Terrible GPS Accuracy - What is going on with my Fenix 5?

I recently went hiking in Yosemite with my girlfriend. I bought this very expensive watch for the explicit purpose of doing hikes with it and instead found my GF's vivosport wrist band to outperform my watch on GPS accuracy. See for yourself:

It's not even a contest. While the vivosport had a small hiccup around mile 7, mine for some reason though I was rocket jumping all over the place on my way back from the waterfall. In all, the watch added almost an extra 5 miles to what was a 10 mile hike.

When I bought this watch, I thought it was mountain-compatible. I am very disappointed for lots of reasons, most importantly because I wanted to capture our great adventure but instead got a bunch of gibberish data.

Is anyone else experiencing these issues? Have I done something incorrectly?

-Pawel

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

What were the GPS settings for the hike? GPS, GPS+GLONASS, GPS+GALILEO or Ultratrac?

Can you post a link to the activity?

0 locopolaco over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Having fiddled around with my settings, I realized that I actually had my hiking activity set to GPS only (no GALILEO/GLONASS). I guess that should partly be the solution. Having said that, it is still unfortunate that a silicone band activity tracker appears to have superior route tracking via GPS than my watch. Here is a link to the activity:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3906721403

0 GJRodenburg over 5 years ago

It's a sad fact that, indeed, the fenixes aren't the most accurate of GPS trackers out there: fellrnr.com/.../File:GPS_Accuracy.png

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to locopolaco

Try one of the GPS+ options for your next hike and compare. Either GLONASS or GALILEO will be good.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to GJRodenburg

I've had my F5 for 1.5 years and have never had any complaints about the accuracy apart from one track where I was running through a subterranean tunnel.

Some people will never be happy if it doesn't show them dodging around a fallen stick

0 Puustinen over 5 years ago

Unfortunately the accuracy of F5x is, how would I say it, a bit lacking. I haven’t had that big “jumps” when using GPS+GLONASS, but F5x does get stuck quite often, meaning that it looses connection for 5-15 minutes, which is quite disappointing when you are trying to figure out which path to take. (And by stuck, I mean that the watch keeps showing me in the same place on the map which I had passed a long time ago)

As I thought that maybe the terrain is just so demanding that GPS doesn’t work there, I took my F5x, Edge 520 plus and my iPhone for a test hike. Both the Edge 520+ and my iPhone worked just fine, but F5x lost tracking 3 times (for a long period of time) during a one hour test hike.

So at least for me, the F5x has trouble keeping track.

0 sis651 over 5 years ago

Fenix 5 GPS accuracy maybe not perfect but, it shouldn't produce such a result. Continue recording activities and if it's just like this in all, contact Garmin for a replacement. It may have hardware issue like antenna contacts not contacting antenna etc...

BTW, don't use the GPS + Galileo option nowadays. Galileo experienced some issues last month and I'm not sure they approved to trust it completely.

0 Yadershik over 5 years ago

HI, I had this problem with update 13.40. On 13.30 and 13.51beta, GPS accuracy was OK. Maybe it is just coincidence. try 13.51beta.

0 Ieslei over 5 years ago

I never had any issues with my f5x in the GPS (only). It is comparable with my cellphone using all satellites. The Ultratrac is useless though...

Here is my track using GPS only:

connect.garmin.com/.../3122975288

0 Puustinen over 5 years ago in reply to Yadershik

I've circled parts of my test hike, where F5x got stuck and started to draw weird routes (Edge 520 plus and iPhone tracked correctly). I walked along the shore line, but F5x had me walk on water or as a straight line through the woods. EDIT: forgot to circle the most southers part of the route. There I also walked along the shore and F5x draws a straight line.

EDIT #2: I replied to the wrong post, I was attempting to answer myself on this thread.