Shift in GPS track depending on wrist

Former Member
Former Member

As an avid heatmapper / run every street I'm particularly interested in more accurate GPS tracks.  I've been perplexed by why has appeared to be a shift of my GPS tracks to the left of where I run no matter what direction I run in.  So if I run an out and back on a road it looks like I've practically run a loop because its shifts it off the road on both sides.  In general my tracks are off the road and sometimes its more egregious than others.  I took to running on the wrong side of the road (with traffic instead of against) to get it more centered.  I then did an experiment and changed my watch to my right hand.  Low and behold my tracks started looking significantly better!  I figured there must be some sort of setting I was missing.  I found the wrist setting in my Fenix 6 and changed it from "left" (the correct setting) to "right" and it made no difference.  


Wearing the watch on my right wrist example here:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/4692022516  - I ran on the side of the road against traffic and its shifted to the right, which is closer to the middle of the road

Wearing the watch on my left wrist example:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/4488678027 - notice how all the tracks are to the left where you would be running against traffic off the road

Really neither of these examples are very accurate as they don't capture where I really ran but at least with wearing it on the right hand it will actually show on the road I was running on.   I don't know if this is an intentional shift or not.  Also I'm not a fan of wearing it on my right hand (again wrist setting seem to make no difference in my tests).  Does anyone have any info on this?  

Also this isnt a one off test. All my runs with my Fenix 6 are like this and I found many with my Fenix 5 as well.  Additionally I have done several runs with it on my right wrist and they consistently produce better results every time.

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  • Ok, thanks! 

    Anyway, I think  a It is a behaviour that affect also old watches. I remember that with 935 somebody suggested to wear the Watch in the right or left wrist depending of running clockwise or underclockwise. 

  • I did try left wrist w/ right setting and right wrist w/ left setting once each. There really wasn't any noticeable difference for me.

  • Ok, perfect. Please read my answer to

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Simone.01

    Yup, I can also confirm that the wrist setting in the watch does not affect the behavior.  It was one of the first things I tried.

  • I tried inner wrist, left arm. A Suunto outside wrist, right arm. Both gave quite decent GPS recording in my moderately challenging city run (houses mostly around me, no tall buildings). Left wrist, outside, seems to give the most wobbly recordings. Right arm seems cleaner, and I recorded half a dozen runs like that, minimum. Inner left wrist needs more sample. I will try, it's not uncomfortable, I do it sometimes to protects the watch from rocks. So I will try again.  It's hard to conclude just with a few runs, I had a VERY clean recording last week with the usual left wrist position, and I have no idea why. Satellites cover wasn't any better than other days, yet it was really better than usual. No idea what made it better. So i wouldn't like to conclude with a false positive ;)

  • I've been monitoring this for a while and I agree that there is a trend to shift left with the watch (6X Pro Solar in my case) worn on the left wrist, but mostly it is of little concern in my opinion. Here is an example today from a 2km dog walk. I walk on pavement (sidewalk) where there is any and that's pretty much where the watch places me. By eyeball guesstimate the worst deviation from truth is probably 4m, but mostly it is MUCH better than that.

    One thing I have noticed when comparing tracks - when viewing on Garmin Connect Web the while track is shifted to the north on the satellite image, at least when zoomed in far enough to see such errors. This shift is not evident in the GCM app or uploads to Strava.

    Here is a portion of today's sample track showing varying environment, including pavement/sidewalk sections. P.s. I'm on beta 8.74.

  • I guess you're quite lucky then, for me the shift is mostly between 10 to 20m but it can be a lot worse.
    Here is a run from past weekend where I was on the north side of the river (scale is on the bottom right).
    It never is below 10m, even neglecting the part were the track is on the wrong side of the river:

  • 4m is really good. In the city, it's mostly by 5 to 10 meters in my case. In Paris, with taller buildings, it can be much more than that, but it's not always to the left.

  • Your screen print appears to come from a web browser, which as I noted in my previous reply will shift the track to the north. Maybe the shift varies according to position on the planet. Please try opening the same track in the mobile app, Strava or similar.

    Back to my example earlier, if I screen print from a browser the track shows me walking in the middle of the road and through houses, which is absurd. I use GPS + GLONASS. 

    This is the same walk and track as before, but printed from a browser instead of GCM (Android). App version repeated for easy comparison. Unfortunately I can't match the zoom level.

      

    Edit : Another day, another walking track. This time the shift to the left was mostly within 1m. With tree cover it did sometimes get worse, but mostly the track was about as good as it gets. I've rotated the map to fit a bit more into view at high zoom level, but you can see I'm on the pavement or at worst within 1m of the watch on my left wrist. The paved area of pavement (sidewalk) is only 2m wide at most, so it is a very fine line to place me correctly on the right paved area.

  • Here it is, same track from the Android app, still looks a long way from the road I ran. I've changed the orientation to be able to get about the same part of the route. I have dozens of examples, even in open fields where sattelite reception should be good. Large deviations are surely caused by bad reception but in general almost every run I do has a significant deviation to the left. I do think they are bigger when running instead of walking, maybe that's why your track is better?