Difference between activities such as walk and hike?

I am not sure myself but why don't you do a "walk" of around 5 miles and then do it again as a "hike" and compare any differences on Garmin connect ?. That would be the empirical way of doing it. Personally I always use hike.

I believe that with WALK the watch can estimate a VO2max figure, but this assumes the terrain for the walk is flat(ish) and easy going - e.g. paved or firm earth and not sand/mud etc..

I think that HIKE will not attempt this estimation on the basis that a hike is on tougher terrain, making a steady pace and effort more difficult, possibly with gradients to confuse things, and maybe burdened with a backpack etc.. 

Apart from that, I guess it just helps you to separate out the nature of the activity for review later, to find your hiking activities vs your walking activities.

Thanks EZ, that’s the sort of info I was after

One more thing - by separating the activities you can also customise screens and data fields to suit. e.g. For hiking you might be interested in elevation/ascent data, whereas for walking you probably wouldn't.

Hey, yeah, thanks, I get the ability to customise screens per activity type, I have an Edge 530 and 510/500 before that so am quite used to switching between indoor, outdoor and gravel rides etc depending on what I want to see and what sensors are available across different bikes.

Was more about as you pointed out, Hike may not calculate Vo2 Max (like Indoor ride turns gps off for instance) but other modes may disable other features or limit access to sensors or mapping etc etc.

cheers

Not sure if anyone’s following us thread. If you are thank you. The hike feature on my Fenix 5s reverts to pause after about 5-10 secs even though I am walking/hiking in rough undulating terrain. . Switching to the walk function in the same conditions, it records and stays on and only stops when I stop. Anyone have an explanation for this. 

6465982 said:

The hike feature on my Fenix 5s reverts to pause after about 5-10 secs even though I am walking/hiking in rough undulating terrain.

Do you have auto pause on for the Hike activity?

Yes, I didn’t know there was an auto pause selectable feature. I have it on I guess for all activities. From your question looks like I need to disable the auto pause for hiking or any activity I do not like that feature for.

Is it in the settings area?

Why would he auto pause  be more sensitive in the hiking feature versus walking or biking or indoor Elliptical?