20+ firmwares later... 955 still broken

Couple years after release. +20 major firmware updates later. VO2 max does not work properly. Lactate treshold detection does not work properly. Many serious bugs from beta verisons still not fixed. Many UX blunders either not fixed or new are created. I bought top device for top money from allegly reputable sport technology manufacturer. And yet I filled I was scam in a third world bazar... or by a modern corporation.

  • I am in a similar position with my FR965 purchased 9 months ago. I cannot remember a single day when everything worked as it should. There was always something: LT detection not working, bizarre training load calculations, maps not drawing, navigation doing strange things, not being able to keep BT connection with a phone and some more.

    Sadly all these problems do not seem to be getting fixed in a timely manner, but rather compounding and leaving me with a feeling of being conned. I invested in this pile of steaming manure 600EUR, so cannot swap watches every other month. But I already decided that my next watch will not be from Garmin.

  • Same with Fenix 7, Fenix 8 and Epix. Accumulating bugs with every software release while important issues remain unresolved. 

  • I purchased the 955 near to the release date and while I expected a load of bugs to begin with, I didn't think we'd be this far along and there would still be bugs. Granted, it does now have more functionality than it did on release, but still....

  • My FR955 Solar has become almost unuseable. There are several problems:

    - The heart rate measurement on the wrist constantly freezes or fails. All data is then falsified or useless. Under "Info" is often for BMX: 0.0.0 and for WHR also 0.0.0. But at some point not anymore.

    - The vibration partially fails or does not stop for several seconds (~10 sec.).

    - Yesterday, after a short break during the run, the watch continued the activity only with a time delay, there were (above mentioned) Vibration problems and at home I then saw that the FIT file was probably damaged from this point on (Strava, for example, could not display the rest of the activity). With the GPX file it then worked manually.

    - Other errors, e.g. the watch says the battery level is too low to connect to Wifi, although the battery level is 70%.

    Everything has expired after the warranty. Overall, this is all very frustrating. I have also tried everything: latest update, hard and soft resets, factory reset, etc.

    I wrote to Garmin support a few weeks ago, but never got an answer...

  • Hi Philip .

    your problem is exactly like mine.

    can you please check what is temperature in the widget when it freezes the heart rate number ? 

    I noticed that when the HR is working it freezes when the temperature goes above 29c…

    Then If I put the watch in front of the AC for a while , temperature goes down and it starts working again.

    Wonder why that doesn’t happen to everyone …

  • I regret being part of the beta tester program. It completely messed up my VO2 max data. There is no option to reset this data, there is no way to fix it. Not even a hard reset will solve the problem, as it takes the account data from the Connect cloud. You need to create a new Garmin account, with a different email address, and then hard reset the watch. That's what I had to do after leaving the beta tester program. Now my VO2max and especially the running lactate threshold are showing consistent data again. But I lost a history of 10 years of activity.

  • I user 15.19 and i am happy with this... Downgrade your Firmware.

  • I user 15.19 and i am happy with this... Downgrade your Firmware.

    Out of curiosity, how did you do that?

    Is that the firmware with the broken cadence sensing (September 2022), or the one with the random stripes on the screen (August 2022)?

  • Oh, that's out of the question. This old firmware 15.19 leaves a lot to be desired, it misses out on many interesting innovations. My problem was when I was participating in the beta program. Now I'm on the final official firmware, 22.24, and I'm very happy with it. The lactate threshold issue couldn't be solved any other way, and your suggestion wouldn't solve it either.
    My point with the complaint is: it is not worth participating in the beta program given that Garmin does not help you fix any errors arising from it.

  • What alternatives do we have?