Hello,
I was looking through the topics here and wonder why noone else has those problem I have. I cannot imagine being the only one since this seems to be a programming error of the app/phone software.
So I have 3 problems that make my vivoactive luxe unusable.
A little background information first:
We (since it's technically my wife's) own the watch since January 3. It's a used watch but it's in good condition and less than a year old. Of course I did a factory reset before using it.
Problem 1, maybe already fixed:
When first trying to test out the watch, it wouldn't connect/sync to the phone for virtually anything without me manually shutting down the app on the phone and restarting the App. Since the watch updated itself to Software 3.7 this SEEMS to be gone. But it's only one day testing so far.
Problem 2, the my be a common/known issue:
GPS accuracy is horrible. The first run, I thought it could be the phones gps that's wrong. But today, the second run (see screenshot attached), we used the phone with the addidas running App the same time, which delivered perfect gps results. It's only the watch that's way off.
I've figured while reading here in the forums, that this might be a bluetooth connectivity issue. The phone is carried in a sports phone holder for the upper arm, the watch is on the wrist of the other hands side arm. So it's approximately 1 meter distance between the phone and the watch. There shouldn't be problems. But that's what it is. We haven't tried out manually turning "intelligent" battery optimisations off jet, since this should not be an issue, but that's something we could try. This cannot solve
Problem 3 though, the big one:
This seems to be a catastrophic Software failure. First thing I did was set the watch and app to metric since I live in Germany. So I set metric on the watch, "on the phone for the watch" and "on the app for the phone/app itself".
The problem is, all distance data recorded from the watch is multiplied wrongly with the factor 1,61. That means when we run 1 kilometer in 5 minutes, the app says we were running 1.6 kilometers in 5 minutes, therefore giving us a flattering but plainly wrong pace and distance. This is mayor and I don't understand how noone else seems to have this problem. I figured it's a 1.6 factor since this is the only thing I could imagine this problem can be rooted in but that's just a guess, could also be a random calculating error.
The first run we did yesterday was about 4.5 kilometers in reality and the watch counted 7.8 so this was roughly a 1.6 factor in inaccuracy. The second run today was a lot closer with 7 kilometers in reality and 10 kilometers in the garmin App. Still horrible wrong and could be a combination from too short measured gps and multiplied this too short signal with a factor of 1.6, giving me a too long distance.
So let me show you the comparison of the addidas running data and the garmin data. This is mayor, it's not a little off, it's just completely unusable. Since I bought the watch used, there is no sending back the watch and I cannot think of those problems being problems of my specific watch unit, this seems to be software issue that should impact all vivomove luxe watches.
But see yourself, the training data:
Gps from the first run was even more catastrophic but the second run is better to show off, because of the direct comparison with the addidas running App.
This was tracked on the same phone the same time. First run there was no second app tracking and the garmin App was running in the foreground.
Phone is a oneplus 5 with Android 10. Not the most recent phone but running fine and as seen in the addidas running App has quite accurate GPS.
Phone has no known bluetooth connectivity issues and is used with bluetooth headsets every day without problems, also connects to the car just fine. Before trying the vivomove luxe, we bought a amazfit GTS 2 (since it looks nice) for Christmas without any bluetooth connectivity issues (but returned it because it had very inaccurate heart rate data. Also I bought the much more expensive Garmin to avoid more experiments with unreliable chinese products and now I'm having even more problems since I cannot just return the watch...).
Software of the watch was 2.4 at the first run and I think 3.7 on the second. Didn't really impact the results.
Those 3 problems in combination let me ask the question how could this product be used by anyone? Also this seems to be software issues not related to this specific unit. At least the vastly wrong distance data that's used to record speed and anything cannot be a problem of my unit. Especially not to explain is, the app shows the map. With a ruler I could figure those lines not to be 10 kilometers but around 7. And still the garmin App calculates this wrong distance.
