I ado tend to believe expecting within 1% or similar compared to other watches that have good tracks and/or measure courses is unreasonable. I would not have returned to F3's if they were less than even 5% off. But, both of mine were routinely 5-10% off. Granted, I run in the mountains, sometimes under deep cover, in canyons, etc. I'd love to see some examples of long trail runs in those conditions, but since my 5x arrives in a few days, I"ll just compare it to my A3P and previously recorded fenix 1/2/3, 920XT, etc. tracks and return it if Garmin still hasn't figured it out. Thankfully REI allows for plenty of testing time.
Morning! A quick run in the park, consisting of two loops and one smaller circle towards the end. I did a similar (but longer version of the run yesterday, as you can see from my Garmin Connect profile);
I'll speak for myself to say for the 90 days I had a F3 when they first came out, the accuracy was TERRIBLE for me. Like why bother with gps. It would lose 0.02-0.05/mile on the same run day in and day out and badly cut corners which made the distance loss obvious. Every other Garmin I've had before and since were all acceptable. Buying the highest end watch to get the worst performance was not acceptable for me. I was very concerned whether the F5 would be more like my others or the F3. 2 runs in and all seems good so far. If it stays that way I'll quickly not be pouring over my tracks and whatnot once I feel it's trustworthy. In fact once I trust them it's very rare I ever look at a track.
It sounds as though you missed out on the major update to the F3 GPS firmware, though, which made a really big difference. Before that, I was seeing the shortest distances ever on my local park run, which is accurately measured but very hard on gps, with the tree cover and switchbacks. Afterwards, it was in the ballpark with other watches, including an Ambit 2.
Ha!! Same experience as with F3. For the F3 it seemed to be just a wrong implementation of the compass data. I used to run short circles in the wrong direction if I took a sharp turn. Thats why I shut off the compass on my F3 completely. Maybe the same algorithms are being used on the F5 also...
Its nice to have compass, accelerator, gyroscope, whatever data. But they should be implemented right! Otherwise each GPS devices without these stuff and with a cheap plasics casing is superior for 1/10th of the costs....
But overall, I'm also of the opinion that the F5 has improved against the F3. The remaining question is, how much has it improved... :rolleyes:
Unfortunately it seems like yesterday was a fluke because I wore it on the right wrist again today for a short recovery run and got some poor results:
- FR235 : 8.03km - 5'31"/km
- Fenix 5 : 8.09km - 5'34"/km
Nearly a 1% difference again and it's not good pace-wise.
Under 1% difference alone is not that bad. Are you sure FR235 is 100% correct to compare against? The performace of F5 could be actually much better or worse.
perhaps the 235 is 1% out and the F5 is spot on? Or perhaps they are both 0.5% out?
CW
I brought this up in the early days of the 235 release and it seemed that it was the first GPS watch they had owned and were comparing it to either the phone app they'd been using or were coming from the Fitbit world.
When you only have experience with one device those results are what you're used to and expect to see with another device. When the new device varies from expectations it is "wrong" although only in the sense that it differs from the other device.
Well it's not a measured course so they could both be wrong but after 15+ months with the FR235 I know it's very reliable distance wise (much more than my previous FR201/205/405/610) and when looking at its smooth and consistent (very close on the way out and back) track and the F5's "wobbly" track and inconsistencies between the way out and the way back (see example posted previously) it's pretty clear which is one is closer to the mark.
Again 1% doesn't sound like a lot until you see what it does to the pace, try setting out on a marathon 3"/km faster and see what happens...it likely won't be pretty.
I'll probably hit the track tomorrow where GPS watches have a hard time doing better than +3% (even the FR235, the FR610 was ofter at 5%) so that should be interesting.
I have no idea either - it seems like OCD to get concerned about the gps accuracy to the degree it gets discussed, it's not like the Fenix gps accuracy is a life or death decision maker , not sure how ppl coped without gps ....
I would say it's different for everyone. Speaking as a mountain trail runner, GPS accuracy is definitely what I'm paying for when I buy a high-end GPS watch. I can go several months and sometimes years between my visits to certain trails/trail races, and I use my tracks to re-orientate myself. Most trails and trail race courses present their own unique challenges and hazards. My GPS tracks (and the pace/HR data connected to them) are my record of an adventure and a learning tool for future races. I'm not trying to go on a diatribe, just pointing out that spotty GPS will destroy your tracks on a trail run with lots switch-backs and elevation changes. It sounds like people are having more success on successive runs so it's not really an issue anyways. I've always trusted Garmin to improve their hardware and software.
1% is very solid. There are so many nuances as to why a given unit might measure 1% difference, that you'd actually have to dive into every track and see why one is higher than the other. Without doing that, then saying one is right and the other is wrong is no different than doing the opposite.
As a general rule, I try not to use any comparisons with less than three devices. If less than three devices, then I'd stick purely to looking at tracks (never in map mode, always in satellite mode), and then reference that with what my brain says I actually ran.
Also, you'd want to validate both are using 1-second recording, both are using the same GPS/GLONASS settings, and neither are being blocked by the other (i.e. I try to never test on same wrist).
