New Instinct Owner with Questions

I dont know anything of accuracy of steps count. I think that important is trend. You should be able compare amount steps during long period so you can see if you are doing more or less ...

Accuracy of floors climb is base on barometric altimeter which has problem, check other threads here at forum. I went to school with my children on foot, first downhill and back uphill taking same sidewalk yesterday and today. Yesterday I went on the same route 3 floors more.

Thanks for the reply.

The step count is woefully inaccurate. I should have had 3-4 times as many steps. It was a route I have walked multiple times in the past using a Fitbit and I consistently had in the neighborhood of 15K steps.

The day before I used my Instinct walking my dogs and just walking and I had 8079 steps for 3.7 miles which is about right. 4.53 miles 4718 steps is way off. The only difference was I used the GPS for the hike. GPS issue?

I read about the issues with the elevation. Very disheartening. The Instinct is the most expensive watch I’ve purchased and to learn it has issues out of the box is disappointing.

I also emailed support about the step count and elevation issue, but no reply yet. I really like the Instinct and I’m not quite ready to give up on it yet, but I may end up in another Fitbit.

I can't explain why you didn't record more steps. It's possible your watch didn't detect your natural arm swing. Were you carrying anything or using a trekking pole?  There's a huge misconception on how floors are recorded.  It's not elevation gained only. To count as a floor, you must have continuous movement of 10 feet or more at a grade of 10% or 6 degrees and a natural arm swing. If any of these were not met, it won't count as a floor.

support.garmin.com/.../

The Instinct seems to count fine without using GPS. Yes, I was using a trekking pole. 

Six floors up and down over 1203 feet for 4.5 miles seems low, to me. 

I bought this to use for hiking and if the step count is that far off how can I depend on the Instinct to know where I am on the trail?

There are threads about hiking using trekking poles that may have a solution for you. Just use the search function. . As far as your 1200 foot elevation gain, if it doesn't meet the requirements for floors, they won't count.  I do several runs with hundreds of feet of gain. They don't meet the requirements for floors and as it should, floors are not counted.  

On every Garmin I've owned, I've gotten about 2k steps per mile ran/walked.  So what you're seeing seems accurate to me?  4.5 miles for 15k steps is insane; your Fitbit was way off if that's what you were seeing!

I may have been thinking about the entire day and not just the hike. I can look the data up.

But, even at 2K steps per mile I should have doubled, or close to doubled, the amount of steps I had.

A the day before I had 8079 steps for 3.7 miles just walking over the course of the day and walking the dog, so that's a big difference. The difference was using the GPS.

hohjoe said:

The difference was using the GPS.

You mentioned using GPS twice now and I'm confused by what you mean by it.  Are you saying this because you entered your stride length?  Stride lengths will vary as you walk, run, tire, speed up, slow down, hit inclines and declines, etc...  It's actually a poor method of counting steps.  GPS will shown you your track, distance traveled and the time it took you, but GPS has no way of determining how many steps you took.  

I mentioned GPS because I thought while using GPS the Instinct measured the distance and steps based upon the GPS movement from point-to-point and I used the GPS when hiking. So maybe I had the wrong impression.

I did not modify my stride length.

If you look in GCM under user settings, does it show a default stride length?  I don't know, but maybe Garmin counts steps based on your set stride length when using GPS, where your Fitbit counted steps based on movement?  That would explain the big discrepancy.