How has everyone's experience with the FR 245 GPS been so far?

I have owned a Fenix 3, FR 920XT, FR 935 and none of these was totally flawless concerning the tracks. ...and so is the 245M. Good thing about this is, that i don't care as long as the track isn't too far off. 

GPS on the 245 works perfectly on the unit I have, as well as other metrics derived from it, speed, pace etc (unlike HR data and other metrics derived from it, VO2 Max, training effect, status, discussed in other threads).

When I compare my 245M tracks to other runners' tracks using older devices (235, 935, 735XT, etc.), my tracks are much less smooth and are more rough/"jittery". Not sure why that is – perhaps because I'm using every-second recording? Do you experience this at all?

When I compare my 245M tracks to other runners' tracks using older devices (235, 935, 735XT, etc.), my tracks are much less smooth and are more rough/"jittery". Not sure why that is – perhaps because I'm using every-second recording? Do you experience this at all?

Went for first run yesterday. When I looked at the track it was very angular with a bunch of straight-line segments that added up to my overall track, but still looked odd.  I figured out I had smart recording turned on so I turned it off and will try again. I don't get why Garmin has that as the default for running. I'd kind of understand if it was the default for hiking where you  might genuinely need to worry about file size.

I went for a second run with 1-second sampling turned on.  I also had my phone with me using the MapByRun app.  When I got home the tracks looked about the same.  During part of the run I was under pretty dense tree cover and both devices were a little noisy.  Out in a more open area both were equally good.  The distance tracked was about the same (3.95 miles on one, 4.01 on the other or 1.5% difference). That's probably due to the squiggles in the dense-tree area.

This with GPS only on my 245.

Whenever I run with GLONASS enabled my tracks are always far worse then GPS alone. This was the same with my Suunto as well. Are you running in America? 

From what I’ve seen all the companies have had a rocky start with the Sony chipset in the beginning...Coros, Suunto, Polar and now Garmin. Something to think about and hope that it gets better over time with updates. My buddies Suunto 9 was horrible at 1st. Def much better now. 

I honestly think with all the big names switching to the Sony GPS chipset we won’t have as accurate pace/tracks as we are all used to from the past. 

I tested smart sampling vs 1 second sampling today on a 4 mile loop trail I frequent. I ran it twice just to be sure. It’s a good test course as I run by several lakes and under some dense tree cover and even on a board walk over water for .25 mile. 

The ONLY difference I noticed was some slight wiggle in the track and small change in some sharp corners. Nothing major at all. Same pace/distance both times. 

I even went as far as to compare it to my old GPS tracks from my Suunto spartan trainer which has been lauded as one of the more accurate watches in recent times. I’ve never had an issue with that watch as far as accuracy goes (build quality is another thing). The mediatek chipset combined with the satellite bump made for very good sampling. ANYWAYS between the 2 watches the...245 was more consistent if you zoom in and get pickey about it. Otherwise from far they looked very similar. 

So far I’ve had all good experiences with this watch. Now I know this is one run as far as the sample rate goes but all my runs so far have been at least good. And this was with GPS ONLY enabled btw for those curious. I’ll continue to test the different sampling rates and satellites used and report back to this thread. Hope this helps those wondering in any way. 

This is definitely very helpful – thank you! When you were talking about the Suunto 9 in your first post, I think there was a minor typo: did you mean to say that it was bad at *first*, but got better with time due to updates? Is that a device with the new Sony GPS chipset? I'm hoping that we can get updates soon that will improve accuracy. It's not too bad right now, but improvements would definitely help.

• sorry about the typo, yes it was meant to say at first. It has gotten progressively better over time going from what I would consider to be not great to now good. It was the first of the watch companies to adopt the new Sony chipset. I haven’t seen any of them have great success initially with it. I think they have all switched over due to the low power consumption of the unit. 
•  I would assume garmin will continue to tweak many things about this watch. I believe this will be one of their most popular devices going forward and doubt they would leave anything uncorrected. Again all my test so far have been GPS only. Anytime I’ve used GPS+GLONASS the results haven’t been positive with any device.