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Garmin 645 GPS issues

chawke
over 3 years ago

My Garmin Forerunner 645 Music watch has trouble connecting to GPS when I prepare to go running. I live near Columbus Circle in Manhattan, New York City. I step outside, walk around and away from tall buildings (like into Central Park), but even 20-30 minutes later, the red bar never quite makes it past 50-75%. My watch and mobile/pc Garmin software are all up-to-date.

What I find I have to do is connect, by bluetooth, my watch to my phone (which itself is connected to WiFi or a mobile network), step outside and wait maybe 5-15 minutes. This process seems to enable the GPS connection on my watch. When I afterwards disconnect the watch from the phone, the watch is then able to quickly connect to GPS itself.

But (1) 5+ minutes is still too long, and (2) I shouldn't have to connect the watch to my phone every time I want the watch to connect to GPS.

Increasingly often, I decide to run with my phone instead of my watch, due to the amount of wasted time and effort attempting to get my watch to pick up a GPS signal.

I additionally own a Garmin Drive 52 Navigator for driving, which also had trouble connecting (although I owned a Garmin nüvi 42 in England -- where I lived for a while -- that worked much better). So is it something to do with NYC? Garmin USA in general? What can be done to fix the issue of the 645 M watch having trouble connecting to GPS on its own?

  • +1 over 3 years ago

    Well, the GPS+GALILEO/GLONASS worked sometimes, but still too often had trouble connecting even when EPO was current and I'd been walking in clear view for 30 minutes.

    I think it may be a Garmin US issue because my Garmin US car GPS also had connectivity issues, whereas my Garmin UK car GPS and Apple Watch were okay. (However, the Apple Watch had numerous other issues, and when the GPS did not connect, there was no indication, unlike Garmin 645 which at least shows if it's connected or not).

    Still, I'm fed up with the amount of time wasted for GPS signals with this device, so I'm now looking at phone arm straps.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to chawke

    I also tried ii here now ("hard reset" by holding down the top-left button until the screen goes off, which doesn't erase any data). Didn't seem to help. Still took over 10 minutes in clear view of the sky for a connection to be established on GPS+GLONASS (GPS+GALILEO had less success on this occasion). Double-checked EPO was Current before I did this. This falls into what I have been experiencing for many months now: 10-30 minutes before a connection is established, if any. Only rarely is it established in fewer than 5 minutes, despite all of the right conditions.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to chawke

    I had the same issue some years ago. Starting a run and GPS connection could not established. Normally it takes less than ten seconds.

    In my case the solution was to delete old activities.

    I heard from a running mate with another model this was also the solution. 

  • +1 over 3 years ago

    Further suggestions I recently received from customer support:

    1. Switch to "Every Second" data recording: Menu > Settings > System > Data Recording > Every Second.

    2. Standing in one place should yield faster connection than walking around.

    3. Restore defaults as a last resort. To preserve run data, sync first, since restore only deletes watch data, not account data.

    After switching on "Every Second" (tip #1), my last two runs connected relatively quickly (within a few minutes, in the same location where it often didn't connect before, or connected much more slowly). It's too early to say that this helped, but so far it doesn't seem to hurt to try (for anyone else continuing to have the issue). TIp #2 is something I've tried before. I haven't tried tip #3 yet.