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Data recording smart vs every second

Former Member
Former Member over 8 years ago
Then manual reads :"Data Recording, Sets how the device records activity data. The Smart recording option (default) allows for longer activity recordings. The Every Second recording option provides more detailed activity recordings, but may not record entire activities that last for longer periods of time"

I am only using my 935 for running and will run a marathon which will take me around four hours and this is the longest distance I do. Should I keep data recording to smart or is there any benefit of changing to every second recording? What are the practical benefit of the more detailed activity recording?

Thanks
Johan
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Ok so if I understand this, and using HR as an example Smart recording writes fewer data points to the data file *but* the watch itself is recording (and displaying) my HR every second even in "Smart" Data Recording mode - right? And so my HR alerts are being evaluated every second too?
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    There is really very little reason to use smart recording unless you find the BT upload time too low or you are going on a month long trip where you won't be able to periodically upload files. For for normal usage, the increase file size should be a non issue, even if you are doing most ultra runs. I certainly wouldn't worry about it for a marathon. I do 9+ hour rides with no issue.

    I'm not 100% sure it happens on the 935, but most likely does, but it should automatically use ever second recording if you are biking with a power meter. Power data changes so quickly that you could miss some important data. I know the edge units used to do this.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    space runs out then the oldest activities should be deleted automatically.

    I've always been very wary of this since the 310 'fell' over when there was too much stored on it. Now, I only keep the number of activities that accumulate between connections to my computer - usually at least once a week. I have a program running to move activities from my device to a backup location on my computer whenever I connect.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    Is there a battery impact on using 1-sec setting?
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    None that I have been able to measure (did some tests in the past on gps vs gps+glonass and 1sec vs smart. Will see if I can find that post)

    Found it. check my posts here:

    https://forums.garmin.com/forum/into-sports/running/forerunner-935-aa/1232067-glonass-on-off-battery-use-and-position-accuracy
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    It used to be stated in the manual of some devices that every second recording used more battery. Is it in the 935 - too lazy to check right now. My own "simple" tests suggested there was a marginal extra drain and FlipStone's tests confirms that.

    99.9% of the time would make no difference but on that rare occasion you needed to eek out every last second of battery life then Smart Recording is seemingly the better option.

    What puzzles me is why even on high end devices like the 935 that Smart is the default. When setting up a new watch and/or after a master reset I always make a point of turning on Every Second recording. It just seems to be sit better with me that I have all the data about my activities that I could have and especially useful for things like Strava segments. That said there have been times when thought of using Smart recording to "game" segment chasing when it is quite common observation that smart recording can save you a few seconds in segment times.

    Another puzzling thing is that on the largely low range FR35 every second was the only option but every other low end Garmin watch and tracker only has smart recrording.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Yeah, while I used to use 1sec I actually changed it to smart now as my default... Perhaps for races I might change it to 1sec (and for my 14k I'm going to do in a bit I also set it to 1sec, just to check) but to be honest I hardly miss a thing with smart mode....

    During your run all the info is the same so no change there, I don't go into detail on every part of my track anymore (when I was analyzing gps accurracy of my Fenix5 and 935 that was different) and just look at general lap times and such. My idea was that filesizes would be smaller and thus syncing faster (although that was mainly a point of interest when syncing over bluetooth, with wifi syncing it's not so much of an issue anymore) but could also imagine when doing really long distances with 1sec this might impair performance or cause issues because of the large fit files... But believe I read in the forum that this isn't or doesn't seem to be the case.

    Wasn't aware of the segments point, but don't do that anyway...

    In the end GPS vs GPS+Glonass and backlight are the things impacting battery life the most. Perhaps watchface...
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    On the segments one, Strava don't do any interpolation so with smart recording you might "get lucky" depending on how exactly their matching algorithm works at any one time. I have certainly seen a few times when somebody using smart recording appeared to gain a few seconds they might not otherwise have done.

    Yes agree GPS/Glonass and Backlight are the two main things.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Yes agree GPS/Glonass and Backlight are the two main things.


    I agree. But I notice a slight difference on battery life with 1 sec recording . I would guess an extra 5% per day running or swimming for 45min. But I haven't quantified precisely.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Does any one here know for certain that the "smart" option doesn't sometimes record *more often* than 1 second? Just wondering why the smart recording continues to be the default on the 935 and newer watches.