A little (sad) summary of my experience with the F5

Former Member over 8 years ago

My first GPS watch was the Suunto Ambit 3 in the end of 2015. The price had dropped to 200 Euros (!). I really wanted the F3, but had to skip it, because it was too expensive at that time.
So, I began preparing for my first half marathon. It was a delight running with a watch. I was surprised by the accuracy of the Ambit 3. It recorded my runs very accurate. I could rely on the navigation. The stats were always complete after a run and identical to the stats I recorded with some apps on the smartphone.

When I heard about the F5, I was hyped. The price scared me, but all the functions and the look of this watch allured me. Garmin wasn't new to me. I hike a lot with my etrex. That thing never let me down - NEVER!! And I was in places, I would have never come out of alive without that little helper. So two weeks ago, I decided to join the Fenix Club.

Let's get to the ugly part:
I have done 5 runs with the F5 now. I started with FW Version 2.90. The 2.95 beta hasn't done any improvement regarding my issues with the watch.
In all of my 5 runs the behaviour of the watch made me disappointed. The disappointment turned into anger fast, which made me run faster, but that is not the point.
Here we go:

The pace was jumping from 5:00 min/km to 30:00 min/km every second. Every app showed different behaviour in pace. The result is an erratic pace chart in Garmin Connect.
When navigating, the watch tells me every 20 seconds, that I'm off-course, but I never left the course. 5 seconds later it tells me, that I'm on-course again. It's permanently pushing this notification to the display. Makes navigation painful.
Today, it rebooted twice during a 16km run. At least I was able to resume the run where the watch had stopped recording. So i got that going for me, which is nice.
Garmin Connect showed the 16km run as a 14km run. Because of that, the pace was very slow. But after the sync to Strava, Strava showed the correct distance and pace.

Please don't tell me to get a foot pod or a stopwatch. How come, that watches at the half/third of the price of the F5 do everything they are supposed to do. If the F5 isn't able to show me my current pace, what it is good for then? Look fancy?
Please don't tell me, that you guys were living with these bugs for the last couple of years (F3/F2) and made the best with a bad bargain.

Do I have to wait for Garmin to fix these bugs with FW Updates?
I know I'm not the only one with these kind of problems, so I don't think, that I have a faulty hardware.

Just tell me, that it will get better.

Thanks for reading.

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

Similar to Olu. F's experience, my F3 and now F5x have been stellar in 2+ years of use.

Yes, I've had minor GPS issues with the F5 but the pace & distance have always been spot on & that is what you need to improve - not perfect GPS tracks.

Having read a few reviews of the Suunto Spartan Ultra (their AUD $1k flagship watch) I honestly can't believe how anyone would opt for that unit over the F5X, which retails for the same amount here in Aus and has a ton more features (not to mention mapping).

My experience with the F5X so far has been that it has the best track accuracy of my last 3 watches... In my experience F5X > F3 > Ambit2. So to answer your question - you should return/exchange your F5 rather than waiting for something to improve.

Thanks DKATCHALOV for the suggestion,
I returned my watch, got a new F5 and everything works fine now.

@ChevronLugs
Of course it is just a hobby, but if I spend that much money on a gadget I expect it to work - as a matter of principle :)

0 ChevronLugs over 8 years ago

Thanks DKATCHALOV for the suggestion,
I returned my watch, got a new F5 and everything works fine now.

@ChevronLugs
Of course it is just a hobby, but if I spend that much money on a gadget I expect it to work - as a matter of principle :)

Absolutely, and my post wasn't meant to negate your experience, of which it turns out your first f5 was a dud. Ironically, so was my first f5.

0 --Fred-- over 8 years ago

So far my F5 has been great.

No scratches on the bezel (black Sapphire version)
No crashes or lost workouts
No gps tracking issues

Only issue I've had is with instant pace being slightly erratic. This was probably the same on my F3 but I just never noticed.

All in all I'm quite happy with it. So far it seems superior to my F3 in terms of functionality and gps tracking and so far it's as reliable, in that regard my F3 was rock solid.

Same. GPS doesn't perform any better than on my old FR610 (GLONASS doesn't add anything imho) though, but also not worse. I think we'll have to wait for GNSS to really get a big improvement. The F5 might support it, if Garmin plays nice and doesn't decide to sell us a new watch for it ;)
Not sure the 935 actually performs better, the plural of anecdote is not data...