Open water swimming accuracy

Mine is pretty accurate. I validated it against a watch on a tow buoy. Sometimes it "catches up" at the end as it may need to use an algorithm to estimate along the way given the watch is under water much of the time.

Hello.

I have the same issue. On both 15.19 and 16.17. And there are more reports about it. I have about 50% inaccuracy in some cases.

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-955-series/346349/open-water-double-distance/1671677#1671677

Exactly the same for me with both 15.19 and 16.17. Inaccuracy this high makes this activity (OWS) useless. Completely irresponsible. Let's hope they fix this.

The "catch up" phase takes, many, many seconds to finish and meanwhile the extra time is running making your speed less accurate and more slow. It is frustrating because you cannot measure your speed/pace.

For me it generally catches up most distance in a minute or less. It could be longer if the signal were actually lost. Presumably you never do *** stroke since the watch would be under water the whole time (no signal). Are you following these guidelines? support.garmin.com/.../

It is not faulty algorithm it is a UI/ UX.

I did exported OWS into Google maps and the distance and GPS data is correct. However distance that is shown by Garmin watch is incorrect. I hope Garmin doesn't use this parameter for other metric calculations like "Primary Benefit" or SWOLF.

By the way, tedious work around if a must. Export activity into Google Earth format file (seems more accurate than GPX) and open in Google maps. Manually edit activity distance.

I will try these guidelines next time and see if it makes any difference. However i didn't get what secondary satellite constellation is, and if it applies to fr955

Leon said:

By the way, tedious work around if a must. Export activity into Google Earth format file (seems more accurate than GPX) and open in Google maps. Manually edit activity distance.

Sounds very hard work for me, but thanks anyway.

Hello,

I think I had found a remedy. It worked with 100% accuracy - Garmin distance was perfectly matched with Google Maps.

Here is what I did:

1. Disabled auto lap and lap button. Inside open water settings menu, there is "Laps". I turned off everything.

2. Waited for GPS lock, before starting the activity.

There is a semicircle on the top of the screen when entering into activity, it is white and red at the begging, I had waited for it to become green.

 I'm happy now.

Good weekend for everyone.

...

I just made the adjustments accordingly. Tomorrow I'm going to test it and give a feedback here. Thank you Leon