Design flaw: Sensor opening in the wrong place. What now?

Following multiple complaints about elevation inaccuracies (during Trail Run and Cycling activities), I compared the Instinct against my trusty Fenix3 HR in a controlled test. Placed both devices in the car, drove for 60km and found very small acceptable differences in Distance and Total Ascent numbers. Conducted several more tests along the same lines, similar results. All good.

When the Instinct is worn on the wrist, however, with the sensor opening positioned so close to the skin, sweat and dirt block the sensor opening leading to errors. My daughter rides with the Instinct and on two occasions, one (worn on the wrist) logged significantly lower total ascent than her peers while on her second ride (worn over compression arm sleeve) logged elevation accurately.

Thing is, wearing the watch over an arm sleeve means having to use a chest heart rate monitor instead of the optical one. This appears to be a design flaw that cannot be fixed with firmware!

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0 tafuk2 over 5 years ago

I have to disagree with this as I find elevation inaccuracies even when the instinct is not on my wrist.

I don't get the same inaccuracies during activities on roads compared to on trails (off road) and looks like the instinct smoothes out the bumps. I didn't get this issue with the Fenix.

0 jan.shim over 5 years ago in reply to tafuk2

I have read about that here. We haven't had the Instinct long enough to experience other anomalies yet.

0 SCHLOEMOE over 5 years ago

I'm noticing the same thing too! Glad i'm not alone, i often get a storm warning when i'm into my run (generally a similar duration into the activity). Also, when hiking my elevation/steps climbed is hopeless...might as well not have the feature!

0 GeoffR over 5 years ago in reply to SCHLOEMOE

I opened a support ticket with Garmin Support on the "floors climbed" issue several months ago, but they never really acknowledged the issue despite a few pretty good examples. They did provide a few possible reasons why the floors climbed did not match elevation gain during an activity: must be registered as consistent (non-stop) movement with a 10% grade. However, I just find "floors climbed" to be really a crap-shoot: sometimes it works, often it significantly under-measures - particularly when I'm doing a run/hike activity.

Perhaps it would help if others also submitted this issue to Garmin. From an activity tracking standpoint, floors climbed on my fitbit was my favorite single metric. On the Instinct, it is pretty worthless.

0 SCHLOEMOE over 5 years ago

Typical ambient air pressure chart right after an activity...ridiculous

0 brz over 5 years ago

I noticed barometer graph issue, after calibration with GPS outside from building came back to previous value range.

0 SCHLOEMOE over 5 years ago in reply to brz

But the barometer should be independent from the GPS signal?! hmmm... will try it out

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

check this sigma wearables https://www.sigmasport.com/en/produkte/wearables/id-series/id-series/id-free

on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PcCCyHAQi8 at 1:22 you can see that hole to barometric sensor is at worse place I think.

do you think they have made same mistake in design?

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

check my comment here

0 Radek over 5 years ago

Yes, the port is in a really terrible spot, but there's more to poor elevation readings than just that. I've complained about this a few months ago in this thread https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/instinct/162867/elevation-consistently-inaccurate-reading-too-low

It appears that even if you set the watch to read all pressure changes as elevation change, the watch will for whatever reason ignore some changes. And it does so consistently - meaning that while your ascent/descent difference will be within tolerable range, the actual numbers, maximum elevation and some sections of the elevation chart will be screwed up and somehow, this seems to happen in the same places. When approaching a summit via a route A, I'd get similar inaccuracies, while route B would give different numbers. The worst thing is that Garmin doesn't really acknowledge this as an issue.

The Instinct is a great watch, but unfortunately it has features which either don't work properly or a are completely useless. I'd really like a cheaper stripped down version, that has just the GPS function and BT connectivity. No barometer, na HR, no pointless tracking of things that cannot be reliable traced by a watch (sleep, stress, steps etc).

Oh and by the way, apparently Garmin has said they've not heard reports of bad elevation readings, so those of you who have experienced this issue are invited to write to [email protected]om