I've had my 920xt for about a year now. It used to track open water swims pretty accurately, but now it doesn't. In the past I could look at the watch during the swim and it was always in the range you would expect for a given swim. Now it seems to be way under where it should be. If you stop at the end of a straight line swim it will catch up the distance, but this is not good because if you swim a large circle and you get back to the starting point, if you don't stop along the way to let it catch up it acts like you have not done any distance at all. Any suggestions?
If I swim around a buoy and turn 90 degrees, the 920XT doesn't always catch that angle at 90 degrees.
I assume that's because the satellite is only connected to the watch when it is out of the water. I think it doesn't even always connect when it is out of the water either.
But in the 2,5 years I have had the 920XT, this behaviour has been consistent.
The 920, like any GPS gets its tracking in open water from an algorithm that estimates where you've been based on the occasional glimpse it gets of the sky when your arm is out of the water. If you're doing freestyle. If you're doing breast stroke it won't see anything. One second recording is unlikely to make any difference in open water swimming because of this difficulty in obtaining regular GPS signals.
I am not aware that anything's changed with the tracking since I've had mine. It is possible of course that you have a problem with your device. Try a simple power off and power on to see if that sorts it out. Failing that, you might need to try a hard reset. And if all else fails, contact Garmin support.
