New Forerunner 165 GPS way off

I did an initial outdoor run with my Forerunner 165. Run was 2.00 miles, watch recorded 2.56 with crazy mapping in Garmin Connect.

How can the GPS be this far off? Country road, no buildings around. Thanks for any advice.

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DavidPHanson 24 days ago in reply to FlowState +1

FlowState... that worked! Changing my setting to "Every Second" fixed my problem. It seems to me, for a Sport watch, Garmin should set that as the default, but I guess it's intended to extend…

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0 FlowState 25 days ago

How long did you wait a for a GPS fix before pressing the Start button?

I’ve found that Garmin watches will usually show a green GPS ring very quickly, but doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s truly a good fix. Often when I get the green ring, I’ll see (current) pace field fluctuating like crazy, even though I’m standing still. I usually wait a little while longer for the pace field to settle to 0:00 (sometimes this can take 30 seconds or even a couple of minutes). If I don’t wait long enough, at the beginning of the activity I’ll see a bad GPS track, unrealistically fast paces, and extra distance.

Also, if you want to see the best possible GPS track in Connect, I would recommend changing the System > Data Recording setting from Smart (the default) to Every Second.

https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-607F08F6-33FC-40BF-9727-84E54043D82D/EN-US/GUID-AF421384-7597-4D79-9D4B-AD4AEB53A2E2.html

https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=s4w6kZmbmK0P6l20SgpW28

0 5164992 25 days ago

Mine is the same, I posted and got no reply.

0 DavidPHanson 24 days ago in reply to FlowState

FlowState... that worked! Changing my setting to "Every Second" fixed my problem. It seems to me, for a Sport watch, Garmin should set that as the default, but I guess it's intended to extend battery life. Thank you for taking the time to answer!

0 FlowState 24 days ago in reply to DavidPHanson

No problem!

DavidPHanson said:
Garmin should set that as the default, but I guess it's intended to extend battery life.

I think it's more of holdover from 10-15 years ago, when Garmin watches had very limited storage, so there was a real concern about running out of space if activities were too big.

I think DC Rainmaker has been telling people to change this setting for 10 or more years now.

It really should be the default (according to Garmin, newer Edges actually always use every second recording.)

I'm kind of surprised this would affect your GPS track and measured distance so dramatically though. I would expect the problem you described to be the result of a poor GPS fix. The suggestion to use every second recording was only so you could get the best GPS track possible (after resolving the original issue).