Elevation problem

I think your graphs look pretty good and nothing major to complain about. The instinct is not an altimeter or a finely tuned and calibrated barometer. GPS may have an accuracy of a number of meters (up to 20) and that includes vertical as well as horizontal. So all in all I'm wondering if this thread is something about nothing.

I sent my tracks to garmin support.
They said they know the elevation bug.
I hope they will find a solution.
And it is not our job, it's garmins job to make instinct acceptable in elevation messurement.

thomass001 said:

I sent my tracks to garmin support.

please, can you provide email address? I will send them my tracks too. thanks

I am in Germany, so I have sent it to

[email protected]

They have it sent to support.

But from valley I am going uphill and watch is showing 250m and later 240m. CAN WE ACCEPT THAT?

J4nci - Yes, I was one of the early ones on this board to report and discuss this issue.  Getting a new Instinct will not fix your concerns.  From my experience, the biggest issue impacting the Instinct's altimeter accuracy has been sweat interference - both during an activity and accumulated build-up if not cleaned.  When cleaned and sweat-protected (simple wrist band does it for me), I see very acceptable readings.  

Your detailed tests seem to support the same conclusion - your gadget protects for sweat and delivers much better results than anything else you've tried. Even then, the Instinct may be slower than some other devices in detecting changes in "rolling" terrain.  At best, Garmin might be able to update the Instinct's smoothing algorithm to better pick-up these changes.  

For me, the Instinct is not an ideal cycling computer.  It is great that it can do it when I forget to attach my Edge, but I much prefer a dedicated bike GPS for many reasons (mostly display related).  In my view, the Instinct is ideally designed for hikers and that is why I bought it over other watch options.   I wanted a rugged device that would keep track of my mileage and elevation gain (yes, over long distances) without having to pull out my phone to check Gaia for these stats (and deplete my phone battery).  Above tree line, the Instinct is awesome for hiking.  However, I ultimately use it several times per week for trail running, cycling, tennis, ... and it mostly delivers - as long as I remember to protect for sweat.  

My old Edge 500 seems to be very precise at picking up "climbs" in rolling terrain, to the point where it will often report 10% or more climbing than other, newer Edge devices.  My friends are always questioning my "elevated" results when they see less climbing on the same ride.  When clean and protected, my Instinct reports more closely to these other Edge devices.

I just spoke to garmin support who was very open and honest about the issue. They told me that with early firmware, there were many dropouts causing bad data and sometimes even way too much gain as elevation bounced up and down (because of the sensor). They applied smoothing to try and fix the issue, but the smoothing is now making it under-represent the elevation. They told me they are aware of the issue and working on a fix for us. 

While this does not solve it, it was at least nice they were honest. Had the same experience with Garmin recently working on my vector 3 pedals where they were just 100% honest and it made it easy to want to be patient with them. Do wish they were a bit more proactive with this, but understand the risk to sales etc.

Hi,

Has someone tried 6.4 Beta release effects (fix elevation issues or not)?

Thanks

Dav.dc -  Nice test!  This is a prefect example of the sweat impact on the sensor, and I don't think there is anything Garmin to do improve it on the current iteration of the Instinct.  Whenever I wear a sweatband, I see pretty decent results - though still a bit under-measured when in rolling terrain (worse on a bike than running/hiking).

I would think the smoothing, non-sweat related, issues might be improved by Garmin.