Holy Crap... Look How Good This GPS Track Is

Former Member
Former Member

Just got the fenix 7x sapphire solar today. Got it setup and did the latest software update. Set it for multi band GPS and every second recording. This is my first walk activity with it...

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/8182210440

You can zoom in all the way and see that the track stays right on the paths that I walked. Much much better than my 6x sapphire. Also because the GPS is so accurate, it seems like the pace is a lot more stable and does not jump all over the place.

AND... the screen crisp and black with the backlight on too.

I am definitely impressed so far.

  • Oh, there's a track mode? So obviously no, I didn't :) I used 1s recording and the super multiband-gps, which wasn't really necessary here but I was too lazy to switch it off. I'll do another track round any of these days (I have 4 tracks right next to another here!) and try to hold the phone in the left hand. Or put the watch on right, and hope I don't forget to change the wrist side beforehand.

    I also for once used the watch HR instead of my wee Polar OH-1, then compared it to my phone recording: it's nearly the same. So very happy there as well.

  • On my F6 the track mode gave similar looking results, but now with Epix I got the same crisp looking track with regular run mode, massive improvement.

  • Here's an interesting comparison: walk with a 7s ss on each wrist, exactly same setup, both watches spent the night and day in the same rooms and soaked for the same time outside. The one representing the red line also has a not so great track. Red is right hand, where I was carrying a mostly empty shopping bag.
    Actual outside elevation should be around 90-91m, start and end same location. But it's a fairly narros street with 4 storey houses. Blue started at 94m and ended at 95, red at 93m, ended at 91m.

  • I hope it will also perform better in watersports when passing under bridges. That always messed up my max speed for the activity when the signal gets distorted and jumping me around the map.

  • Which satellites does the clock use when set to "all systems"?

  • I just found a purpose for GPS only. When I'm taking photos outdoor I could record a track with my watch (because my camera does not have GPS). Since I'm not recording for the sport and probably delete the activity afterwards just GPS would be good enough to later sync it with my photos. While during real sports I probably always want the best GPS signal in full mode. I probably setup a copy of walking, name it GPS tracking, set it for GPS only, get some useful data-fields in it like its a normal watch and use that for this purpose.