GPS Accuracy of Garmin Watches vs Other Brands like Apple Watch

TempoTom wrote:

Is Garmin the best in the business when it comes to GPS accuracy?

Yes.

TempoTom wrote:

Is there much of an accuracy difference in various Garmin models?

Not between the good models that have GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo.

TempoTom wrote:

How does Garmin’s GPS accuracy compare to other brands?

It’s better.

TempoTom wrote:

Have you ever worn two watches on the same run to compare?

Yes. Garmin wins, even though I prefer my Apple Watch.

Garmin makes GPS devices. That's their specialty. They've been doing it for 30 years. Apple makes phones, computers, watches, displays, etc.

Any idea how much variance there would be between a Garmin and Apple Watch?

I have a Polar V800 (about 5 years old) and a Garmin Fenix 5 (got it last year). Out on the open road the Garmin is about 0.5 % out on distance measured and the Polar about 1 %.

Now with lockdown in our country I've run many times around my house with both. The Polar beats the Garmin hands down on shorter turn routes. The Garmin is WAY off.

All GPS will be distorted to an extent. Government keeps that way. With that said, some devices are better than others at keeping the signal. Garmin and Apple are virtually in this aspect with everyone else coming in a distant 2nd (sorry COROS).

You may want to check out DC rainmaker's reviews:

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/12/garmin-venu-smartwatch-sports-review.html

Garmin watches are excellent for sporting activities, but they tend to be cludgey and awkward from a design and software point of view.

The Apple Watch is the opposite. It's a highly sophisticated extension of the iPhone. It's design and software are outstanding and for every day use it is a clear winner, although freaking expensive for what it is. The running aspects of the Apple Watch are second rate IMO for a number of reasons.

If I'm looking for a smart watch and use Apple, the Apple Watch is the clear winner and I just deal with it as a not-great running watch.

If I want a true running watch and am serious about training, it's Garmin all the way.

Both are completely acceptable when it comes to GPS accuracy, but the Garmin devices tend toward higher accuracy from everything I've ever read about them.

Garmin is not remotely the best at GPS accuracy. That's been shown over and over again.

The issue is that there are tradeoffs when it comes to accuracy. If you want a very small device with a real-watch form factor, you are not going to have superb accuracy. That's why Garmins from 15 years ago are more accurate than Garmins from today. They were huge, and they had huge antennas. Also, because running watches in 2020 have to be pseudo-smart watches, or at least 24/7 activity trackers, they need to have much better battery life. That means that Garmin has turned to ultra-low power chips that do not, unfortunately, have the same accuracy as older, power-hungry chips.

Garmin's approach is basically to have their GPS be as bad as they can get away with, without losing significant sales. That doesn't mean that it's terrible. Any Garmin is going to be better than any typical smartwatch other than the Apple Watch, which is comparable. The kind of people who buy Garmins would NEVER put up with GPS performance like you get in something like a Samsung Galaxy. In the realm of running-specific watches, Suunto was historically much more accurate than Garmin (until Suunto switched to low power chips), but you can still get old Suunto Ambits, which crush the Garmin in accuracy. Same is true of the old Polar V800 and the old TomTom watches.

The important question is whether Garmin is accurate enough for your use. The answer is absolutely yes. The people who complain about Garmin accuracy are the same kind of people who go on photography forums and complain about soft lenses because they blow up their pictures 1000% and look for flaws. Pro runners, just like pro photographers, don't get worked up about the accuracy of their GPS watches. You can squint at pictures of your GPS track and complain that it doesn't follow exactly where you went, but ultimately it doesn't matter. A Garmin works very well as an actual training tool, just like modern photography lenses are great for actually taking attractive pictures.

The shortcomings of Garmins are effectively the same as the shortcomings of every GPS watch: No GPS watch will give you a highly accurate current pace (use a footpod if you really want that). And no GPS watch is accurate enough for doing short intervals. That's what the track is for. When it's important to hit 73 seconds instead of 74, you should be at the track. If, on the other hand, you're trying to do a long progression down to MP, any GPS watch can give you last mile splits that are accurate to within a few seconds, which is good enough for that kind of work. And any GPS will be also good enough to track your overall mileage, because there's effectively no difference between a steady 8.3 miler and a steady 8.4 miler.

800 dude wrote:

That's why Garmins from 15 years ago are more accurate than Garmins from today.

So, according to this genius, a Garmin from circa 2005 with only GPS on board is going to be more accurate than a Fenix 6 with GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo.

Sounds legit.

DudeBroMan wrote:

800 dude wrote:

That's why Garmins from 15 years ago are more accurate than Garmins from today.

So, according to this genius, a Garmin from circa 2005 with only GPS on board is going to be more accurate than a Fenix 6 with GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo.

Sounds legit.

Yes. This isn't debatable. Everyone who follows the industry knows this. You can go on Garmins forums and see everyone waxing poetic about the good old days when GPS watches were more accurate. Just because something is newer and more expensive does not mean that it performs better in every conceivable way.

