GPS accuracy is really bad.

Unless it's a vertical wall like El Capitan (where a GPS is mostly useless), please tell me one situation where you cannot slowly step 2-5m left and right to orient yourself in bad weather and where GPS is the only solution?!

Trux: The page in the link seems to be specifically about gps devices in cars because everything on the page is car specific as is everything on a page it links to: To view the current accuracy rating of your device, refer to its Satellite Information Page

Devices behind glass on embedded without a clear view of the sky will perform differently to dedicated outdoor watches.

Yes, sorry, for the watches it is actually within 3 m with a strong signal:

Improving the GPS Accuracy, Distance and Speed Readings of an Outdoor Watch | Garmin Customer Support

trux said:

Yes, sorry, for the watches it is actually within 3 m with a strong signal:

Yes, thanks for acknowledging you were quoting the wrong page. It is important to be accurate about these things or mis-information can spread.

Now, I have been seeing a lot of instances where I am way outside 3 meter accuracy (and also some excellent results too).

This is not my thread but in my stone circle trail run example (in open clear skies), given I know how wide the standing stones are, the arc to left showing an offset vs. the other two watches I would estimate is probably 5 meters away from actual. And these are almost perfect conditions.

On the same post, I show incredible good accuracy from all 3 watches, but I feel that the Enduro 3 does tend to make leaps outside of typical expected accuracy and is offset to actual by more than the 3 meters more than any other recent Garmin I can remember.

If we assume the original poster is posting examples in good faith, then he also seems to show a larger than expected offset.

Having said that, if I was to put a finger in the air I would say the Enduro 3 has more than acceptable ie excellent accuracy probably at least 90% of the time but nevertheless appears to present more anomalies than the previous generation, which as I said on another thread is probably because they are running the gps receiver in a lower power / lower accuracy mode.

Do you own an Enduro 3 and do you have any personal comparisons you can share yourself rather than links?

This is what I see more than I would expect - the buildings on the left are farm buildings to give a sense of scale. Could be 10 meters out here - way off track. Enduro 3 is in blue here, Epix in purple

I think that the main point of this thread is not that Enduro 3 is not accurate enough, but that it is clearly less accurate than the previous generation of devices such as Fenix 7, Epix 2, etc. 

I did some races with Fenix 7X SS that consisted of multiple loops on a singletrack on a densely forested mountain slopes - that is a  challenging environment for GPS. The accuracy was so great that it was impossible to tell I did more than one loop unless I zoomed in all the way. An even then tracks from multiple loops were almost perfectly on to of each other, only deviating slightly in sharp turns. 

Examples of Enduro 3 tracks that I see here are more similar to tracks produced by Fenix 6X, in particular the offset to one side relative to direction of moving. Let me also mention that that offset was more pronounced when I ran fast. When I stopped the position would move and become accurate, which I could clearly see when stopping at stoplights, but as soon as I started running it would offset again. That offset had completely disappeared when I switched to Fenix 7X, so it is super concerning to see it reappear with Enduro 3. Does it mean that Garmin has switched to a different GPS chipset or changed the GPS antenna design? Or does it mean that the battery life is prioritized over GPS accuracy.

Also, I wonder what is Enduro 3 distance and pace accuracy compared to Fenix 7 and Epix 2? Fenix 6 was suffering was pace being too slow and distance being too short. I hope that isn't a problem with Enduro 3.

This is from a 24 hour ultra I did - using GPS only not multiband, and here are 17 tracks overlaid on top of each other. The only real differences are in the turns which are not particulary clear as it was a big wide turn and so the differences are probably genuine - but in this activity the longer bits without turns are almost completely over the top of each other pretty well.

I use the E3 almost exclusively in GPS mode for trail and only use multiband for the occasional road run. My particular one is better than my E2, but again I have to emphasise this is just my opinion on my own watches only

Let us be sensible here. The Enduro 3 is a great watch and also very expensive. When someone buys a watch that costs almost 1000$, people want it to give you very good results. But the fact is that the GPS works, but it's still one of the worst GPS tracking watches out there right now. I'll show you a comparison with another watch that is 1/4 of the price compared to an Enduro 3.

Garmim Enduro 3

Another cheap watch

Enduro 3

Another watch.

As you all see here - The Garmin is struggling.

Cheap watch: spot on for 80%

Enduro 3: Spot on for 20%

Nothing near what Enduro offers.

But my now sold Suunto Vertical had better GPS accuracy and battery life so yes, Garmin can indeed fix this with a firmware update.

Iggge said:

But my now sold Suunto Vertical had better GPS accuracy and battery life so yes

Vertical specs tell up to 90h of tracking with basic GPS (140h with Solar). Enduro 3 specs claim 120h (up to 320h with Solar). It does not sound like Suunto offers better battery life.