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

This is common and normal. Garmin claims horizontal accuracy of 3 meters.  Keep in mind, this is with ideal GPS conditions.  Very rarely do we have these ideal conditions.  Some tracks are great, others may show you in the water while running along a river.  Your smartphone has a larger GPS antenna and also uses Wi-Fi and cellular towers to find your location. Because of this, it's far superior than your watch. Some people will compare the track between their phone and watch and conclude their watch is faulty. This is not a fault, but a limitation of a smaller device. 

I don’t get why people get so caught up on tracing vs accurate pace/distance. I know where I run already. I just need to know how I’m doing while running there. Besides if you have to zoom in to find faults in the track then the watch is doing pretty good

If the tracing is frequently showing you zig-zagging across the road, then your entire pace gets thrown off. And by zoom in, I just meant that Garmin Connect shows straightened lines unless you zoom in a bit to override that.

The main thing for me is that most people I see on, say, Strava still have the 235, and their tracks are consistently smoother than what I see from my 245. I am curious if other people are experiencing this, as well, and if that's just something we'll have to come to accept. I'm just not sure if it's only me (and therefore, I need to try to resolve), or all of us. That's all.

I've had the 245 music for a month now. Previously had TomTom. Mostly it seems accurate but I've had 3-4 occasions where the track is way way off. Happened to me just now. The distance was about right, but the route on the map was about a mile north of where I ran. It was an expensive birthday gift and I'm really not convinced it was a good upgrade. Never had this with TomTom- ever.

I have owned F3, VA3, FR645 and so far FR245 suits me very well. I use GPS here in Europe with GPS+GALILEO and find tracking super accurate, yeah, I am staying on the right side of the street. Though the GPS lock time is a bit longer than with FR 645, but not that long as with Fenix 3 where I had to wait up to a minute :O

Other than that, buttons feel a little bit strange, hard to press, some of them produce different click sound, but that's ok, I had this feeling with older Garmin watches and even with my old friend Pebble. By my experience, you stop noticing that after some time, and you use them hard and soak them  in the mud and salt water and whatnot and buttons keep working well. 

I like body battery feature, and find it helpful. Also, I like the slightly different interface feel, is that added animations or what? Quite snappy and feels nice. Also, lap button can be turned off (oh, thanks for that, I kept pressing it accidentally on my FR645). Plastic in FR 245 feels cheaper than in FR 645, or just made from the different material, because it is still pretty strong, and screen is somewhat darker than with FR 645 and with glare. I have added another layer of the glass protector and now it looks like sapphire. But that suites me, I am ok, back on the track and super excited. 

Did you try the GPS Chipset 2.50 update? I received it today on my 245.

GPS Chipset 2.50 can be downloaded via Garmin Express or automatically through Garmin Connect Mobile. 

Change Log

- Improves GNSS performance for open water swim activities. 
- Improves GPS + GALILEO navigation performance. 
- Improves GNSS performance for cycling activities. 
- Other bug fixes and improvements.

You can read more about it here:forums.garmin.com/.../gps-chipset-2-50-is-now-live-open-water-swim-improvements

Hey I was wondering please;

You wrote: "I find that the battery drain is closer to 4% when I dismiss notifications from the watch or don't read them, and closer to 10% when I read and delete texts and emails from it."

Is that for the entire day? Can you please share for battery drain per hour please?

I am concerned mh watch battery drain is excessive ,(25% per 10 hours in normal smart watch mode with observing most of battery life maximization tips)

I've been comparing my new 245M with my old 235 and found the GPS on the latter better. For example I set both to GLONASS and 1 second recording. Wearing both, I ran to a park, did 2 circuits along paths (one clockwise and the other anticlockwise) and then home the way I had come. Ideally the 2 loops around the park should have been on top of one another and along the paths as far as I was able to see them (some paths were through trees). When I checked the tracks of the 235 they were very good as the tracks looked along the paths and overlapped well.  However with the 245M, the tracks were clearly different,although not massive, in some places even when I was running along a clearly defined path. Also the tracks to and from the park should have overlapped but while the 235 gave good results the 245M wandered to the side over houses coming back. Finally the 245M regularly give the distance run as longer than the 235. For example on the run above the 245M recorded 4.79 miles whereas the 235 recorded 4.72.

Have you installed the GPS Chipset 2.50 update?

I had a 245 and noticed the same things as you. My old watch gave better tracks.