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GPS accuracy compared to first Vivoactive

Former Member over 5 years ago

Hello all,

I decided to upgrade my Vivoactive to a Vivoactive 3 Music recently.

Although as a smart watch, it has more functions - as a running watch I'm finding it quite unsatisfactory so far, in that it appears to perform worse than my old Vivoactive.

In the last week, I've run outdoors twice, on a route that my old Vivoactive used to consistently measure at 7.2KM (almost the same as the Google Fit app on my phone).

The first time with the Vivoactive 3, the resulting activity had no map data at all (but told me I had run just 6.45KM). Today, it did record GPS data, but "lost" 0.35KM off the route. If I look at the GPS trace, it goes off course at times - which I assume accounts for the difference.

I read a few threads where people say that changing the orientation of the watch (so as a left wrist wearer, the hardware button ends up on the left of the watch) dramatically improves things. However, the menu options to change screen orientation seem to be missing from my watch - so I assume you can't reverse the screen on the "Music" edition?

Before I send it back to Garmin, I just wondered if anyone else had found any solutions to poor GPS accuracy on the Music edition?

Thank you!

Steve.

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0 Oren over 5 years ago

Which satellite system do you use?

GPS only? GPS+Galileo/Glonass?

Have you tried one of eht others to see if it is better for your location?

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Oren

Thanks. At the moment its set to just "GPS" - but I've looked and found those additional settings, which I'll try next time I go out for a run. The old Vivoactive watch this replaces, I never had to change the default settings (which I assume are also just GPS).

It seems to be OK when I'm just walking - maybe I run too fast for it (unlikely!)

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

My VA3M sucks too: I tried GPS, GPS + Glonass, GPS + Galileo, but the dumb thing continuosly loses the satellites and most of the time it won't re-lock them during the run. This has been happening for a few months, like since FW 2.80. I wrote Garmin yesterday, and they replied that they are aware of the problem, and that they will provide a fix, but they don't know when... I guess that the time to make a baby is not enough for these geniuses to fix their products!

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I find it staggering that they could release a new product that performs so much worse than the model it replaces. I have a really old Garmin Forerunner watch (from well over a decade ago) - and that also works much better than my Vivoactive 3 Music

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

This company is a joke: one could forgive that the product gets to market defective, but would expect it to be fixed within days / weeks. These gimokes keep releasing crappy software for months!

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Mine is still under-reading distance, but a lot less than it was (less than 0.2KM on a 7K run). What did the trick for me, was switching the data recording setting from "smart" to "per second". When I view the GPS trace after an activity, this has more or less eliminated the problem where huge corners were being cut-off. TL;DR... "smart" mode isn't smart.

0 jimvenza over 5 years ago

I also have GPS accuracy problems with the VA3M where I never had an issue with the original Vivoactive. The online help support had me delete some files on the watch and reset it but that did not work. I have tried changing the setting to record data every second which did not work either. Hopefully they come up with a fix soon, it is frustrating to be recording inaccurate distances and paces. GPS should be Garmin's bread and butter.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

A little late but trying to figure out what is wrong with my VA3 led me here. The trail I ride and tracked with my VA HR was ALWAYS 4.18 miles. Now, it may be as low as 3.6 or as much as 4.25! It’s really hard to tell if my HR training is working when the distance can be off by almost a mile. The HR sensors read incredibly high. My VO2 Max is way off. It seems like not much is very accurate about this thing. Most likely punting the Garmin platform. There has to be something better

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

I have had the same issue all year. They replaced it and the new one worked slightly better but is still way off than just running with a phone. I run with friends who have other models from Garmin and theirs are much more accurate. This apparently is something just with the VA3M.