Hey there everyone. Former Fenix 3 owner who counts himself lucky for dodging all the reported problems the 3HR had with its altimeter/barometer...... I've had a Fenix 5 Sapphire on ver 4.1 for the past two months or so with no issues, until around 2 weeks ago. I was walking around my house in the morning (having only been out of bed for about an hour) when I received a GOAL alert for completing my stairs goal (set at default of 10 flights)...... well this is weird as I don't have stairs in my house and I hadn't left the house at all for the hour I'd been awake. So...... I went to my ABC widget and noted that my altitude was all over the place. If you check out the pictures you'll see the watch suddenly decided I had climbed to 7,224 feet from my normal level of around 200-200 feet.....and then quickly dropped down to -1,786 feet. You'll note that after that the altimeter reads 203 feet and remained steady for the next 3 hours or so. The 203 feet was based on a manual calibration after I noted the huge variations. The shot of Garmin Connect for stair shows that the watch thought I climbed 26 flights and descended 2 during that weird episode. I can attest to the fact that there were no pressure gradient changes/systems in the area. Stable pressure was present.
The next day I went for a run and noted the watch was down at -1,500 feet or something weird like that (my home elevation is around 220 feet but the watch is off a good bit and I have to set it low to match the local airport barometer readings)....... anyway, so I manually corrected the watch to around 180 feet, started the run app, waited for GPS and then went running. Note here that I have the GPS "auto cal" during activities set to off. During my run on a known course I received the one mile lap alert WAY early (about 1/4 mile early based on mapping it after). When I got home I noted the altimeter had drifted from where I had set it back down to -1,640 feet and the activity elevation graph shows me at -1,640 for the duration of the run. Since 1,640 feet is about a 1/4 of a mile, I think the watch took the descent distance and the distance I had run and decided I had hit one mile (based on my descent and my forward movement).
Since then I have been on vacation walking all over Washington, D.C for a week, watching the watch altitude like a hawk. I have only had the chance to do one run since the last run I mention above. I haven't had the HUGE fluctuations noted above, but I do see a couple of hundred feet up and down every now and then. On my latest run the watch altitude was wrong, but I elected not to fool with it (recalibrate manually or with GPS) as to not induce the same issue I had on my previous run, and all went well. The watch caught the variations of my course (pretty flat running), but just at a lower and incorrect altitude the whole time.
I will save you a lot of typing and say here that I have experimented putting the watch in Barometer and Altimeter modes with the same weird things happening over the course of the past weeks (I keep it in Auto normally and that's what it was in with the initial incident). I've also tried manual and GPS recals and it will hold for varying times before it drifts again.... sometimes it holds for a few hours, sometimes a day or more. It varies. I will also say my F3 had some altitude drifts in the Auto mode, but maybe 10-20 feet over the course of a few days.... nothing like this. And I NEVER saw a negative altitude on it like I keep seeing on this one.
I rinse the watch in fresh water in the sink after every run or swim so I don't think it's an issue with something in the sensor. I've powered the watch off and back on numerous times. I've syncd with GC with both my phone and via the computer. I really don't want to reset the watch to factory settings but I'm thinking that's the next step to rule out software.
So, with all that, if you've read this far good on you!!!!! Any thoughts on this? Thanks! ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1239045.png ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1239046.jpg ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1239047.jpg
