GPS + Glonass vs GPS + Galileo

You’re going to get a lot of answers depending on someone’s experience. One thing to consider is the location of the satellites around you. Look for an app called GNSS View if you want something on the go.

You'll see in this shot, that GPS+ Galileo would be the best options for me right now:

Thank you for this app recommendation!

Is that because Galileo shows ‘12’ and GLONASS shows ‘10’?

Odie21 You also have to match up the satellites above the horizon with the ones that are in service for Galileo. That is a bit hard to do now because of this page being down https://www.gsc-europa.eu/system-service-status/constellation-information but there are a few of those satellites that are not fully functional 

Also keep in mind that while rare, GPS satellites can transmit bad data. The entire Galileo constellation was down for a bit not that long ago https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/tech/galileo-gnss-outage-intl/index.html

scotthunter2 said:

I don't want to check an app every time I go for a run.

I don't either! I just want the watch to set the settings that are best for a given time. I'd love for Garmin to figure out an "auto" setting because honestly they are asking me to pick between 3 different GPS settings without any additional context or information on which to base that decision. The watch should just figure it out. 

Well it does matter!

That's pretty cool, I didn't know such an app existed.

Scrolling through the timeline in the app, it seems like Galileo has several more satellites overhead where I live, like 90% of the time. Maybe I'll try switching it to Galileo for my next hike and see how it goes.

That's an awesome feature idea! 

So I tried an 8 mile hike today w/ Galileo, and the results were "meh." 90% of the track was great, but there were at least 3 drunk uncle moments where it looks like I wandered off a cliff. Granted, this entire hike was in a canyon and mostly under tree cover, so that's probably relevant. But I hadn't thus far had any drunk uncle moments with Glonass, so I think I'll switch it back to that for the time being.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/4058846107

Note that I did in fact wander off-trail down to the river twice, so ignore those. The rest of the time, I was on the trail, but the Galileo track has me as far as 65 meters off the trail in one place, and about 30 meters off the trail in a couple other places.

I did the same trail with Glonass last week, but unfortunately I didn't take the trail as far as the spots where my Galleo track started getting wonky, but still you can see the Glonass track is mostly pretty good, as it has been on about 5 other activities I've recorded in Glonass mode.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/4034856379