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Forerunner 945 Open Water Swim

Hi everyone. Just want to share a really bad experience with open water swim and Garmin 945 and a customer service provided . The open water swim with these watch have a massive issue with accuracy. It does cut 30-40% of your swim. I was years with Garmin company and my previous watch xt735 never had that problem . Altho my last experience with customer service is just shocking.

I have brought new watch and after two weeks i have contacted support to ask how i can fix the problem . After troubleshooting and all advice unfortunately open water swim still wasn't good. And there is a first ridiculous step. They have decided to exchange the watch for re-certyfied watch ( just reminder that my watch had just two weeks and it was brand new) , but i said well i take it probably they will send a quiet new device. After 6 weeks of exchanging process ( which you can imagine how great it is to wait 6 weeks when you just brought new watch for 550e ) . I have my swim done and same problem occurs plus the battery life of the exchanged watch is much more shorter than previously ( obviously re-certified watch is not that great as they said it will be) . Contacted support centre again and of course they advise me the same troubleshooting after 35min waiting on the phone. They came up with same answer and solution as the last time. When I did that again and the distance still wasn't correct I have been informed that they can exchange my watch again for re certified with information that "THIS WILL NOT RESOLVE THE OPEN WATER SWIMMING ISSUE AND WE WILL NOT REPLACE THE DEVICE FURTHER FOR THIS ISSUE SPECIFICLY " . So they are aware of the problem , they don't want to give me a refund but exchange watch again for re-rertified and still advertising this watch as a good quality for triathlons and open water swimming. Basically the watch have manufacture faulty but they won't take it responsibility for it or give you the money back ! Device worth more than 500euro....

An absolute scam!

0 e7andy over 2 years ago

What do you mean by that the watch cuts 30-40% of the swim? Does it cut the distance or is it just the logged positions that are cut?

0 NickMN over 2 years ago

Yeah that is a crappy situation with the battery of replacement.

personally I have never had much luck with the outdoor swim, honestly it seems like even with GPS lock for a bit... that it still will start me in the wrong spot. Way worse than run/bike/walk. I don't swim much at all and not far so i think it has a heck of a time picking up a good direction anyhow with the watch being underwater for roughly half the time. If I make a point of doing some backfloat swimming with hand on stomach or frontcrawl with just one arm ... watch arm resting on my back/butt... seems to get a good heading and will read decent enough.

It's just strange to me that I can get GPS lock in my house... but then it has trouble when it is under a little bit of water 50% of time. lol

0 NataliaPocelujko over 2 years ago in reply to e7andy

Instead 2000 m the watch would recorded approx 1500m - 1600m

0 NataliaPocelujko over 2 years ago in reply to NickMN

Garmin obviously know there is a issue with some models . Xt 735 was perfectly fine with open water , sometimes it would loose gps but then you stick your wrist up to the sky and In a second you have it back. I Think is extremely unfair to customer s , there should be information that this watch is specyfy for running and biking but not such as swimming. I would not buy it . Another things is exchange for recertify device which again is not fair to anyone who just brought brand new device. I have no option to refund either so i can't buy any other watch which would be better for swimming... . Just extremely disappointed

0 Joeribar over 2 years ago

I can agree.

Okay I did my first open water swim today with my new Forerunner 955 Solar. And I must say when I checked the map everything looks very promosing. Until I checked the distance my Forerunner with new and so good gps only had 3843m of swimming. While my 2 year old Polar Grit X had 4420m. So I checkt the distance of the Strava segment we have in our swim spot. And this says 430m but it isn't s closed loop so let's say 440m when it's closed. I did 10 loops today. So normaly 4400m exact what my Polar says.

So why is the oh so good Garmin multiband + all systems over rated gps 600m off? Can someone maybe explain why this can be and if this can be solved? Because a 650euro 2022 watch can't do what my 2020 399euro watch does

I also checked the distance with Google maps just to check.

0 Edward over 2 years ago

I had 735, 945 and 955 solar. I can tell you the gps (gnss) on 945 is a disaster, it was a lot worse than 735 and 955 even for road running. I was quite disappointed when I did the “upgrade” from 735 to 945 as well.

For your case, is there any chance you could ask for upgrade to 955? 945 (or the entire 45 series) should be avoided if you really care about gps accuracy.