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GPS Accuracy

Former Member
Former Member over 5 years ago

I am wondering the F6 performance dips when the battery is low. I have a 14 hours left and did a run. The GPS route is terrible. It has been through ponds and shrinks the run down massively. The black line is the route. I have the google gps  map too and it's no better. 

Is the overall distance based on the gps data as my 4 laps are quite a bit shorter than the reality. Is anyone else having gps issues? 

I really felt the F6 was the ultimate outdoor watch but I am a disappointed at the minute, especially given the investment. 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to RISBAC

    distance by 10 or 15%??? are you being paid by Garmin?

    even the 7,2 % of the distance (less) is intolerable and is useless for proper training analysis. "10m away"? Sometimes I have 30m or more. The device seem sto know where I like to run before I turn! That means that Garmin "calculates" something afterwards an defines the result as "track". The cheap device bought about 9 years ago at ALDI had a higher accuracy!

    we didn't buy the device at a One-Euro-Shop!

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to beta-L-user

    That's pretty impressive from the V800. Did you wear it the same day ? and could you publish the GPS tracks of the V800? i'm curious to see that. In those conditions, the Fenix is cutting corners too much. Not that surprising for the Sony chipset, the Suuntos had the same problems initially. Will Garmin improve that, good question though !

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to beta-L-user

    Standard GPS precision is 4m. And it's with perfect conditions. 10m happens, and 30m isn't that crazy, with tall buildings. My Ambit 3 Peak was not always on track, and I had some 10 to 20m errors too. And the total distance was also not fine. 7% error is significant yes, but unless the device is using an accelerometer, there will always be errors with a GPS. If the Fenix 6 was looking significantly worse than the Ambit, I would agree with you. It looks quite fine, but what is annoying is the distance. I fix it on Strava, and even my Ambit was sometimes short. So I still find this acceptable. And the Sony chipset is still young, and mostly focused on battery life. So is it perfect ? Surely not. I hope they will improve it a bit. Especially for the distance. But it's already much better than the Fenix 5, and on par with the Ambit 3 for my forest runs. i will compare it more in the city. For now, I say it's pretty fine, I miss the accurate pace though. 

    What I would love to see if the V800 and your ALDI cheap device tracks, used the SAME DAY as the Fenix 6, to see how much difference there is. Running like that between buildings, it's impossible with GPS only to be really spot on. My Ambit 3 tracks were "waving" around the right line. My Fenix is doing it also. Other devices could do better, but I guess either by using the accelerometer, or maybe even cheating a bit by "sticking" to a trail / road when you synchronize the data online. 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to RISBAC

    I always run with both devices, because Garmin-data is not reliable.

    The V800 has for same routes always same distances - with acceptable deviations. Unfortunately this device is not the newest anymore (6 years old) and battery is weak and lasts for warm-up and marathon only (no cool down), the screen has not a proper bond anymore, but reliable and acceptable GPS-track.

    I use the V800 with the Scosche HR-band 24 (for my arm). This is much better than the built-in fenix 6x HR-sensor - and almost that good in comparison to the HR-tri-belt (except the beginning if I don't pre-warm my muscles where I wear the Scosche 24HR).

    The best accuracy from my predecessors from Garmin had the fenix 3HR. Garmin needed some time to fix the accuracy for the fenix 5x (which I still use sometimes). It has not the accuracy of the V800, but is much better than the fenix 6x sapphire (at the moment). All Garmin product I own(ed) have the same problem that displayed distance does not fit to the calculated distance out of the gpx-Track. (distance from GPS-track is always longer, but in many cases even not long enough for the actually run distance).

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to beta-L-user

    Would you mind sharing the GPX tracks of the 6 and V800 ? I'm curious to compare them. 

    I have the Scosche too. More reliable than the OHR of the watch, but I'm surprised by how good the watch can be. Often my scosche has a period of 5 minutes at the start going really too high (around 180 bpm when I'm around 130). Never saw that on the 6X. but it goes off sometimes, so I plan to keep using the Scosche. Wrist HR won't be good enough from most watches anyway. And I wear the watch on the jacket when weather conditions are very difficult anyway... 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to RISBAC

    This is from a thread about Hrm accuracy, but you can compare GPS too.

    One bad v800 and one bad 6x. Most often the v800 is a tad better.

    https://analyze.dcrainmaker.com/#/public/889c86e6-286a-4fd7-664a-0a6fe07a338f

    https://analyze.dcrainmaker.com/#/public/d27f1f97-effa-495e-5c43-fc81b3c3d4d1

    (6x red v5.0 ,5x orange v15.1 both HrmH10, v800 green HrmH7,

    other sensors, see setname, GPS config, see comments if there is any)

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to phoglund_

    Thanks for sharing, it's nice to see a direct comparison like that. Glonass doesn't seem to help, I read that and your example seems to confirm it. The V800 is considered as a very reliable GPS watch, and the Fenix isn't looking bad. I would be curious to see beta-L-user data, to understand why there is such a difference between the V800 and the Fenix. I don't expect the Fenix to beat the V800, but I don't think it as terrible as some are saying here. The distance problem / pace accuracy can be a real problem though, I won't argue about that. But I would still love to see the recording to compare more carefully.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to RISBAC

    hey guys, you can also check the thread from the 945 forums - basically accuracy should be the same between f6/945, as it's the same hardware (ok, minus the metallic shell, but hopefully garmin did get the antenna right this time) :https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-945/207680/feedback-for-gps-2-60

    my take - tracking is worse if compared with the 920 and 935...

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to RISBAC

    My yesterday's 14km-race in Vienna (officially measured 7km-laps) led to a 13,25km run! That means fenix  6x pro is 5,35% below! (GPS 2.7! - didn't fix any accuracy problem)

    The accuracy of the fenix 6x-track is not very bad in this case and calculating the distance out of the gps-track gets a result of 14,1km! Differences between the recorded second-intervals are up to 295cm (per s!!) You can see that the deviations are not distribtuted randomly. They are increasing and decreasing. These two laps do not show any coincidence. First lap is much better than the second one.

    The accuracy fenix 5x is much better than the fenix 6x sapphire, but V800 is still more reliable than both:

    V800 (dark  blue); fenix 5x (light blue), fenix 6x sapphire (red)

    How can I share gpx-tracks?

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to beta-L-user

    The deviation can be different between the two laps since the satellites position will be different over time, and it can make a significant difference, don't you think ?