I am pretty disappointed with the newly acquired Fenix 5X. I got it primarily for the mapping and GPS on the trail capability. However, when I took it the Appalachian Trail this week on a five day trip and the information such as Total Ascent, Distance, and GPS signal were all really bad and did not reflect the true information at all. I am attempting to attach some of the screens of the GPS signals during the trip on here hopefully you all can see what I tried to describe. The watch lost GPS so many times on the trail and when reconnected it just connected a straight line from where it lost signal to where it received signal again.....All the relative information such as ascending and total travel distance were all messed up and not even coming close to reality....on top of that the Trace Back To Start is now useless since the GPS lost signal too many times and keep connecting from point to point.....I am not sure I did anything wrong or the Fenix 5X GPS signal is not just up to par like a regular stand-alone GPS. Any comments are appreciated. ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1372338.jpgciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1372339.jpg
I don’t know the area, alas I am from the UK. But from experience woodland impacts on GPS signals and the watch will loose site of the satellites it needs to correctly calculate you’re position.
I run with GPS and GLONASS enabled and this helps. But ultimately the face needs clear view of the sky to get a good fix for trail work.
hope that helps, as I doubt it’s youre watch, more likely the terrain,
Hmmm - It shouldn't be that bad. I ride in North Florida in some pretty wooded forest and while its not perfect it does follow the trails close enough to be very useable. That's using just GPS only and 1 second recording. Switch off all that 3D stuff too.
I wouldn't use auto-pause (if you do) while walking - I find it doesn't pick up the movement again sometimes and you'll get joins there. I had the same with biking, esp on slow technical sections - I ended up using a speed sensor and it works better with that. The preference would be pause the session yourself when stopping. That's my experience anyway.
The 5X is pretty average with GPS but you should be getting better than you are seeing, imho.
As ikim1967 already mentioned it looks like the auto pause function stopped the track recording. The watch will never lose the GPS signal, even in the middle of a tunnel :rolleyes::rolleyes:. In other words, it is tracking always "something" and doesn't connect points with a straight line, like in your example. I see two options: Either set the auto pause speed to its minimum (1 mile), but then you have to be always as fast as this ;) or disable the function at all and stop the tracking manually
Emtec99, you are probably right since I changed my watch from manual to auto-stop before I left for the trip. I will try to switch it back to see if it works....many thanks for all the comments and suggestions above.
