I bought a vivoactive 3 last week with the primary intention of using for running as well as a general lifestyle wearable. I have been on two runs with it so far and the GPS is so completely awful that unless there is some reason for this I'm going to have to return it, as my iPhone records runs far more accurately than the watch does.
My first run was nine miles along the river Thames (I live in London) on Saturday. Now I know that this is not idea conditions for GPS tracking, given the tall buildings, some tree cover and the sheer volume of people about. But the vivoactive 3 GPS accuracy was absolutely terrible, compared to my iPhone. My first uploaded image is of the point where I ran along the South Bank (running parallel to the river probably about 7-10m from the river bank, cut in to run up to some steps, then crossed Waterloo bridge and continued along Victoria Embankment on the other side.
You can see RunGo tracks this fairly accurately, although not perfectly. The second image is of the GPS tracking according to my vivoactive. It has me launching myself into the river some 50m short of the bridge, swimming across, running a fair way north of the bridge then veering back to jump back in the river and swim almost back into the middle of the river before heading back to sure. The accuracy is absolutely abysmal and to my mind not within the bounds of what's acceptable due to the difficult conditions.
However I did notice that by default the run activity uses only GPS satellites, not GPS+GLONASS. So I changed the setting and tried again tonight, hoping I would notice a marked improvement. Sadly once again the Vivoactive had me launching myself into the river for a long stretch of the run. It wasn't quite as terrible as Saturday, but it wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination and still compares unfavourably to my iPhone (I also include a screenshot of the iPhone tracking on the same run previously, I didn't record on my iPhone tonight).
I have tried emailing Garmin Customer support on Saturday, and have received no reply.
Suffice to say I am less than impressed, and having bought this together with the Edge 520 Plus for my bike which I am also having trouble with, I am considering returning both and writing some pretty scathing reviews on Trustpilot, Amazon, Wiggle, and anywhere else where I think prospective buyers will find my experiences insightful. ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1382762.jpg ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1382763.jpg ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1382764.jpg ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1382765.jpg
