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Altimeter Fenix 5

This morning, as I always do, I drove 22 miles to work in the North west of England. According to several websites there is a difference in altitude between my start and finish points of circa 220 feet, the altimeter on my Fenix 5 shows no difference in altitude at any time in the last 4 hours. Is there a setting that I have wrong or is it a faulty unit?

I've had the watch less than a week so haven't noticed this before, so I don't know if this is the first occasion or whether or not the unit has been showing different altitudes previously.

Any assistance would be really appreciated.

0 wahnamch over 7 years ago

I was using the stock analog face when this problem occurred (had 2 other watch faces installed, though). Now using a different analog face. The issue improved significantly before changing the watch face (and deleting the unused ones).

Just my experience (to date)

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I also suspected wtach faces or other widget issues and tried to remove them one by one to identify the potential root cause, but I got no improvement with altimeter behaviour. At the end I made several factory resets when having the altimeter issue and the problem was still there with the fresh installation (with default settings and free of any watch face or any other widget). But the warm water / soap for at least 30min always fixed the situation, at least temporary... The problem now is that it seems to be less and less efficient as the altimeter issues comes back less than 24h before the soap treatment. I think of requesting RMA again (2nd time) but I do not imagine to have better results with a new F5 as it seems to be software or hardware related. Now I am wondering if the users that are not complaining are simply not using the altimeter function, or if it realy exists some F5 free of altimeter issue.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Still problem free after deleting all downloaded watchfaces (except I still kept and currently use “Quattro”). I was suspecting maybe “Actiface” just because it’s so popular and I only had 3 watch faces installed...
so far so good. Haven’t had any problems and have been logging altitude and baro pressure every hour I’m at work (while going up and down stairs throughout the day) and it’s been accurate since deleting watch faces.
Hope it stays that way!!

0 Peter_Ista over 7 years ago

I just factory defaulted my Fenix 5 and it is still syncing with my phone but the altimeter is still going crazy.
Maybe i have to let it sync first and then i will reboot it and see what happens.
One day one the stairs where counted pretty good but after playing with settings and installing watchfaces and extra options the the stairs where not deteced anymore and i noticed the strange altimeter readings.
Could it perhaps be strava segments? I have a lot of them which are synced to the watch as well.

0 SebLeclercq over 7 years ago

I delete all watchfaces and no problems from last Wednesday until today.

My altimeter moved without any reason from 250m to 850m this afternoon.

I recalibrate many times and it seems to be stabilize now...

0 chloe2 over 7 years ago

I deleted all of my Connect IQ watch faces 48 hours ago (had Actiface and others) after having crazy barometer/altimeter/thermometer issues (invalid readings, etc.) and after a couple of hours all of the sensors started producing valid results. The sensors have seemed pretty stable (within reason) over the last 48 hours .... we will see if that continues. I keep my watch in altimeter mode so I can have accurate step counts (like to climb the 5 stories of steps at work). I am beginning to wonder if this really is a software issue/instability versus a hardware issue.

One other idea is that the sensors are flaking out/glitching sometimes and certain watch faces prevent the Fenix from correcting the glitches... or there is a software driver flaw/bug in the pressure/temperature sensor readout.

0 wahnamch over 7 years ago

Unless I am mistaken (can happen ;) ), I had no issues prior to FW 7.10.

Although my altimeter seems relatively stable at the moment, I am tending towards a SW issue (hope, maybe).

0 Peter_Ista over 7 years ago

After defaulting my watch i installed one wachtface which i really like and went for a run in the evening. All day long the altitude was the same which should be the case for me.
While running it seemed to be fine untill the last 15 minutes or so.
I saw that the power was 0 while this worked while running in the beginning. Also the height went to 8000 meter which is impossible in the Netherlands :) and the temperature went down to -3 degrees celcius which was also not the case, it was around 10 degrees celcius..
I am starting to thinks that it is software related as power and height has nothing to do with each other.

Here is the activity where you can see it going crazy just before the hour:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2428633015

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

My F5 altimeter issues started when the watch was almost brand new. After the the initial problems I had a full week of excellent measuring. Yesterday the altimeter went crazy again and it has been on a roller coaster all day (6000-12000m asl).
The ambient pressure was completely wrong (300-700mbar going up and down for no reason); this, as far as I understoond, is supposed to be a raw measure without any software processing and makes me think the problem is sensor related. In this case, I wonder why it has been working properly for a week (I kept it double-checked against local Weather Station official value). Could it be software related?
Oddly enough today looks fine again…so far.
What should I do??
Give the watch back straight away and go for a completely different product?
Have it replaced by Garmin an hope a new F5 work alright?
Just wait and hope Garmin fixes a possible software bug?

By th eway, does anybody know if Garmin is seriously looking into it?

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I deleted all of my Connect IQ watch faces 48 hours ago (had Actiface and others) after having crazy barometer/altimeter/thermometer issues (invalid readings, etc.) and after a couple of hours all of the sensors started producing valid results. The sensors have seemed pretty stable (within reason) over the last 48 hours .... we will see if that continues. I keep my watch in altimeter mode so I can have accurate step counts (like to climb the 5 stories of steps at work). I am beginning to wonder if this really is a software issue/instability versus a hardware issue.

One other idea is that the sensors are flaking out/glitching sometimes and certain watch faces prevent the Fenix from correcting the glitches... or there is a software driver flaw/bug in the pressure/temperature sensor readout.

I'm having the same issues as everyone here. I'm leaning towards a software issue based on what I'm seeing, but will have to elaborate later.

I did just want to note that I am keeping the watchmode set at barometer which seems to help, but more importantly doesn't mess up the stair climbing data somehow. FYI.