Very Poor GPS while hiking

After hiking a 10 mile section of the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire while using the hiking activity on my Fenix 6, it registered less than 5 miles hiked. Other devices in use on this hike (Apple Watch + iPhone) indicated the correct distance. I can understand minor discrepancies in the distance due to GPS accuracy but to be off by > 50% is unacceptable. I have had no problems with the watch tracking distance while running or walking a route of known length. As an experiment, I used the hiking activity on a road walk of known distance that has been measuring accurately while using the walking activity. With the hiking activity the 4.6 mile walk was measured as 4.14 miles. Better than the hikes in the woods but still not as good as when I used the walking activity for the same route.

I have changed the watch to record every second instead of smart. I have tried just GPS instead of GPS + GLONASS. None of these tweaks have made anything any better. I even created a route for a hike and even though my track covered the entire route (7+ miles), the Fenix still said I only hike 3.4 miles. WTF! Any help would be appreciated.

0 AndersB over 3 years ago

50% distance deviation sounds really bad. Have you spoken with the support?

0 7739312 over 3 years ago

Same issue. Hiking in Shenandoah (including parts of the AT) and the Hiking mode can't seem to track much of anything in the woods. I switched to "Walk" mode and it worked much better and tracked just fine in on the very same trail.

0 AndersB over 3 years ago

I tested this a little today and noticed that when walking SPM (steps per minute) was less than 60 (less than 1 step per second) gave some strange data. SPM then recorded as 0 and both pace and distance gave wrong data. Distance was somewhat buffered and some of it was added later when SPM was over 60 again.

So, maybe that's a problem for others while walking really slow.

0 Dan.Boilermaker over 3 years ago

Check to see if auto pause is enabled. Can cause some unintended measurement issues.

0 AndersB over 3 years ago in reply to Dan.Boilermaker

No autopause enabled for me. Its more about that the device is calculating once per second and when SPM is less than 1 per second it probably gives the device problems.

0 Simone.01 over 3 years ago in reply to AndersB

Maybe a footpod could help in this cases?

0 AndersB over 3 years ago in reply to Simone.01

I dont think so (but im not 100 % sure). Easy to test for someone with a foot pod. Walk really really slow (with less than 1 step per second) and see how the pace and distance acts in the data fields.

0 AndersB over 3 years ago in reply to AndersB

Looked some more at the data and found out that:

Moving Time is also reporting to less time due to this
Avg Moving Pace is also reporting to fast pace due to this
Avg Run Cadence is also reporting to high numbers due to this

So, it looks like that the device "thinks" that the user have stopped when moving really really slow (when SPM is less than 60).

0 Martin868 over 3 years ago in reply to AndersB

That's exact what happen when auto pause is ON. I know you said you check this, Maybe try to turn it on and off again. This kink of sticky setting happened in the past. Watches are not the best at very slow speed but the results you get are way off and should not be that bad

0 Luca over 3 years ago

Salve a tutti, premetto che sono il possessore di FR945, passerò a Fenix 6 entro l'anno, corro con il foot pod zwift e cammino solo con l'orologio sullo stesso circuito da anni, ho riscontrato quanto segue: nelle aree aperte e libere da vegetazione le tracce sono le stesse ma, appena si entra nel bosco, anche se non troppo fitto, durante la camminata il tracciato non è più lineare lungo la strada ma si deforma e potrebbe avere conseguenze anche sul lunghezza finale. Uso solo GPS intelligente