Is there a way to speed up map rendering? Which layers affect draw speed?

Hi Matt,
for me, map detail slows down the speed of the map display considerably. The effect of a high level of detail is best seen at higher zoom levels, where you then see more POIs, buildings etc that you do not normally need for navigation. The normal setting works quite well for me.

It isn't the rendering problem. It is the problem with the watch having only 5 MB of operating memory on SoC, so it cannot cache map data in memory and constantly has to pull data from the storage, which is relatively slow.

Other brands solved that by adding more operating memory. For example, Suunto Race and Race S have 32 MB of additional RAM, 37 MB in total. Suunto watches are reportedly based on the same SoC, but the map rendering is so much faster and smoother. 

Yeah, my old Suunto Vertical was so freaking fast when rendering maps. 

Going to Garmin feels like two steps back when it comes to navigate with map open.

Same issue

I feel like I bought a new case with a 5yr old watch in it. So so annoying.

I have no experience with the Vertical but the Race with a 464 x 464 AMOLED screen is amazingly quick with zooming in and out via the crown, or rotations to follow a heading.

When I got the Enduro 3 the map slowness really stood out. 

I think Garmin needs to have a look at what their competitors are doing as the Coros Pace Pro (amoled) is also supposed to be very quick - mips should be faster to draw as its  280 x 280 vs 454 x 454 or close to.

Do not use popularity layer, I think the popularity layer was the one that made map rendering useless for me. I am on normal details.

And it sucs cauce if you are in the middle of the activity and wanna change map settings it doesn't sem to have any effect. Waypoint by default are supper annoying and turning them off during activity has no effect.

Yes, Garmin is really slow in when using maps

I actually 100% prefer my old Suunto Vertical before my Enduro 3. 

The Enduro 3 just have to much flaws so in the end it's just sont use it.

5135968 said:

I think Garmin needs to have a look at what their competitors are doing as the Coros Pace Pro (amoled) is also supposed to be very quick - mips should be faster to draw as its  280 x 280 vs 454 x 454 or close to.

Again, the rendering doesn't matter. Modern Garmin watches have a dedicated GPU with 2D vector graphic acceleration. Rendering is offloaded to the GPU so the CPU doesn't spend much time on that. What I think matters is accessing the map data, especially when you zoom in/out or rotate the map. Fenix, Epix and Enduro are all based on the same SoC that has only measly 5 MB of onboard RAM (operating memory). That doesn't leave much space to cache map data so it has to be constantly accessed from the storage which is relatively slow. That the main reason the map is slow. It seems speeding that up has never been a priority for Garmin.

In contrast, if you research hardware specs for the modern Coros, Suunto, and Polar watches, they all seem to be based on the same SoC but with an additional 32 MB RAM module, so the total size of memory becomes 37 MB. That might seem like an odd memory size, but that comes from 5 MB of memory on SoC + 32 MB of additional memory. Compared to the storage, the operating memory is way faster. I bet other brands use that to cache a larger amount of map data and prefetch in background, resulting in much smoother map experience.

I don't think Garmin can improve the map experience with the current hardware. Maybe in the next generation.

@Silentvoyager

I don’t particularly care about what the reason is although I would argue fhat screen rotations about a point don’t require loading and reloading because you are rotating existing data that is tile shaped within a circle so there is no need fo reload data each rotation. That would be very poorly written code if it is doing that becsuse if operating on SVG type data then scaling and rotating is kind of the point vs. bitmap data.

You can set a Garmin and Sunnto on a table next to esch other and rotate the watch and as both watches orientate true north, the speed difference is vast. That is on existing map data already loaded.

In any event my main point what that Suunto and Coros (only with the Pace Pro) are way quicker at 1/3 of the cost so if performance is due to lack of cache which is certainly possible its not a good look for Garmin going with an older less capable SoC when they are charging premium prices.

I know. I have both Fenix 7X and Suunto Race S now. I pretty much stopped using Fenix and use Race S exclusively.

With regards to rotation, the current position marker is off-center on Fenix, so it is possible  there may be loading of tiles, depending on the zoom level. But perhaps the main reason is that on Fenix the frame rate seems to be fixed at one frame per second when in activity - that is the main reason it feels so laggy.