6S Remorse?

PizzaQueen said:

I was browsing the discussions & it seems

Hello.
Reading a forum where 80% of communication is about complaints is not the way to go.
Use your watch. Enjoy it. 
They are many happy users here too, communicating and exchanging tips.
Those forum's thread, here, are generate by users "asking question about their issues". (That the way Garmin has made their forum's... Not very clever as the issues and bugs are generating most of the threads.)
I'm a happy users of a Fenix 6 Pro why should I create thread in the first place ?
I have not been an happy user of a 5X (changed unit twice under warranty) and a 5XPlus (changed once), been happy user of an Instinct and now happy user of a Fenix 6 since August 2019.
So use your watch and see for yourself, the mood of the Garmin's forums are not representative of the general mood. Just look at how many professional (jetfighters, soldiers) are now wearing those Fenix... ;-)

www.businessinsider.com/preferred-watches-of-fighter-pilots-at-miramar-top-gun-2019-10

Before you return it, try using GPS +GLONASS, one second recording and, if you can, wait at least a couple of minutes between getting a green satellite lock and starting your activity.

e. g. I record my daily dog walks. I drive to the park and I start the watch in the car whilst driving. By the time I am ready to start the walk the watch has already tightened up on the GPS positioning. If I start the walk instantly, without letting the GPS stabilise, the start of the track is usually not very precise. It does improve after a minute or two.

Here are my tracks from three separate days of dog walk overlaid on each other. You will note that by and large the tracks are quite consistent, with no massive deviations etc.. This is with my 6X Pro Solar.

Also worth noting that, with the watch worn on the outside of the left wrist, the recorded track does tend to be offset to the left by a couple of meters (sometimes) . Worn on the right wrist the track will be offset to the right (sometimes) . This might put you in the road instead of on the pavement, or perhaps in people's front gardens, but it's just a small offset, not a massive error. 

The 'track offset' issue seems to be fixed.  I am quite / very satisfied with the GPS tracking since some months ago :) 

Overall I think the 6s is a fantastic watch with no real competition capability etc. wise.  

Maybe it has improved somewhat. I'm now running 17.73 beta firmware with the new GPS firmware too and performance has tightened up, but I still see a small offset when I precisely retrace my footsteps.

Of course one would expect a small separation simply due to the gap from centre line of the body to the wrist, so maybe +/- 50 cm for a total gap of 1m, but I'm seeing more than this, sometimes. Still, within the claimed accuracy of +/- 3m in *optimal* conditions I think Garmin is on target.

Tall buildings blocking the horizon and reflecting satellite signals is, of course, sub - optimal. Ditto heavy tree cover, mountains, cliffs or anything else that obscures significant parts of the sky/horizon. 

EDIT : I now have five days of data out of the past six days for the same walk. Separation between tracks is rarely more than 5m in total, or +/- 2.5m - for walking the dog. This seems very reasonable performance to me. Here is a more tightly zoomed example of all five tracks. Click the image and zoom for a better view. Direction of travel is marked with yellow arrows. In the bottom right corner I retraced my steps, so this is ten tracks in total. 

eezytiger said:

Here are my tracks from three separate days of dog walk overlaid on each other. You will note that by and large the tracks are quite consistent, with no massive deviations etc.. This is with my 6X Pro Solar.

I honestly don't think anyone can tell anything about accuracy by posting a birdeye view of a map, pretty much any track looks great zoomed out at 1:100m resolution (or whatever the scale is).

Not commenting one way or the other about the accuracy, but as GPS is usually within 5 meter accuracy, maps should be posted at that resolution if you want to comment on accuracy (or otherwise)

Are you the sort of person who is going to get upset and obsess because your watch showed you on the left side of the road and you were on the right?  Then return the watch. Please. The forums are already full of people like this.  Like all GPS devices, GPS isn't pinpoint accurate.  Get your phone, download a GPS app and you'll see sometimes the accurancy is +/- 5m.  Even your phone doesn't know!

I would challenge you to find a wearables forum where there's not some complaints about GPS accuracy.  That said, some clever forum member did a really in-depth study and found that the watch is more accurate when pointed directly at the sky, so the GPS Antenna design does seem a little sub-optimal.  However:

Are you sort of person who will be happy to know your watch recorded your 15k run, gave you performance metrics, told you how well you slept, told you your heart rate, the contents of text message and when people are ringing you, and who's GPS is plenty accurate to nagivate you home if you get lost in the middle of a 3 day expendition? And still had 30% charge? Then you'll be happy.

Probably the only outstanding issue is the GPS pace isn't that accurate.  It's hard to know exactly what your exact speed is at any point in time when running.  If this is a deal breaker for you, then this is probably a valid reason to return it.  Seems perfeclty fine for biking though.

I've had my F6 Pro for 1 and a half years and I still love it 200%.  Of course I'm biased, I spent a lot of money on this thing.  But I would happily spend it again if, heaven forbid, something happened to this one.  It's been a great fitness companion.  (Note: I am a casual runner/biker - not an ironman or a pro or anything like that)

I use the official version (don't use beta versions) and I have found no issues with track and distance in the 2 to 3 weeks i have owned it . It isn't perfect, but then no watch is, but it seems very consistent on the routes I use, and when comparing it to meter wheel distanced spacing on the flat its pretty much perfect (note that was over a 1km with mark at 500m - tagged both distances perfectly).

I do a regular morning walk with my daughter (and dog) taking her to school and the distances I am getting pretty much match recoridngs from previous watches, and are fairly consistent each day, normally all within approx 100m of each other across a 3.7km distance: 3.59 / 3.70 / 3.59 / 3.63 / 3.69 / 3.58 (this week and last week). Please note that my walk includes walking around the edge of a playing field for approx 600m - no lines so its entirely possible that a lot of my variation is from taking wider/narrow path day to day.

This is fit for purpose for loads of users. If you want sharp lines look at the Suunto 9 Peak and always use it with a route and the snap to function....(as long as you don't deviate form the route you will have perfect tracks....).

Fenix tracks are about as good as you are going to get. Not sure you will get any much better on wearable.

eezytiger said:

Maybe it has improved somewhat. I'm now running 17.73 beta firmware with the new GPS firmware too and performance has tightened up, but I still see a small offset when I precisely retrace my footsteps.

Maybe I should try the beta firmware with a reset to see if that improves things. Hmm.

muppetman said:

Are you the sort of person who is going to get upset and obsess because your watch showed you on the left side of the road and you were on the right? 

Not really, just a little frustrated that I see good tracks in reviews but for me it shows I was in a building or doing a 180 when I wasn't. Oh well. I'm more interest in accuracy of miles as I like to do 30+ miles usually on the weekends on my bike. As for the other features I am really content with those as they seem to work well. Battery body seems great, as it sleep track(though I hope that improves as it learns when I fall asleep). The other part of remorse I have is is not going with the 6S Pro for the built-in maps, but that would have been more than I want to spend. I'm also glad to have a current Fenix lineup as its like the watch to have.