Instinct not very instinctive!

trux EPO is updated via Garmin Connect if Instinct is connected to phone and you try to get GPS coordinate.

I have the Garmin Instinct and also have the Suunto Ambit3 Peak with the large GPS nub antenna that is highly rated for its GPS Accuracy.  Walking and running out in the countryside including in heavy tree cover and areas that are difficult for GPS, I have found that the Instinct is slightly under records but is always within 1-2% of the distance the Ambit records and the same for the plotted route distance.  The Instinct underecords on a 10 mile run by around 0.15 - 0.2 miles.

Whennit comes to high-rise buildings and built up areas, the Instinct doesn't seem to do as well. 

This recent review of another watch included the Instinct in the testing and during the downtown area, the Instinct performed the worst.   It may be the case that the Instinct is not the best choice for this type of environment. 

"A) Garmin Instinct: Winner of the most suck – it’s drawing mountains in my buildings"
www.dcrainmaker.com/.../polar-grit-x-gps-watch-review.html

When I start an activity, I always let the GPS Soak (leave it another few minutes after it connects to GPS before hitting start. It's important to start in an area with a clear view of the sky. If I start outside my house the GPS track starts slightly offset due to high trees.

The only time the GPS has been innacurate for me is when the EPO expired, you can tell as it takes much longer to connect to GPS. 

My only real issue with the Garmin Instinct is that due to the placement of the sensor for the barometric altimeter, if you do an activity that involves sweating, the sensor can get blocked easily. The elevation readings were off for all my runs until I looked on here and found out about what was happening. Now I use a sweatband and place the part of the watch with the sensor just over the corner like this.

BTW, did anyone of you observe much slower locking of GPS satellites, after one of the recent updates? I used to get the GPS lock within 10s after stepping out of my door, while since a week or two (perhaps three), it always takes minimally a minute or two. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but maybe Garmin included certain "GPS Soak" time. Anyway, I see it now takes longer time, than it used to. But perhaps it is just me.

Hmmm...I am in an area with hi-rises and the roads have a lot of trees. This sucks. 

All GPS devices will struggle in those environments, but it does seem that the Instinct struggles more than most with built up areas of solid buildings. 

Maybe it's the antenna design or the software. 

General info on GPS. 

"Why does GPS sometimes show me in the wrong place?

Many things can degrade GPS positioning accuracy. Common causes include:

Satellite signal blockage due to buildings, bridges, trees, etc.

Indoor or underground use

Signals reflected off buildings or walls ("multipath") "

https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

Some explanations on GPS Accuracy issues in general. 

"Before we get too far into the weeds on GPS accuracy, I want to note a few things that are often misunderstood. First and foremost is GPS chipsets. Many people try and categorize GPS accuracy based on chipset vendors, but that’s rarely correct. The reason is that a host of other things have much bigger GPS accuracy impacts than chipsets these days. Antenna design being one of the biggest. Virtually all ‘poor GPS accuracy’ units on the market in the recent past few years have had issues with antenna design, which specifically talks to the GPS antenna that’s ultimately connected to the GPS chipset to provide it with connectivity to GPS satellites.

Selection of GPS chipsets these days is largely done based on battery demands and components combinations. So if companies can get more features on a single chipset while having minimal battery and/or accuracy impacts, they’ll likely do that. Consumers have demanded GPS watches get smaller and smaller, so companies must get better at managing power (since battery space is minimal). We see companies doing interesting and creative things on battery life, most of which are never seen by consumers. For example, some units will utilize the accelerometer such that if a GPS isn’t moving, it’ll lessen the GPS polling rate (or turn it off entirely). Accelerometer data is virtually ‘free’ in terms of battery requirements, so that’s an easy way to increase battery life in certain situations.

Others will reduce GPS polling rates. Polling rates are impactful, whereas recording rates are rarely impactful for battery life (they save space, but that doesn’t much matter these days). Finally, in order to increase accuracy, companies may implement technologies like GLONASS. Neither directly increases accuracy though (many misunderstand this), but rather indirectly increases accuracy by increasing the number of satellites available, so that if you have a situation where the number of satellites is reduced – you still may have decent GPS accuracy. Said differently (with imaginary numbers), if before you had 10 satellites available to you, and then went into a canyon and only had 2 left, you’d have poor accuracy. Whereas now if you had 20 satellites with GLONASS, and you went into that same canyon you might have 6 left, leaving enough for OK accuracy.

In any case, none of that fancy talk matters though if the end resultant is suckville in terms of distance or tracks."

www.dcrainmaker.com/.../suunto-spartan-ultra-review.html

Extended Prediction Orbit:

Who has a problem with Garmin Express (as I have), EPO.BIN is available from http://www.javawa.nl/epo_en.html .

USB cable is necessary, of course.

Usually 7days x 4 (6hour intervals per day) x 32 GPS satellites x 72bytes = 64512 bytes

Hi, I’ve been using GPS+Galileo all the time and it seems pretty good.  Are you suggesting the current number of satellites is less accurate than the glonass system?  Just curious as I would have thought any additional satellites now (I thought it was almost fully operational already?) would make minimal difference but I guess it might depend on your location (I’m UK based)?

3854086 said:

Are you suggesting the current number of satellites is less accurate than the glonass system?

Wikipedia tells "The complete 30-satellite Galileo system (24 operational and 6 active spares) is expected by 2020.". I do not know when exactly, or whether it already happened, but Wikipedia still tells it has currently 22 usable satellites. At Glonass it tells 24.

I cannot locate the comparative test of individual positioning systems that I've seen a few months ago, but in that time the accuracy of GPS and GLONASS (in non military mode) was about the same (with some deviations depending mostly on the latitude). Galilileo was slightly inferior with the forecast to get more accurate later.

However, the theoretical accuracy of each positioning system is one thing, but it won't really improve the accuracy of simple receivers like smartwatches or phones much. For those it is especialy the number of satellites it can get the signal from, in the case of the sky oscured by obbstacles. The difference between Glonass and Galileo is minimal, and in the real life you probably won't see any difference at all.

trux I find it with simple experiment. After so many days stay-at-home (Covid-19 prevention) EPO on my Instinct was outdated (checked in Menu/Settings/About). On my way to grocery I long press GPS to get current position, after this EPO was current. It's worth to mention that I never used Garmin Express as I use GNU/Linux OS.