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Various problems with my Garmin 645M watch

4293374
over 3 years ago

I bought a Garmin 645 Music Watch a few months ago and I have several problems with it:

1.After I push the start button for a run, it immediately stops again ( the next second) by itself and I'll need to push the start button again to make it work!

2.When walking and or hiking it gives me the wrong kms. I noticed that when I go for a hike and take a lunch break, the kms and time continue to add up. Very weird, when you're sitting still and you see kms being added. Even when I have pushed the stop button, the kms continue to add up. Yesterday, when hiking 15K in the mountains, the watch switched itself off, during a lunch break and I had to start all over again.

3.I have been wearing my watch 24h a days 7/7 since I bought it a few months ago. However for the last few nights I had to take my watch off at night, as I'm wearing a splint.  I noticed in the mornings that the watch shows 450 calories used, while it has been laying idle on my bedside table all night. I doubled checked at midnight and it went to 0.

Needless to say that I'm not impressed with Garmin at all. I was persuaded to buy a Garmin watch after many problem free years with TomTom.

I did my homework before I bought the watch and the 645M sounded great. I now did a bit more research and there seem to be quite a lot of problems with it.

I have not done a factory reset yet, as I'm afraid that I will loose all me info in the Garmin Connect on my computer. Someone suggested to delete all the info from my phone at the end of every month. This seems to help for some people, but hope that for a watch, which costs quite a lot, an easier solution can be found.

TIA for your help from a very disappointed and unhappy Garmin user.

  • +1 over 3 years ago
    4293374 said:
     I noticed in the mornings that the watch shows 450 calories used, while it has been laying idle on my bedside table all night. I doubled checked at midnight and it went to 0.

    This is correct. When you first got your watch you entered your age, sex, height and weight and Garmin calculated you your BMR.  What your seeing is that calculated hourly BMR burn. For example, if your BMR is 2400 calories a day/100 per hour, your watch would show 600 calories burned at 6AM regardless if it's worn

    For the activity stopping after the start button is immediately pressed, you should contact support on that issue.

    When you stop for lunch during a walk or hike, are you pausing the activity and then resuming later?  If you just stop, GPS will bounce around from that stopping location (several meters) and add the distance. The longer the stop, the more distance added. 

  • +1 over 3 years ago

    I have the 645M and haven't experienced these exact issues.  I do notice the GPS being wonky. I went on a walk with a friend the other day that has a 645 as well. Walking side by side on the same roadway, my watch showed 6 miles while their watch showed 5.5.  That's a huge difference. And when we went and looked at a map of the route we walked theirs showed a nice straight line following our path almost exactly, while mine showed wide zig-zags every few hundred yards.  I also have problems with the bluetooth headphones connection. It's very weak. Tried three different headphones and the connection drops out if I don't have my hands close to my head. Works okay for running but any sort of walking (where my hands would be down near my waist) and it cuts out. And forget about text message notifications showing on my watch.  That has never worked since I bought it. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    You might take a look into the satelite network settings. Link:

    I set mine to only gps, and for 1,5 year now, over and over again the same distance is measured  during my standard 5k and 10k runs.
    Good luck trying, I am a very happy user of the FR645M (sorry, those guys do exist :-) )
  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Obviously this is not the typical experience. It sounds like your Start/Stop button is faulty. Contact Garmin Support for troubleshooting and they may replace it.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I have the same problem about the watch giving wrong distance data. I already posted about this here. I also get wrong altitude data. The watch adds distance when you are standing still which of course it should not. It doesn't matter which sattelite combination you use. I already tried all of them and they are all doing the same thing. Tottaly useless for hiking since you have to stop to catch a breath or take a photo, which are mostly 10-60 sec pauses and using pause for every stop like this during hiking would be totally stupid. I already sent my watch to garming for repair and they did nothing to fix it. They just said I need to use pause and that this is normal which of course is not normal! All my friend's watches work correctly even when taking a break during a hike. Of course the watch will show the right distance during a run like someone else already posted this here because you aren't stopping. 

  • +1 over 3 years ago in reply to Anže

    About the running you might have a good point. I will give it a test while standing still. You know there is an auto-pause function on the watch? Or does it even keeps adding up the distance then?

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to DaKo

    Auto-pause is no good for me during hiking because sometimes when you hike slowly uphill the watch thinks you are actually stopped and keeps mistaking. Also, I want to be able to see how much time the hike took me with all the pauses combined.  I mean is this too much to ask of a watch like this. Other watches can do it perfectly fine. My friend who hikes with me has a suunto and he can leave it running during pauses as long as 1 hour or even 2 hours and the watch won't count distance during that time. I also tried every second recording which does nothing.

    If you go read Garmin support, they actually talk about this problem here: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=xQvHXbfaT27Zr4hxZDvjv5

    They say this is called a GPS drift and its suppose to happen near trees, hills, mountains etc. It looks excatly the same as the photo they have there. But sadly this doesnt justt happen when there are environmental factors. This happens to me all the time. I could be taking a break on top of a flat hill, with only sun and no clouds, no trees and still get distance added for no reason. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to tess

    Hi,

    Thank you for your reply. The calorie adding at night sounds logical, so thank you for that. One problem solved. Hurray!

    Yes, I think I will contact support.

    When, hiking, walking or swimming, I've set the the settings on Autopause when stopped. This doesn't work, it keeps adding  extra kms. When doing a 15k hike it can add another 3k, not just a few meters, it's very annoying. I will contact support about this as well, but have read in the meantime that a lot of people seem to have the same problem.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to domswan

    Unfortunately on a 15km hike, I can have a 3km difference, compared to my friends!

    The watch also adds extra when I'm walking and swimming. It only gives the correct kms when I run, This is a continuous movement and doesn't involve stopping. I suspect, the moment, I make a stop with running it will do the same. It's something which I'll need to try out. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to DaKo

    Hi, Thanks for your reply. I don't have any added kms when I run either. I suspect , however, that this is because it is a continuous movement, which doesn't involve stopping for a break, or looking at something. That's the time, when it adds extra kms. it is something which I will try out though.