GPS Accuracy

[Stefan Sheriden]

Received my Suunto Peak 9 watch this week.

I’m a bit puzzled as the GPS on the watch seems to be overstating the distance of walks.

For example today the watch recorded 6.08 miles but when I imported the track into two different mapping software the actual distance was 5.62 miles.

5.62 miles was close to what I recorded on my phone and what other people were recording.

My watch is currently setup with the default settings.

It seems strange that the track is accurate when imported but overstated on the watch, in the Suunto app and when synced with Komoot.

[surfboomerang]

@stefan-sheriden Could it be a bad reception in combination with a slow pace?
I checked some of my runs and on the same rounds, different days my S9P is spot on. Never noticed such a big difference.

[Brad_Olwin]

@stefan-sheriden Comparing many watches side by side, both Suunto and the newest Garmin devices, the 9Peak is nearly identical, as good as or better than 9baro and equal to newest Garmin watches. However, most of my recordings are runs but several ultras so I am power hiking a fair bit.
Did you stop during your walk and what was the environment. It is possible to get GPS reflections from buildings or water, etc.

[Stefan Sheriden]

It’s reassuring to know it should be accurate.

We always stop around half way for a drink (outdoors) for about 10 minutes.

Also stop for a short while if people need to catch up.

I will try pausing the track when we stop for our drink break, see if that helps. Never did that with my phone not with my garmin gps.

[sartoric]

@stefan-sheriden said in GPS Accuracy:

I will try pausing the track when we stop for our drink break,

That would be better.
If you check your activity, you’ll probably see a wobbling track, where you had your break.

Mapping software use (most of it) correction algorithm

[Brad_Olwin]

@sartoric said in GPS Accuracy:

@stefan-sheriden said in GPS Accuracy:

I will try pausing the track when we stop for our drink break,

That would be better.
If you check your activity, you’ll probably see a wobbling track, where you had your break.

Mapping software use (most of it) correction algorithm

And Suunto provides you with the real data.

[ChrisA]

@stefan-sheriden my wife walks a lot with her parents dogs and I often accompany her, whenever I am at home. She tracks her walks with a Garmin Venu / Vivoactive and when We compare tracks the S9 Peak and the Garmins are almost on par - mostly 10 to 100 m apart. We also stop often. (Waiting for the dog to catch up)

[Tomas5]

@stefan-sheriden I have exactly the same problem with S5. When I do hike with friends and family, their phones and watch (for example amazfit) record similar distance usually corresponding to multiple map sources. But my S5 measure more. For example on hike long 9km it measured around 11km if i remember correctly. Main source of problem looks to be at not pausing watch when i stop somewhere for a while. It is possible to see in map in my case that watch measured few hundreds meter circulating around place where i had to stop. It is probably when GPS signal is bad and watch don’t know your exact position but it jumps in circle 10meters around you. I would like to use autopause, but it is useless with hiking because if you go slower than 3km/h it will pause recording. But i walk slower when there is steep climb.

[DMytro]

@sartoric I would have paused more often if SA would visualise the pauses and their duration. Right now by pausing you loose track of ‘real time’ you need to cover a distance, which is crucial for future planning.

[sartoric]

@dmytro said in GPS Accuracy:

@sartoric I would have paused more often if SA would visualise the pauses and their duration. Right now by pausing you loose track of ‘real time’ you need to cover a distance, which is crucial for future planning.

Well, it depends on the point of view
I mean, I usually pause the activity to have the real duration, the time spent walking.
Maybe the next time I won’t pause, maybe I’ll pause more … but at least I know how much it takes to go from A to B without stopping

but this is for sure OT

[DMytro]

@sartoric yeah, I’d like to have both metrics. And maybe a graphical representation would help as well.

[Stefan Sheriden]

I hadn’t realised there was auto pause, I’ll try that next time. I’m optimistic that will solve the problem

[Tomas5]

@stefan-sheriden it will work if you walk fast enough.

[Stefan Sheriden]

@tomas5 my previous cheap smart watch had pause enabled by default and it was quite good at accurately recording distance so hopefully tracking with auto pause on my new Peak 9 will work.

My next planned walk is next Tuesday. I’ll take a rucksack mounted gps with me to compare accuracy.

[freeheeler]

@stefan-sheriden
or you plan a route, know exactly the distance as planned on the map, follow it strictly and you’ll see the difference to the map without the potential uncertainty of the deviation of the other device?
anyway, enjoy your peak

[zhang965]

yes, my S9P can provide very huge distance gap.

for the same route 10K, I’ve got + 800m to -800m difference.

[Stefan Sheriden]

@freeheeler Most of the time I will be joining a ramblers walk led by someone else. Quite often I will be leading. People do compare distance at the end of the walk. It was a little unsettling that my expensive Suunto watch compared unfavourably but I’m hopeful that have auto pause will resolve.
I also need an accurate mileage when walking out a walk that I will be leading. But I guess for those purposes I will still have the option of using the route recorded on my phone using Komoot if the watch is still inaccurate

[freeheeler]

@stefan-sheriden
I never use auto-pause and when I first got my S9B, I purposely did not pause my activity when we had a rest.
The track then looked like this…
the watch received a firmware update soon after and when doing short rests like that, the track doesn’t go that wild anymore and does not add up extra distance.
that’s the experience I have with not pausing during activities

[sartoric]

Do not forget that this is anyway related to GPS signal.
If it’s bad, it’s bad … it doesn’t care how expensive is the watch

[Stefan Sheriden]

Unfortunately non of the suggested solutions worked. The Peak 9 still overstated the overall distance compared to my phone and the track when loaded into mapping software and compared to everyone else’s recordings.

As accurate recording of tracks while walking is important to me I have returned the watch for a refund and will try a different make.

Thanks for your helpful responses to my original post. Disappointing I had to give up on the Peak 9 as apart from this I did like it.