When I updated to the latest update (3.20) it seems like floors climbed are inaccurate when I'm inside. However, might this be for the different pressure inside? It worked fine before the update though. Floors descended are also inaccurate now.
Can confirm. Had the same observation in the 3.11 Beta. Floors counted are now less than before and "fluctuate" strongly on a day-by-day basis. Cleaned the sensor. So that can not be it.
... today I found, when checking service menu, that I was on v3.10..., all my observations was unlesses because old FW...
I have Instinct my 2 weeks, and only v3.20. climbed floors is unusable. I live in house with stairs, I use stairs more than 20x daily (we have 3 childrens there is a lot of opportunities run up and down...), and after two weeks of using was max climbed floors 2.... but floor climbing is not my primary activity so I can live without it. I will check it in high building in near future.
This is something I’ve noticed lately as well. I work in a three-floor building. Always use the stairs when going up. Today I’ve been up and down at least 10 times. Should be 30 floors, right? Well, watch says only 7. Pretty much a head scratcher. (I’m on version 3.2, btw)
Update: For me that has now happened on another two days within the last 14 days. Seems to happen arbitrarily. Rebooting the watch seems not to help. I repeat again: Sensor is clean. Never experienced that before 3.20.
Prior to upgrading to 3.1 (2.6 and 2.8), I noticed that my floors climbed for the day often reported too high on a day with an elevation gain activity. On the 2.x releases, it appeared that any activity was being double counted (e.g. after a morning hike with 340 ft of elevation gain, the watch would show 70 floors climbed). Starting with 3.1, the problem is reversed – activities seem to not count as much. I will say that the amount of under-reporting is not consistent – some days it is closer than others. The release notes for 3.1 suggested that they "fixed" an issue for over-reporting floors.
I believe there is a software issue with the way the watch is sorting out floors climbed, particularly on days with activities. Or, it may be on any day when I have a lot of climbing. I'm actually pretty happy with the altimeter, as it seems to perform quite well during most activities.
To summarize:
The sensor seems pretty good: elevation gain logged to an activity seems pretty accurate (this includes cycling where the Instinct is probably better than my Edge 500)
Floors climbed is sometimes pretty accurate, and sometimes erratic
On 2.6 and 2.8, the floors climbed almost always over-reported on days with "elevation gain" activities
On 3.1, and 3.2, floors climbed is now, on occasion, under-reporting days with activities (or elevation gain)
Garmin Support looked into my data (shortly after 3.1) and felt that Floors Climbed was operating in an acceptable manner, save a few erratic days. I guess I've resigned myself to be happy with the elevation accuracy during an activity, with the hope they will eventually fix Floors Climbed.
... today I found, when checking service menu, that I was on v3.10..., all my observations was unlesses because old FW...
I have Instinct my 2 weeks, and only v3.20. climbed floors is unusable. I live in house with stairs, I use stairs more than 20x daily (we have 3 childrens there is a lot of opportunities run up and down...), and after two weeks of using was max climbed floors 2.... but floor climbing is not my primary activity so I can live without it. I will check it in high building in near future.
after 5 days on v3.20 is situation same as before.
question is how exactly is Floors Climbed measured. Is there minimum floor height? Or it is combination movements on stairs and pressure change? iPhone 6 is more accurate now.
Garmin uses the typical metric - 3 m / 10 ft equates to 1 floor. It seems to update at the top of each minute. Garmin Support has advised me that for outdoor activity, the uphill motion must be constant and on a slope of at least 10%. However, my Instinct, at times, definitely credits floors on grades of less than 10%. I can see how pausing in the middle of a climb might result in a reset for the current "floor", but that does not explain the erratic performance of my device.
Yesterday, I did a morning walk activity with 360 ft. of climbing registered. After that walk, the watch showed 32 floors climbed (pretty reasonable). Later, I did a trail run activity with over 800 ft of steep elevation gain registered (close - should have been about 1000). But, the floors climbed only increased by about 13 for a total of 45 floors. Once again, the sensor works reasonably well for an activity, but "floors climbed" is way off.
Climbed 88 floors, and my Instinct stopped at 20. Didn't budge after that... tried removing it from the wrist, knowing that altimeter sensor might be clogged with sweat, but it remained at 20.
