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Fenix 6s Open Water Swimming under reporting distance & pace

Sydney Ryan
over 3 years ago

I've upgraded to the Fenix 6s sapphire and the distance (and thus pace) is being under calculated on open water swimming. At first I thought I was just having a slow day or the current was stronger than usual but over multiple attempts I am getting the same result.

I have swam in the same bay for years and from my previous watch, triathlon times  and pool pace I know I average between 1:50 and 2:00 per 100m yet on the Garmin 6s it is showing more like 2:30m per 100m. 

I wore my friends Fenix 5 on one wrist with the 6 on the other and over a 600m swim the 6s reports 500m. Likewise over an Olympic triathlon distance swim (1800m) the 6s shows closer to 1500m. 

I have switched between glonass / galileo and changed GPS to every second to no avail. It seems to be more an error in the distance calculation rather than the GPS tracking as the route shows as accurate when looking at the  map post swim. Worth noting distance and pace is accurate for running and cycling. 

Has anyone else experienced this?  

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to who knows

    Please report it to beta team, maybe if many people report it, they fix it and I can start to use again my delta solar for open water swim...

    Now it's almost a year that I started to report this bug...

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Olu.F.

    Ok but why Suunto and Polar work without under reporting distance??? Also my Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 reports correct distance. Only garmin fenix 6 series and all new models with Sony chip is off.  If I use an old Fenix 3 or a 735 or Fenix 5 plus, all of them work flawlessly 

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Olu.F.
    Olu.F. said:
    . The watch will only record a data point every 10-15 seconds and attempts to determine your speed and course

    Can you reference this?  I have my watch set to every second recording.  I understand the signal can go out when the watch is underwater, but it's not underwater for 10-15 seconds.  I also tried renton82's test.  It took a while before distance started counting, but when it did, it was consistent and not updating every 10-15 seconds.  If what you're saying is correct, I'd see "jumps" ever 10-15 seconds and that isn't the case. 

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to who knows

    I just took a closer look and it looks like this is a thing of the past. Previous watches exhibited this behavior (and were just as accurate). 

    935 example: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3697637361

    You can see how the track jumps as you scroll along the timeline. I use Training Peaks which is much more granular and when selecting segments, there were times that you could not an exact point because there wasn't a point at the time you wanted to select. 

    Fenix6 Pro example: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/6938585451

    This is a swim from today which was accurate. The jumping around no longer exists, so I assume the new generation watches write more data points. Start and end points are spot on and turns and distance to landmarks are correct. I did 2 minute accelerations at time index 10:00, 20:00, and 30:00. (I'm wearing FORM goggles so I see the timer in my display) Selecting those time indices in Training peaks correlates to a drop in pace. 

    Since I can see my average pace in the goggles, I CAN tell that the first few minutes the watch is reading a pace MUCH slower than my real pace, but that catches up after about 5 minutes. When I go back to review the data that discrepancy no longer exists.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Olu.F.

    As i said if you do repeated, pace can goes all over the place because every repeated, watch starts to count distance after some time.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to renton82

    Does this really matter if post processing figures out the correct distance? I wouldn't even know this was an issue if I was just using the watch. The only reason I know about the lag in pace calculation is from using Form goggles. For my use, I've tested the distance multiple times (see earlier in the thread) and happy with the results. 

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Olu.F.

    As i said before, distance is off for me, happy for you.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to renton82

    Did an open water swim totdat with an FR735XT in my Buoy and the Fenix On my wrist wich I factory reseted And had a 1 sec interval storage:

    FR735XT: 4046 meter

    Fenix 6: 3299 meter

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to rene.brons

    If you have time, try the reverse the 735 on the arm and the Fenix on the arm. A few things that I found help my accuracy is wear the Fenix 6 on the side you breathe the most and have the watch facing the sky (outside of the wrist). I did a sprint triathlon today with the Fenix facing inwards and the GPS tracing looked awful. 

    https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/6944795872/1

    I measured 306 yds despite my GPS tracing. This is what I see in Strava and the device used. 

    346 yds Enduro

    301 yds Forerunner 935

    302 yds Fenix 5x Plus

    263 yds Forerunner 935

    299 yds Fenix 6X

    299 yds Forerunner 735XT

    370 yds Forerunner 920XT

    The 3 Fenix devices (at least in this scenario) all measured pretty close.