16.50 Barometer Issue

It would be appropriate for Garmin to at least announce they are investigating a widely reported issue.

Software update 16.50 has made the watch completely useless regarding altitude and so I have had to disable it (Altimeter setting to Barometer only).

What is even worse is in "Barometer only" mode, the watch does not appear to use GPS altitude! The altitude just remains completely static.

That is an improvement !

System Software 16.50
Change Log
Improved altimeter calibration.

Altimeter always behaved strangely:

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/instinct/255504/strange-behaviour-of-the-altimeter

Now it behaves also strange, but by different way.

Today I have a night shift, and while sitting behind the table, Instinct shows this:

I am not sure if the night time has any meaning. But even if I had a bad pressure sensor, it should never show dropping the pressure and at the same time drop of altitude. So I suppose this is some wrong calibration. (236m was right, 197m is 39m off).

Just like with you, 16.50 made altimeter and barometer completely useless for me.

I would strongly advise (after backing up waypoints and tracks via Basecamp), to downdate to 16.00 via the beta update downdater. Worked for me.

More here: forums.garmin.com/.../the-unsatisfactory-altimeter-calibration-change-from-15-00-16-00-to-16-50-shows-that-garmin-should-listen-and-beta-test-more

Garmin uses forced calibration every night on v16.50, it can't be turned off anymore. Unless you happen to be at the ground level during the calibration and automatic calibration uses correct altitude level, you will have nice result. In my case when I live a couple of floors above ground, I have wrong altitude every single morning, and even if I was at the ground level, it is still wrong by a few meters (not sure from where they take the data from as calibration with DEM is accurate). 

The funny thing is that Garmin is well aware of this issue, but instead of them fixing this wrong behavior, I was advised to not use Altimeter/Barometer, or "just start an outdoor activity with GPS tracking to calibrate the altimeter automatically to the correct value". 

Yes, this mixture of cool watches and sporadic absolute incompetence is something I cannot wrap my head around.

They broke the altimeter in Fenix 6 line too. However, it looks like the currently published Beta 20.50 fixes the problem. I suppose they will release an update for the Instinct right after they sort it out on Fenix.

Reading the user reports, Fenix 6 beta 20.50 is just renumbered 20.42 which both contain the very same broken forced altimeter calibration. At this point I would expect at least "Sorry guys, we screwed up, but we're working on the fix." message from Garmin, instead of the silent treatment. Or are we experiencing the planned obsolescence at its finest..? 

5840817 said:

Fenix 6 beta 20.50 is just renumbered 20.42

Wrong

5840817 said:

Fenix 6 beta 20.50

1. 20.42 is a beta. There is no 20.50 beta. 20.50 is a public release. So the same version that is rolled out via Express. 
   
   
2. 

Thanks for correcting the absolutely irrelevant typo. The rest is true though.

Changes made from version 20.42 to 20.50:

• Version bump to 20.50

www8.garmin.com/.../download_details.jsp