Outdoor Recreation Archive

fēnix 5 Series Altimeter Malfunction

Altimeter Malfunction

Former Member over 7 years ago

I'm having an issue with my altimeter on my 5x. It goes up and down while sitting on the table next to me-currently a high of 3067 and a low of -467 over the last hour. I live at 1000 ft asl. Prior to that, I didn't notice any issue and the graph shows it steady until it moved up 2000ft in a short time and then dropped to negative numbers, so this appears to have just manifested itself. I live at 1000 ft asl. I can watch it drop and when I re-calibrate it starts moving again immediately on its own. I have an early 5x, (April '17), so i'm wondering if anyone with an early 5x has had similar problems.

EDIT: It appears to have self corrected. It was pretty disturbing to just watch my altimeter drop 3 or 4ft a second while just sitting here. Hopefully it won't happen again, but now I'm wary.

0 Sean_Starkey over 7 years ago

I had a similar issue with an early 5x and contacted support. They are sending me a new watch.

0 jose.cboliveira over 7 years ago

Go to fenix 5 forum. There is a long thread about the subject.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I'n still having issues yesterday and today. Today, I've had a high of 6000+ ft and a low of -49,000. I reset my watch to default to see if that helped and now I'm not getting any readings for the barometer and temp. I guess an RMA is in my future.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-the-trail/wrist-worn/fenix-5x/1291923-brand-new-device-rip

15 days without watch now.

0 thigger over 7 years ago

Great :( Mine is still working but every Garmin with a barometer I have owned for more than a few months has gone the same way (I never had a good answer from Garmin support; I asked DC Rainmaker and he reckons it's something that seems to happen to some people but not others). I'm religious about rinsing the watch so sweat/chlorine etc aren't there longer than necessary. One of the reasons I bought the 5X rather than the 935 was because the greater waterproof rating made me hope it's better built inside.
On the plus side my watch face displays altitude so I'll know pretty quickly when it happens!

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I think all Garmin devices use the same baro so since this instrument is exposed to the outer environment for obvious reasons, the waterproof rating doesn't matter.
Strangely this didn't happen with the 920 (but only had it for a few weeks) or the F3 (but I was asked to send it back twice for the GPS and only sent it back once) but it did happen 4 times in a row with the 910. It's got to have something to do with the instrument itself, too low quality and prone to break down with use.

Sorry but I don't think the guy you mentioned has any authority, credibility or competence in judging the reliability of devices.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Just as a data point, I've had every new Fenix pretty much on release day since the line was launched. I wear them daily. I generally run 3 days per week and bike 3 days per week. I don't always use my Fenix on rides, but for the last six months or so I usually do. I'm a VERY heavy sweater, and seriously it's about six full months out of the year that I'm soaked in sweat on my run within 15 minutes of starting. I also wear my Fenix for all manner of salt water activities for two solid weeks each year, which include heavy dousing in the ocean. I also use it for various other watersports throughout the summer. I've snorkeled with it down to 20 feet deep at times.

I never ever rinse it just to rinse it. I don't shower with it. I mostly just ignore it. Knock on wood, I've never had a barometer issue with one. I post this mostly to make the point that I *seriously* doubt it's anything a user is doing to cause this. I think there seem to be a reasonably high occurrence of sensors that fail, and some people are just more unlucky than others.

--Donnie

0 AllanOlesen67 over 7 years ago

I never ever rinse it just to rinse it.

We don't know that rinsing the watches will do a difference.

We do know that some users have experienced that submerging the watch in (soap) water will do a difference to a problem which seems to be caused by static electricity.

The difference between rinsing and submerging may seem as nitpicking, but it isn't. My point is that we don't know if the improvement comes from debris being removed, or from water or soap being added, but the apparent static electricity cause points to the latter option.

If so, your described activities with a lot of submerging may actually be beneficial to the watch.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Hmm, good point. I will say that in the winter I go 3-4 months without submerging, though I probably run with it once a month or so in rain, anyway. Hmm.

--Donnie

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I sweat a lot too (spinning) but I am between 2 and 3 hours a day in the swimming pool. Due to foul weather I seldom biked outside this winter but the first baro failure happened on a road bike ride (flat barometer), no dirt whatsoever (I do fall pretty often on the MTB but never real crashes nor dirt and the last off-road ride before the first failure was over a month earlier) and the second happened overnight (I almost never wear the F5x when I sleep) so I saw the -22.000 meters altitude as soon as I woke up and knew something had happened.

You can call luck out of this: when you have 2 broken watches in 6 months (total is SEVEN Garmin RMAs so far and it should have been EIGHT but I turned down an RMA because I knew the GPS wasn't broken, just POOR) you're getting a bad batch from production and it should be up to the local tech support to give you an RMA from the newer batches to prevent you from breaking another watch and just waste time. I pray this is the reason why I've been waiting 2 weeks for the F5X to get back to me but really there's no guarantee.

Keep in mind I never had a broken baro with Suunto's T6c, D, Ambit2 and Ambit3 but I've had 4 FR910XT broken baros. It's not the user... it's low quality hardware.