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Number of steps very inaccurate with hiking poles?

three-alpha-six
over 1 year ago

I was out hiking in difficult terrain and was using my hiking poles. I noticed that the number of steps recorded for this activity is very inaccurate. At the end of the day, I was at about 9000 steps, my hiking partners were at about 24000. My iPhone was in the range of 24000 as well. It seems like the watch does not record steps properly when hiking poles are used.

Has anybody else noticed this behavior for the Fenix 6 series?

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  • +1 over 1 year ago

    The behavior is normal across all of our outdoor watches. Your steps taken do not come from having physically taken steps but from the swing of your watch wearing arm. It is your accelerometer sensor recognizing your arm back and forth movement that is naturally made taking steps.

    Pushing a shopping cart, golfing and using a golf cart to go hole-to-hole, carrying a young child etc. will lower your step totals seen by your watch.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Garmin - Chris

    Interesting to see that Coros handles this so much better.

    Will the number of steps be more accurate with a chest strap or will it still be way off?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to three-alpha-six

    I do not see many comments very many conversations about Coros in our forums. As for capturing steps while wearing a HRM-Pro+, I have not seen forum comments on either the happiness success level OR any issues experienced when wearing the HRM. If you buy one directly from a vendor vs. through us directly, check into the return policies. I cannot speak for exactly how it works in Europe but we have a buyer's remorse test and return period for devices bought directly from our Garmin United States headquarters.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to three-alpha-six
    three-alpha-six said:
    Will the number of steps be more accurate with a chest strap or will it still be way off?

    As long as you wear the watch on the wrist, the watch will still be the Primary Wearable Device, and hence the steps count will come from there, not from the HRM. You need to remove the watch from the wrist. And if you keep it in the pocket, or attach it to the ankle instead of the wrist, it will count steps correctly even without any chest strap, while walking with poles.

    The main problem with counting the steps while walking with poles is that the watch cannot sense the steps of the leg on the opposite side, because the watch is firmly supported by the pole in that moment, and does not sense the foot hitting the ground. It only senses the swings of the arm wearing the watch, while at normal walking it can sense both the arm swing, and the leg hitting the ground.

    Some brands perhaps only count the bigger peaks in the acceleration curve, and multiplying them by two, but that is not an ideal solution either, since it leads to inaccuracies in other situations.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to trux

    Thank you for your detailed explanation.