GLONASS helps only in edge cases where you can't get enough GPS satellites. That rarely happens in real life. Galileo is potentially much more accurate, but not if your chip is single-band. In that case, it's no better than legacy GPS. No running watches use dual-band Galileo at this time.

I happen to have a Fenix 6. I also had a Garmin 205. I love the Fenix 6, but there is no question that the 205 was more accurate. Why? Well, for one thing, it hand a gigantic antenna that wrapped around my wrist. It also had a GPS chip that may or may not have been more accurate, but it used a ton of power. As for accuracy, my Fenix 6 tracks are usually on the right side of the street. My 205 tracks were usually on the right side of the SIDEWALK.

The Fenix 6 isn't more expensive because it's more accurate. It's more expensive because it's a tiny device that connects to my cell phone and wifi, tracks my blood oxygenation and heart rate, acquires a satellite signal immediately (vs. 10 mintues for the 205), plays music, gives me notifications, goes days without charging, is made of high end materials, and actually looks really good.

Actually, I just thought of an easier way of making the point: If newer Garmin watches were even arguably more accurate than older ones, wouldn't Garmin bother to say so in their marketing?

I just bought an Apple Watch 5 and returned it. Here's what I found:

- Most watches on the market use 1-second GPS fix intervals

- The Apple Watch uses an interval that "varies." The definition of that is proprietary, but from what I've seen online (and anecdotally validated through using it) is that the the Apple Watch is taking a fix roughly every ten seconds then using an accelerometer to interpolate position. Apple has a high-res screen (big battery drain), so the reduced GPS fixes conserve battery life.

- The Apple Watch uses a generous GPS smoothing function. This makes really pretty lines on a map, but it isn't very responsive to pace changes, especially when combined with the increased GPS fix intervals.

I wore both a Garmin Forerunner 10 and the Apple Watch 5 for a few days last week. The Apple Watch always lagged 30 - 60 seconds behind the Garmin on every pace change.

Like most Apple products, it is the best looking one on the market, it has an impressive spec sheet for the internal components, and it only kind-of/sort-of works for someone who would want to push the limits past what the "average consumer" would do. This is like trying to write a macro in Excel on a Mac vs. a PC. My wife loves her $2k facebook machine, but I could never get any engineering work done on a Mac. Same thing for the Apple watch.

GPS is great location tracking and that's why the technology as built, to be able to reasonably locate a device using satellites. It was never deigned or intended to be used to measure and calculate distance, that is however an excellent by-product and it's accuracy is just about good enough for most needs.

It's quite well known that GPS based distance measuring is a flaky at the best of times. If you really want to consistently measure distance accurately, then a calibrated footpod that uses accelerometers and a number of other sensors is your best bet. There's some good ones on the market.

Good post 800 Dude,

I have had a few Garmins, i presently have an early Vivoactive 3. I originally had one of the very first (so early the shop didnt even known they had it), and it was a bug riddled piece of thing.

garmin were clearyl rushing it to market and beta testing on the public. I waited 11 months and complained and got a new one - very different.

But the GPS is very poor. Altitude is impossible - i have to correct on Strava every run. My house used to lose 50m altitude on a 5km run. You used to be able to re claibrate, but they removed that functionality.

When doing marathons i were two garmins since the vivo is so unreliable and battery is poor. The GPS dont remotely agree; normally 10/20 seconds pace out. You have to know when the vivo is lying to you and when it is settled down - and when it gos off on one again a few minutes later.

I imagine the sampling rate is just not very good on the vivo to preserve battery life.

I’ve had a number of Garmins over the years and I’m now on my second Apple Watch. There are pluses and minuses to each. There have been Garmins over the years that has some fails, like the one with the touch ring around the screen (even worse than a regular touch screen).

I concede I think the Apple Watch instant pace updates a slight bit slower than Garmin.

The DC rainmaker review of the AW4 (which is what I have now) actually has it as having a more accurate GPS than Garmin. When he talks about smoothing maps I think it’s just the look of the map that is smooth. My actual data is comparable to Garmin data. I have an FR10 as well and they usually come out very close.

I’ve only ever had one issue where my Apple Watch was WAY off distance. A 9 mile race came out to 9.27 (!!!!). A 10K in the same town also came out a bit long - 6.3. I almost have to wonder if there some geographical weirdness occurring because it’s otherwise been fine for 5K’s and even up to half marathons (measuring 13.2, which is a totally normal deviation for a race that long where you may be weaving and not taking the tangents).

I really don’t think there’s a wrong answer. I really do hate Garmin snobs though that swear that you’re not a real runner if you use an Apple Watch instead of a Garmin.

What you said is mostly true, but I would look at another watch if you're doing workouts in forest trails. Especially if there's turns in the trails, the watch is so far off (often undershoots by 10%!) it's essentially useless.

Has anyone tried Coros?