GPS issues all of a sudden - past few weeks (Nov/Dec 2020)

Certainly not normal behavior and, if caused by the update, I have not seen it (and I would have expected a major thread here it is was widespread).  Have you gone through the various resets (soft - press and hold the top left for 20 seconds or so - does not loose any data) to the full reset (need to set up the watch again)?  Support will ask you to do this anyway so I would suggest you give it a try as it might fix some corruption going on.  Hopefully not a GPS chip issue (you could run the diagnostics).

I have tried a soft reset but it has happened again since. It doesn't happen every single run but seems to be most of the time now. Strange that the distance starts immediately counting on the watch but the map track doesn't begin where the watch was started. 

Run the diagnostic (can't off hand remember the steps so google it)) just to see if anything is showing up with an issue then I suggest you bite the bullet and do a full reset.  I'm assuming you are out of warranty.  Regardless, you might try calling support.

Thanks for the info. I have now tried a hard reset which didnt have any affect - still problems. This morning I tried rolling back the firmware to v13 and still problems persist. I might contact Garmin Support.

I had once this problem and it was a problem with auto pause. The watch sometime stopped recording the position that's why you get a straight line to the end or in the middle of your tour.

I don't have auto pause enabled so it can't be that.

I have figured out a workaround so far - record a 5+ min run activity and discard before starting the proper run. This seems to have worked the past week. I have been just starting a run activity 5 mins before my run and discarding rather than saving. Once this is done I start the run again and the tracks record properly. Still quite annoying having to do this.  

I got a gps loss a few dozen times in 2020 which was disappointing after virtually none in 2019

Thought it was finally over maybe with firmware updates but nope, Started 2021 will massive gps loss yesterday.

The craziest thing is it started with GPS, lost it after the first half mile, then 4 miles later decided again and then 8 miles later decided to drop it again.

The weather could not have been more clear and fine and same route I use without issues other days. Low traffic because Sunday.

What upsets me most is that garmin REFUSES to add any kind of warning or indicator in the middle of an activity started with GPS, suddenly loses it. They should flash a red ring around the dial, the opposite of the green gps lock circle at the start.

I've looked at the FIT data and the lat/lon just goes "invalid" the watch is just getting bad data from the gps chip.

A theory is that as garmin watches age the gps chip starts to lose it. They supposedly switched to sony gps chips for power savings but there may have been other issues with the mediatek gps chip that finally made them quit (I hear the sony chip has worse issues).

Garmin if you can't fix this, give up a red flashing ring circle when GPS is lost in the middle of an activity that was started with gps.

ps. it's not the EPO.BIN  because I've been using a direct daily update from mediatek that I thought was working the past couple months

hello, i have simillar problem, have you finally solved this?