5 suddenly "lost" 40 meters, i.e. the 1000 meters on the FR235 were only 960 meters on the F5. The overall pace happened to be correct at the end after the F5 had gradually "made up" for the lost distance with its "wobbling" around compared to the FR235's straight tracks.
This happened with my Fenix 5 on my 13.1 mile run on Sunday. GPS + GONASS:
It seems there are (tall ?) buildings to the South on which GPS signals could have "bounced" and not properly been filtered out by the F5, the "multipath" problem.
If you dig deeper in to the comments on the Facebook post and the fellrnr website, it's clear he hasn't finished testing yet, hence a zero in the first table. If you look at the table in section 2 here http://fellrnr.com/wiki/Best_Running_Watch there's just a blank for the 5X in the GPS accuracy column. Perhaps best to wait until the guy's actually finished testing before leaping to conclusions.
Also worth noting that an early 'not promising' is relative to his testing environment and that a lot of more recent GPS watches, from all manufacturers, are falling short of his 'bar' of acceptability. It seems the solution to truely reliable pace and distance in the more challenging environments for GPS reception is a calibrated foot pod.
I keyed in on this statement of his:
"I'm hopeful that Garmin will update the firmware to improve GPS accuracy. Right now I don't have much data (~100 data points) but it's really doing rather badly."
Someone really ought to ask him whether he's using Smart or every second recording. At one point I reported here that he had written in his methodology section of the website that he uses Smart recording, because he said the setting didn't seem to make any difference in his outcomes, one way or the other.
Seems odd that "How Fast are you Running?" and "Where Am I?" are both a 5, and "How far did you Run?" is a 0. Seems based on everyone elses testing distance accrual would not be a 0. Something wrong here I think possibly.
Why not post the question in that Facebook thread? While you're at it, ask him whether he's still using Smart recording, something I reported seeing in his methodology last year. At that time, he wrote that he saw no difference between Smart and Every Sec.
Yes 100% simultaneous recordings to allow for a meaningful comparison and with autolap at 1km with a vibration that's why I went back to Google Earth to see what had happened at the end of lap 2 for which I got a timing/pace of 4'59"/km on the F5 vs 4'46"/km on the FR235. As it turns out the F5 suddenly "lost" 40 meters, i.e. the 1000 meters on the FR235 were only 960 meters on the F5. The overall pace happened to be correct at the end after the F5 had gradually "made up" for the lost distance with its "wobbling" around compared to the FR235's straight tracks.
Didn't realize that pace was only for one lap, sorry!
