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Turn by turn navigation audio inconsistent

Rave79
8 days ago

Hi

I have recently bought the 955 and have tried x3 runs with routes created in Garmin connect.

One was in a town (Lanzarote), one was road and trail, and one was trail.  

The latter was a preloaded course.

1. In 2/3 runs, I found the audio prompts for navigation turns to be very inconsistent. 

For example, most 90 degree turns are fine. But many don't get announced at all.

One was given in the wrong direction (and there was nothing weird about the turn...just a standard 90 degree).

I think occasionally some get announced as a slight turn when it's clearly 90 degrees.

This happened on both town and the trail runs. 

I'm using the latest firmware according to my watch.

2. Another slight annoyance is the third alert - the one that announces the actual turn is always about 5 seconds too late. 

Can anyone help with these issues?

It almost feels like no one at Garmin activity tested navigation. Having spent over £300, I'm really disappointed.

Thanks 

  • 0 6 days ago

    I agree 100% and saw similar problems. The turn by turn voice prompts are practically useless in that you can't rely on them. You will often need to glance at the watch to double check you're on track. You quickly conclude that the voice alerts are an irritating distraction that you're better off without.

    I only use the discrete watch beeps/vibrations for navigation (along with regular visual checks) - this works quite well though the last beep to indicate "turn now" also occurs slightly after making the turn.

    Unfortunately, you'll have to give up on the idea of listening to music from your watch when navigating if you don't want to be distracted with the pointless voice alerts. You'll also have to turn the volume down on your phone otherwise the voice alerts will find their way to your phone speaker to really annoy you. You can't turn these off without also turning off the discrete beeps. There are many threads across the forums with people asking for a setting to allow TBT beep alerts without vocal audio prompts, but Garmin have their head buried deep in the sand with this one.

    The off-course alerts are not that great either and are actually worse than previous cheaper Garmin watches with supposedly inferior GPS chipsets. You have to veer too far off course before you get the off course alert, it will only alert you once, and strangely, it doesn't give you a voice alert for this (something that might actually be useful!).

    I don't want to seem too negative. I use navigation a lot and even as it is, I find it extremely useful. I think Garmin are probably trying to cut back on having too many complex settings and options, but this lack of attention to fine details with usability, especially in the face of so much customer feedback is concerning - and will ultimately have people (including me) looking over the fence at other brands to see what else is out there.

  • 0 5 days ago in reply to Paulr707

    Thanks for the detailed reply and sorry you're also having the same issue.

    I paid the extra for the improved navigation maps and features. I think if I'd known this, I would have gone for a lower spec model as I only really need music and the workout voice alerts.

    I can't understand how it can't use the radius of a turn to determine if it should warrant an alert. I wonder if they tried to be too clever about it and failed miserably.

    Has anyone had a lot of success with navigation audio prompts/vibrations?