Measuring activity distance wrong?

Yesterday I went on a walk I've done dozens of times; it's a little over 2 miles. Using the Venu 2 Plus as usual, I got the one-mile notification on the watch at the usual place and didn't look at it again until I finished. At that point the watch recorded my total distance as 1.16 miles, which is about half what it actually was! I thought maybe I had somehow paused it, but clearly it was still recording GPS points since it correctly showed the trace of the entire loop. In the summary it showed a total activity time of about 34 minutes at a 17 min/mile pace, but only came up with 1.16 miles??

Looking at the activity on the Connect website, it looks like there is a discontinuity in the track just after the 1.16 mile point, after which the GPS track picks up and goes to the end but my distance travelled stays stuck at 1.16 miles.

This all started with my first activity after the 13.14 update. I'll try another walk in the next day or two and see what happens, but this is the first bug of this kind that I've had in 20 years of using Garmin sports watches!

  • I do have a similar problem since a few days... my distance somehow freezes during the activity... I was running over 15km .. but the venu 2 plus somehow stopped recording the distance after 1.4km ..... gps and duration have been recorded correctly.... this also is since software update to V13.14...

  • I haven't had the problem on the two activities I've recorded since I did a restart of the watch (hold the upper button in for 15 seconds until it turns off, then hold it for a second to turn it back on).

  • Hi,

    I experienced the same thing with the original Venu and again the Venu 2. At the request of Garmin, I did exhaustive testing on these units using a measured indoor track and actually wore my old Garmin Vivosmart HR on the same wrist for comparison. Also, I did numerous walks outside using GPS tracking. The GPS steps were counted correctly on both, but never did the device count them accurately inside or with the GPS turned off (as verified by the measured track and compared with the Vivosmart HR). I sent jpg photos of the device comparisons, spread sheets and written reports to Garmin. I had an ongoing discussion with them about this and even spoke with the Garmin product manager among the CS reps. I spent over 6 months working on this. The Garmin people were all very nice and acknowledged there was a problem and assured me they would fix this. I waited for a firmware update for over a year, but it never happened. They finally agreed to refund me the money I spent on the devices.

    I'm sad to learn they still have not fixed this problem; it seems to me like it should be a very simple tweak to the firmware code. It does beg the question, if such a simple function does not work properly on a high-end device, how well/accurate do the complex functions of the watch work?

    @gordonwd thanks for posting your results. I was about ready to buy and try the Venu 2 Plus but thought I'd first check the forum for user "issues". I'm really a big fan of Garmin and especially their ecosystem. But the simple stuff has to work or at least come close to reality. I'm waiting patiently for the Venu 3, maybe it will work.

    Good luck, I'll be watching this thread to see if the issue is fixed (if ever).

  • I have exactly the same problem, already happening for my last 3 consecutive runs. the distance just stops around 2.5 kilometeres while the time/hr/steps are still progressing. even the map generated after the workout is kinda accurate but distance ist showing unrealistic low number. 

    This is really annoying, restarted, changed some settings, but nothing helps. 

  • I am having a consistent issue with my Garmin Venu 2 Plus, specifically its distance tracking. After approximately 2.5 kilometers, distance tracking halts/stops, although time, heart rate, and step count etc continue correctly. Post-workout map matches the route but shows a much lower distance.

    This happend for my last 3 runs, and the watch is only one month old.

    I've tried restarting and changing settings, to no avail. Other devices don't present this issue on the same routes.

  • I just had a similar problem with my new Venu 2 Plus. I ran 8.5 miles, but the watch only recorded the run as 1.00 miles. It recoded the time correctly.

  • and All,

    Please reach out to your local Garmin Support team to look into this for you. 

  • Mine has just done the same after the software update it did this morning.