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Incorrect stair count, elevation, and pool swim lengths

Former Member
Former Member

I have had my Vivoactive 3 since it was introduced.  It has worked perfectly until the last two updates.  Needless to say I am extremely disappointed.   While cycling or walking, the elevation gain is highly inaccurate giving at least 3 or 4 times the elevation gain.  The stairs climbed sometimes goes as high as over 300 in a short walk with minimal elevation gain.  While pool swimming with strokes other than free style, the length swam is doubled.  Note that while choosing BIKE will riding in a car (with sunroof open) the elevation gain is correct.  I have reset the watch and started over without any improvement.

PLEASE correct this!!!!  SOON!!!!!  If not corrected, I will be forced to switch my wearable brand.  I am a loyal Garmin fan and own 5 Garmin Edge cycling computers and 3 Vivoactive watches.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago

    Unfortunately it seems that Garmin has a tendency to just abandon their products and user base when it comes to issues like this. Complaints fall on blind eyes and deaf ears. I love the Vivoactive 3 Music but the fact that it has been a year since the floors/stairs tracking has been accurate is absolutely ridiculous to say the least.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago

    I want to let everyone know that I have spoken with Garmin support via Chat twice.  They were very helpful but they cannot offer a solution because there is none.  Not that Ascent continues to increase while I am cycling down hill and on flat surfaces.  You can see this after the field is added to a data screen.  

    Here are the things that I tried which made no difference.

    Barometer Test

    Factory Reset

    Hard Reset

    Clean the barameter port by soaking and then further cleaning with canned air

    I am also having issues with keeping the watch synced with my I-phone.  Sometimes I have to turn the phone off in order to get it to connect.  The watch is becoming a brick quickly.

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

    The support staff tries but there is nothing that can be done to correct this.  The product keeps getting worse each day.  I am going to bring out my old previous version, set it not to update, and give it a try.

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

    That is clearly BS, as a software developer, I can tell that it is obviously a software bug - probably in the activity tracking part, because in normal mode the altitude handling is fine, but after 15-30 minutes of activity tracking, something messes up the altitude measurements. However I don't know what causes it - buffer overflow, buffer re-allocation or wild pointers or whatever...