How long to wait after the watch says "GPS is ready"?

My apologies.  I completely missed that the F7's signal strength bar is displaying zero or all and nothing in between.  I amend my post to "When working correctly...". Lol.  I'm using a 945 and it's working fine.  Just tested and I got a green band in about 25 seconds and my graph is showing 4 bars.  I wonder if this issue is just with the F7? 

mcbadger said:

Previous devices have given more than off/on information in this field. The arc shows four different levels, so it's not giving the same information.

The data field with the stair bars is only an indication of the signal strength. However, the fenix unfortunately lacks a data field for GPS accuracy.
Signal strength and GPS accuracy are two different things that are not necessarily dependent on each other. That is, you can have high signal strength but low accuracy. And vice versa.

I wonder if this issue is just with the F7? 

Probably everything current generation using the same family of chips. Which are good enough that instant pace is much improved. Each new generation of watch, I've tried it out, and fairly quickly switched to lap pace. 7x I am still using current pace.

Just put Garmins and IQ gps bars on the map and checked. Both go full bars as soon as the arc is red. 

Zoomed in on the map, some dancing around at yellow then steady with green, a few seconds later it told me to press start and the position started dancing around again, switching between red and green.

Love a bit of empiricism.

Sounds as though the red arc means locked at least one satellite but not enough to locate you, amber sketchy location, green more stable location, and the data fields are both just telling you that there is a reasonably strong signal from at least one satellite. Not very helpful; it would be more useful if it was telling you the same thing as the arc colours.

I believe the Press Start message is time, not lock-based. I seem to remember calling it a bad name when it popped up on a day when my F6 was taking so long to find satellites that I ended up rebooting it (which sorted it).

mcbadger said:

it would be more useful if it was telling you the same thing as the arc colours.

It would be best if the watch had not only a data field for the signal strength, but also a data field for the accuracy.

Just like the handheld devices have.

Here as an example my 65s. It has both. Both a data field for signal strength and a data field for accuracy:

A display of the signal strength alone says nothing.

When I'm out and about with the handheld, I can often observe that a good signal strength doesn't always necessarily have good accuracy.

This colored band on the fenix I see only until the start of an activity profile.

On the road I have no way to check how the accuracy is. 

At least not on the fenix. Unfortunately. I think that they could change this, if they would want it.

My summary of what I have learned so far : as already mentioned here. Make sure that the CPE is up to date, switch the activity profile to "standby" and wait - the longer the better - some time before you start the activity profile.

What happens then, I can no longer control and see only afterwards in Connect as this record was.

And even if I always run the same course, and always wait the same time before I press the START button, each recording can be different.
There are too many influencing factors that can be different every day. One of the biggest interfering factors is the atmosphere of our planet, which is between our equipment and the satellites during every recording.

For a good GPS recording, this atmosphere is really very disturbing. Still I do not want to go running without it ;)

These photos show the necessity of having an accuracy data field on the watch.  For those who didn't notice, the accuracy in the second photo became better even though the signal strength dropped. 

These photos show the necessity of having an accuracy data field on the watch.  For those who didn't notice, the accuracy in the second photo became better even though the signal strength dropped. 

Exactly