Not showing accurate pace & distance comparing to cheaper Garmin watches

Former Member over 4 years ago

Fenix 6X Pro has serious problems with showing current pace - does anyone know how to fix it? I have followed all the suggestions on Garmin website (with adding 2nd satellite, measuring per second etc... but nothing has changed). My friend has old Garmin Forerunner 245 - we tested it with running together and slowing down and accelerating - that old watch is much much better than this Fenix 6x which is super expensive.

I have done another test with my old watch - Garmin Forerunner 735XT - please look at the difference. Unbelievable. Garmin is not paying attention to this at all. Feels for me that I need to buy one watch specialized only for one sport I want to have and that this type of all in watches is not really something Garmin can make. Please send any recommendation on how could we change this. It is less than 1 year old so I will try to return it back and stay with old one.

On top of all - it shows sometime in my house that I am on 225m altitude, and some times -60m. Very bad also but that is not bothering me at all since I am not doing climbing or hiking.

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0 Bjorn over 4 years ago

Yeah, the 6X PRO is horrible in showing active pace. I've resorted to using a Stryd for when I need accurate pace readings. I live in a extremely flat area with no trees (just farmland around), so GPS reception should be awesome. This is for GPS+GALILEO.
I just ran an easy run, and according to the watch my pace was between 4:30min/k to 6:30min/k, but the cadence was fairly constant. I did run at a very constant pace, by feel rather than looking at the watch. I was at a constant 5:30 +-10s for sure.

Regardless, I agree, this is terrible for a watch of this caliber.

0 Bjorn over 4 years ago

By the way, which distance is the correct one? One watch measured 6km, the other 8.5km. Is it the same run? Can you validate the distance my retracing it on a map?

0 BriRunner10 over 4 years ago

that is a pretty bad! I have both the 735XT and a Garmin Fenix 6 pro and finding at most the delta between the two are within 100-400 metres when walking (~20km) but running it's pretty much the same, with 5m difference.

The instance Pace on the Fenix is absolutely embarrassing though, I wish they sort this out but I don't see it affecting the distance covered much.

0 silentvoyager over 4 years ago

The pace is obviously bad because it is based on the distance - the shorter distance on Fenix means the resulting average pace got slower.
What kind of terrain this run was on?

0 nonparametric over 4 years ago

Yeah, it’s bad. Garmin changed to a different GPS chipset (Sony) for all their products because it draws less power and gives longer battery life. Fenix seems worse off than other recent watches. Maybe because of the metal bezel? But the instant pace is utter garbage. Pace estimates swing by minutes per mile in a matter of seconds. Fenix is not a reasonable running watch, unless you shell out another $200 for a Stryd footpod.

0 silentvoyager over 4 years ago in reply to nonparametric

Take a look at this thread where I collected a lot of evidence of how bad instant pace is:
https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-6-series/226504/instant-pace-is-neither-precise-nor-accurate-and-has-bias-towards-slower-than-actual-pace

I don't think the problem is with the Sony chipset. I had Suunto 9 before which is based on the same chipset, and the instant pace was way way more accurate - within 0:15-0:30/mile most of the time. The same chipset is also used on all recent Polar and Coros watches and I haven't seen any reports of it being so bad there.

It is pretty likely that Garmin has an issue with the algorithm that calculates the pace. They obviously attempt to do some sort of post-processing of pace but that obviously isn't working as supposed.

+1 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to nonparametric

Thank you for your comment! What would be then the best watch for triathlon - meaning you need to train bike, swim and run? Fenix 6x pro is definitely not the one. People always asked me how come that you have much better results on half marathon in comparison with your training and I had many different explanations to that - but in fact my watch sucks...

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to nonparametric

Do you think thaz normal Garmin foot pod will do the job instead of stryd?

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

Yes... Garmin FP, but without running dynamics data.

0 9340403 over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

Creo que para triatlon te vendrá perfecto el Forerunner 945