Garmin support: we have a situation

+1 This will be my last Garmin purchase.

If you allow me:
Antique OHR - shows mostly cosmic noise.
Battery life is 4 days when using external sensors and 2 hours of daily training.
No barometer.
No mountain training - buy a more expensive model he-he.

Support@coros - not existent.

It just doesn't compare to Garmin's functionality.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), for that money fr255m remains the best choice with all the current bugs.

My 255 updated to beta 14.08 today. I noticed whilst it was applying it and during the reboot that the bluetooth sensor had been updated (now its version 23.09...dont know what it was on 13.23) This was not mentioned specifically as one of the points in the 14.06 or 14.08 beta update list...Im not surprised! As others have already posted, this beta does not appear to have solved the BT disconnect issue...furthermore, my watch still does not successfully broadcast its HR to my laptop when using the wahoo systm cycling software.

global_local said:

If you allow me:

Why wouldn't I?

My experience is slightly different:

global_local said:

Antique OHR - shows mostly cosmic noise.

The OHR of the Coros Pace 2 is not the best clearly, but the one in the 255 is also disappointing to say the least. Many people find it super buggy (even more since 13.x releases).

global_local said:

Battery life is 4 days when using external sensors and 2 hours of daily training.

I don't see any difference between the battery life of the Coros Pace 2 and the 255s, both are excellent: 10-11 days.

global_local said:

No barometer.

The Coros Pace 2 does have a barometric altimeter. I live in the French Alps, and I'm an outdoor guy (Trail, Touring ski, mountaineering in general). The Altitude is one of the most important metric to me.
I never ever had any issue with the accuracy or the auto-calibration of the Pace 2, always good.
Not the same experience with the 255s (apparently finally fixed in 14.08 from what I can tell)...

global_local said:

No mountain training - buy a more expensive model he-he.

Less outdoor activities in Pace 2 yes. One of the reason I went with 255s.

global_local said:

Support@coros - not existent.

I never had to experience it so I can't comment on this.

The only thing I know is that the Garmin support is subpar.

global_local said:

It just doesn't compare to Garmin's functionality.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), for that money fr255m remains the best choice with all the current bugs.

I wouldn't be that categorical.

I'm not a Coros fanboy nor a Garmin hater. I bought the 255s thanks the superior feature set and hardware compared to my Pace 2, but the constant regressions and bugs is totally killing the experience. I don't fully trust this watch like I did with the Pace 2.

You are right, it has baro, but i can't use it because there is no hiking(any 3D) activity.

May be for you coros was a better choice. I hope you can return the watch like I did with the pace2.

global_local said:

You are right, it has baro, but i can't use it because there is no hiking(any 3D) activity.

3D measurements are useless unless in climbing or alpinism to be honest. The pace 2 can totally be used for trail or hiking, with a high reliability.

global_local said:

May be for you coros was a better choice. I hope you can return the watch like I did with the pace2.

The point of this thread is not to say which model is better suited to me (I can deal with that, thank you ^^).

The point is to say that Garmin 255s are not reliable & full of bugs for now. Besides, Garmin is unable to fix those bugs, brings regressions instead, and does not provide us a fully transparent status update on the situation.
If you are happy with that, good for you, but many of us aren't and I guess it should be respected. Thanks :)

Well, hope you are not only complaining about that here in the forums, but wrote a bug report and uploaded whatever logfile there is. Because as far as I know, 14.08 is a beta version and you should only join that, if you are

1. aware that there could be still bugs

2. if you encounter a bug, report it properly

Which is, by the way, the reason I am not joining the beta program. I just want to use my watch, not write bug reports frequently (unless there is really serious trouble).

Emile said:

Some significant change is probably needed here, people have been complaining for a long time, this is clearly killing the whole Garmin user experience

Back to topic.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth in Emiles starting post for this thread. The software development of Garmin could be really better - even though one always has to take into account, that a couple of bugs, that are reported here in the forums, do NOT affect every single user! (On the other hand, there is some minor bugs, that I notice on my FR255, so work needs to be done)

I have some history with Garmin products and the situation has always been a little like "good hardware, software often buggy" and a good tip has always been, NOT to buy a Garmin product in the first year after release, so that the major bugs would have been fixed ;)

But what I want to point out, also is this: Garmin has always been willing, to deliver bug fixes and partly even new functionalities at least for their top and medium range products. This is something, that is not standard in the industry - my girlfriend has a competitors GPS watch that received 2 or 3 really minor updates in 3 years and major annoyances (like a bad implemented "screen on" gesture) were never fixed. Meanwhile, the second and third generation of this watch was released...

But I agree, the quality assurance could be better, as regressions seem to happen much too often and also the communication here in the forums should be much better from official side! There is plenty of room for improvements.

Maybe the new beta program is the first step of improvement to the whole firmware development process. At least it is something new to Garmin and hopefully, all of the users that joined the program will really contribute there - and Garmin will use this to get better on communication and bug tracking.

Grumpy from dawn till dusk said:

Well, hope you are not only complaining about that here in the forums, but wrote a bug report and uploaded whatever logfile there is. Because as far as I know, 14.08 is a beta version and you should only join that, if you are

1. aware that there could be still bugs

2. if you encounter a bug, report it properly

Which is, by the way, the reason I am not joining the beta program. I just want to use my watch, not write bug reports frequently (unless there is really serious trouble).

To clarify, I personally reported every bugs I encountered of course, and helped the support to debug everything with videos, detailed descriptions, debug logs, etc.
I'm well aware of what a beta means (I'm a software developer).
I installed 14.08 because the 13.21 & 23 were super buggy, and I had high hopes to see bug fixes in this beta.

I really think there is room from improvement, and I strongly believe that Garmin is willing to make things better.
Here are a few suggestions, inspired from my work on a popular open source project:

• Provide a public bug tracking platform
• Prioritise every bugs. Highest priority bugs should trigger an immediate bug fix release. Mid-priority bug should be fixed in the next release (no release until fixing all those bugs). Low-priority bugs should be fixed on best effort.
• Clearly provide the status of each bug (can be reproduced, version impacted, fixed found, etc)
• Provide the list of bugs (with IDs) fixed by a specific release in the release notes (avoid things like "Various fixes in activities", that's useless)

Those are widely used good practices in public facing / open source software development.
I really hope we will see a step in that direction, this would be an instant benefit for Garmin and the community :)