Is the gps still off on the 5s?

I have created a 7.43km route last weekend, ran it, and the watch measured it as 7.44km. I've never had any significant issues but I run in a suburban neighbourhood with not many tall buildings or trees. When I was in Singapore the GPS the track was much worse - as it was with any other device. So it depends a lot on where do you run.

There is a lenghty tread on GPS accuracy (or inaccuracy), no need to create a new one.

According to my experience (160 runs with 5s), the overall distance is usually OK (+/- 100m on 10k run). But if I look on the map, the tracking is allways horrible - 20m outside the track is normal. Also instant pace is not usable, if you want to run according to it.

So I really don´t recommend this overpriced piece of scrap.

(In attachment comparison with fénix 3 - no buildings, no trees, bright sky... and this is how it looks):

ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1308809.jpg

Yeah. GPS is a mixed bag; as some of you will have seen from other posts of mine, I now use a footpod for distance, pace, instant pace. The GPS not only has real issues with overall distance in my case, it also indeed tracks outside the road/path, cuts corners massively, and gives me a seriously different result every time. Finally, the accuracy/precision changes every time the watch has to re-calibrate the GPS satellites.

Never has been of on my 5S.
Hope I do not jynx it lol

I'm not sure what you mean by the GPS being "off" on the Fenix 5. On mine, is been almost perfect, maybe off by 0.05 miles occasionally. Unless I'm surrounded by tall buildings, which is very rare for me, I never have ANY problems.

Let me give you an impression of what "off" means.
First, since FW 7.6 (let's see what 7.8 brings), the GPS takes ages to find satellites after either a soft reset, or changing locale.
This means: until FW 7.6, even acquiring satellites from scratch would take I would say really max 3 mins. Now, on both occasions where the watch had to reacquire satellites after upgrade to FW 7.6, the watch had not locked after more than 5 minutes (!), so I had (for scheduling reasons of my own) to start the run without full satellite lock. Once it has finally locked on, the same run the next day day will be much easier, I usually get full lock within 10 seconds.
But that first time - I just don't understand what's going on.

Second issue (independent of FW level) that I've reported many times now, is that when looking at the track on a map afterwards, it's as if it was run in less than sober condition: it cuts corners by as much as 10-20 m, places the track off the path or road, cuts across fields, etc etc.
Before using a footpod I had to rely on the watch GPS for distance and pace, and it got to the point where I would have to manually correct the total distance of my "standard" run in order to have a semblance of coherence between runs: distance between runs would vary by 200-300 m (on 5.5 k, i.e. close to 10%), average pace obviously the same, on one specific lap in my run it would cut the track by so much that the lap duration would be extended by between 20 and 30 secs compared to what I get now with the footpod etc, etc, etc.

True - my standard track is in the city, and part of it is between buildings - fair enough. But over half of my track is in a park, which sits on top of a hill and only has trees in it with no buildings let alone tall ones anywhere near the path I'm running on, and only one potential reception issue which is that about 1k is in a depression. But we're talking depression (surrounded by slopes), not valley or canyon.

It's just not ok to have this level of inconsistency between runs in a device of this price range. Everybody understands that a miniature GPS device which is moving all the time, cannot possibly have the same precision as a car unit, or a much larger shipping or airplane unit. But the kinds of tracks I'm getting are borderline laughable (they look fine bird's eye view, but zoom in even a little and they're... "off").

NB: since I use the footpod, total distance varies by max 25m between runs which is totally within the variation linked to different points of crossing roads, starting or ending the run 5m earlier or later, etc. The same for average pace which still varies, but by less than 10secs per km between runs.

It's always off, which throws the pace tracking off, which throws the vo2 max off, which throws the training status off...

Still this nonsense drags on. I have used my 5s on 183 runs, as at last night, and sure sometimes that track is off a bit but overall there are no real issues with the GPS. I have run in Asia, New Zealand, New York, Australia, Europe. I have run marathons, half marathons, and lots and lots of training runs. I have run in the countryside and amongst the buildings in cities. Distance is normally within a few tens of metres. My suggestion is to recognise the limitation of wrist worn GPS devices and concentrate on your running, not on minor issues with the watch.

Summary: if you care about gps accuracy, dont buy the fenix line. Go with 935.

Agree with MKWillisSP. Nothing wrong with GPS accuracy on the Fenix 5S. I have owned a Polar V800 before - the generally agreed precision standard - and it had its share of distance accumulatation issues as well. For instance when using a footpod in tunnels, there was sometimes double distance counting. When comparing the smoothness of the recorded trail, I would say that the V800 trails looked a bit smoother but in terms of distance accumulatation I don't see any significant difference on the 5S. Never off by more than 1%.