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Sync on Bluetooth or Wifi?

OKENNY
over 5 years ago

Just wondering if there an advantage to using Wifi sync, is it faster? What are the pros/cons to each?

My Fenix 6 Pro seems to sync over Bluetooth unless I select Wifi instead. (FW 4.10)

Thank you

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    In my case, wifi is not faster because it takes my watch about 5 mins from me arriving back home for it to sync a workout.  When I have my phone, sync is much quicker via bluetooth.  By quicker, I mean the time before the watch syncs, not the actual sync speed.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    WiFi tends to have a much higher bandwidth than Bluetooth. So the amount of data it can send over a given time is higher. 

    So syncing via WiFi will be quicker than using Bluetooth in most cases. 

    I have my watch set up to use both. It’s connected via Bluetooth all the time for call notifications and will sync via Bluetooth from time to time. But when I’ve carried out an activity that has increased data, including GPS and other data, I use WiFi.

    Software updates over WiFi are also quicker than via Bluetooth.

    These watches will auto sync via WiFi when you return home from the gym, a run or a ride etc and this works really well with my Fenix 6x pro and my Edge 530. It seems to have synced before I’m even through my front door as my phone pings up to day Strava has a new activity sent over from Garmin connect. 

    You can also set up a hot key for a WiFi sync. If I hold my activity / start button down for more than a second it starts a manual WiFi sync which is nice and quick. 

    I’ve set up two WiFi connections on my devices. One is my home WiFi and the other is my phone’s WiFi hotpot. When I’m out and about a hotspot WiFi sync is still faster than Bluetooth despite not being near my home WiFi network. 

    So I prefer WiFi to Bluetooth for speed but Bluetooth is convenient for casual updates when I’ve not done an activity that day. 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Pebbleheed

    I’m sorry how do you configure a hotkey for wifi sync?

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Hold menu>scroll down to system>select system>scroll down to hot keys> select start button and scroll down to sync. select

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I find WIFI pretty much unusable as it's so hit and miss - often for no reason it will report 'invalid' password  when it's not changed and I need to try to set it up again, and it's 50-50% at best if it'll work.

    In theory, WIFI is faster but BT seems more reliable and stable.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 5135968

    I think my biggest problems stems from having more than one fenix watch. It seems like I get corrupted files with 2 watches. I use a Mac and had to download android file transfer to delete the corrupted files. My activities seem to sync better with my smart phone connect app than my computer using Garmin express/connect. My autodownload doesn't always work so I have to manually sync my watch. Yes, I can download using the cable.