Hello everyone, I’m reporting my very bad experience with Garmin. I bought one of the premium products on the market and a strong brand, looking for highly reliable basic metrics, GPS and Barometer Altitude. I’m a long trail runner and these data are very important.
But in 1 year, I was completely disillusioned from the Fenix 6X Sapphire not able to measure for me the altitude gain. I wasted a lot of time with Garmin, I called, I wrote to support and beta testing team, I had 2 replacements without any explanation, but the problem is still not resolved on the 3rd device and several Firmware.
I have hard times to accept to not have an official answer from Garmin included no mentions on firmware fixes, apart replacements without any explanation. This make my suspicious of a design flaw (on barometer sensors and holes positioning) that Garmin doesn’t want to acknowledge, but this is just a personal speculation.
Problem:
After 20/25 minutes of running, the elevation profile starts to present random peaks and spikes in altitude that finally results in completely wrong elevation gain. Randomly I have hundreds of meters of altitude gain in flat runs of 10 / 12km. We are not talking about errors of "a few meters" but about measurements that on average are more than 3 times, with more than 250% error!
The elevation profiles are ALL OF THE SAME TYPE where the problem is appearing after 20/25 minutes.
It is not a problem of using the watch ... I have been running both trail running and road for 10 years, never had such problems with Suunto (Ambit 2, Ambit 3 Peack, Sparta, Suunto 9 Baro), only with Garmin Fenix 6X Sapphire.
I went through several tests:
- I tested 3 Garmin Fenix 6X Pro (my first one and the 2 replacements)
- I Test the various types of calibration (manual, at start-up, continued). Enabling, disabling the maps.
- It's not a GPS coverage problem, I run in open spaces and clear skies
- I have hard reset clock
- I have tested the various firmware releases over the months and the problem has always arisen
The problem does not occur:
- Wearing the watch on the right wrist (where the barometer holes are NOT frontal to the running direction so no direct air flow that may push swear in)
- Using a wristband on the right of the watch, protecting the barometer holes from sweat
- Using a cover (where the barometer holes are protected)
- Wearing the watch on the belt
- In easy activities, such as walking
These items, combined with the fact that the problem occurs after 20/25 minutes, may indicating that the cause is the sweat entering on the barometer holes with the swing of the arms and the front air running, thus disturbing the sensor. Not sure why this is not happening to everyone, maybe it could be depending by the individual sweating level and\or different physiology of the liquid (who knows? The PH, …).
Since in my several calls with the support they told me they never had complaints for altimeter problems I invite whoever have the same to reply indicating “I have the same” and I compile in this post the list of the customers affected
Only 2 examples...find many in other posts on the forum. All are similar, some better, some worst but always wrong.
Users affected:
- Paolo Costantini
- acajic14
- eezytiger
