What about Gradient Lag?

@tom.weiler.  Just like a bad marriage, we all have options.

No one is forcing anyone to stay married to Garmin. 

Coincidentally, there are other suitors in the bike gps computer world. For example - Wahoo is currently having a sale on their gps units:

https://ca.wahoofitness.com/devices/bike-computers/view-all

Today I went out on my test hill with my old 1000 and the 1040 mounted. The manual for the barometric pressure shows you where the sensor is. For the 1040 it's 4 small holes on the back, for the 1000 it's 1 slightly larger hole. I put the 1040 on the out-front mount so as not to impede the holes. The 1000 was on the stem mount.

The results where both astonishing & abysmal. The 1040 lagged way behind the 1000. The 1040 still showing -10% from a previous descent when I had turned a corner and was going back up, the 1000 already was on +%. 

Both device were calibrated to the same altitude. The actual altitudes on the ride were mainly pretty much the same on both devices. (The official manual states that there can be a -3M to +3M difference to the actual. (That's ok, such a sensor cannot be 100% accurate.)

On all the ride sections of this rolling route,  the 1040 was way off of the 1000, i.e. showing an incorrect Gradient.

For my devices this shows a totally retrograde step for the1040. Maybe someone else can try.

It may be fixable as the altitudes were roughly correct and changing in time with the climb. This would tend to suggest that the sensor is reacting well to the elev. gain. My previous posts, however, prove that the 1040 is not reacting quickly enough on the descents, so here the 1040 sensor is not so good.

For the climbs at least it appears that the Gradient calculation, and/or displaying of it, is too slow and is open for improvement.

Of course this will not be fixed if Garmin feel that they have absolved themselves of responsivity as stated in the FAQ.

(Another interesting point from .fit file comparison was the temperatures were also off with, in my opinion, the 1040 being 4-6C too high. That, however, is another story for another ongoing Forum post.)

(Yet another interesting point from .fit file comparison was that the "Position Latitudes" were not the same. I had set data recording to 1sec and when looking at the Timestamps was surprised to see Latitude difference. I was using GPS+ on the 1040 and have not bothered to look if the differences are just a matter of centimeters. The route on the maps was the same, so not a problem, but confusing at first.)

Agreed - 1040 (and same barometric hardware 1030 Plus) are abysmal with gradient lag reporting, compared to 1000.

Agreed - Garmin is LAUGHING at all 1040 and 1030 Plus owner’s faces, via their official FAQs re. Gradient lagging issues.

Agreed re silly Temperature display a significant 6 degrees C off.

We all agree - except for a few fan boys

Utterly useless.  I tried to use the 1030 plus climbing pro functionality for this year's Liege Bastogne Liege.  At least a 20 - 30 second lag which made it less than useless. Why have functionality that doesn't work and then charge premium prices for it. 

I live in a very hilly part of the UK.  If it actually worked it would be great, but the lag makes it pointless. 

I was considering upgrading to the 1040 plus but it clearly has the same problem, so  I'll likely be switching to Wahoo.

Unbelievable that Garmin wont even acknowledge the problem. @garmin-mathew why not just get out on a bike and see for yourself and stop asking users to send in videos or data.  This has been reported for years now. Do you not have hills around you?

I thought garmin was better than this.

What makes Garmins response especially hurtful is their competition has it figured out.  I could see having their response if they were all pretty much the same, but I have both a wahoo and a karoo2 and THEY do not have this lag problem.  Couple this with customers that spend hundreds just on a head unit are smart enough to understand that all competitors benchmark against the other.  So the Garmin team HAD to have the others head units to benchmark against.  Garmin HAD to take the time to run tests side by side.  So what we as consumers recognize is that you know as Garmin that you are not competitive with this measurment reporting and you are simply saying "we do not care, it is good enough"

This ️

Trust me, Garmin, Garmin-Matthew and others are reading these comments; as are Wahoo and Hammerhead.  Let the cards eventually fall where they should.

I am sure they do, but I am also afraid they will just close this thread the same way they did with the 1030+ thread with one comment "After reviewing internally, we have found that the devices showing a delay in Grade by up to 10-15 seconds are operating within our expectations."

This is especially interesting since the garmin support is happily answering other 1040 threads while ignoring this one :-(

MikeF-Swiss said:

I use the ClimbPro and Elevation screens so I am still subjected to this crap

To say it in the beginning: I also think that the gradient display can be greatly improved. The problem lies in the delay of the altitude display. That is where the problem should be solved.
But:
Climb Pro has absolutely nothing to do with this problem. Climb Pro uses only the elevation graph of the loaded track and therefore works as accurately as the elevation profile is stored.

Ok, Climb Pro then has something to do with the gradient problem, if the basis of the elevation profile is a previously recorded track with the 1030+ or 1040 itself. Then of course the elevation profile is shifted by the delay.