Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race

Brad_Olwin

@jw-cou said in Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race:

An interesting article from TrainingPeaks https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/how-accurate-is-your-gps-watch

Looks like a “fair” comparison to me.

It is, but dated. I downloaded the published manuscript. For fenix, the newest was the 3 and for Suunto newest was Spartan. No data for Sony chipset.

zhang965

@jw-cou said in Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race:

An interesting article from TrainingPeaks https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/how-accurate-is-your-gps-watch

Looks like a “fair” comparison to me.

another study:

Study-Findings[1].png

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@zhang965 that study is also sponsored by polar.

Interestingly both studies are not updated or fair for the competition.

Imo

johann.fuehrer

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos Thatt’s the problem with such studies, they are always outdated, never on the latest firmware and always sponsored by someone. But I have/had five of this eight watches (the Garmins and the Vantage were sold, Polar V800 and S9B are still here besides A2 & A3) and the result matches well with my experience.

The V800 is besides the A2 & A3 the watch with the most accurate GPS I ever had, the FR935 was also pretty good, then the S9B and last would I rate the F5X plus.

The Vantage went back, because of the poor navigation capabilities, the Garmins were sold because of the software issues which went worse with each update and it sucks to update every 1-2 weeks not to know if you get more fixed or more new bugs…

The V800 and A2/A3 will stay as I like them as they are

The S9B is my all day and workout watch now …

freeheeler

shouldn’t scientists work to uncover the truth independently from a sponsor?
I would expect that from the phd’s and bcs’s in magglingen…

Brad_Olwin

@TELE-HO said in Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race:

shouldn’t scientists work to uncover the truth independently from a sponsor?
I would expect that from the phd’s and bcs’s in magglingen…

I would hope so too, the only thing I can think is they donated watches? I am a publishing scientist, not in this field but it is hard for me to imagine why the study was sponsored. It is possible the sponsor paid for the salary of a student or technician. If it is peer-reviewed, which these are I trust the reviewers as they new the conflicts and assessed the data.

Egika

Only because some company ordered a study at a scientific organisation, this does not mean it is wrong.
Maybe the setup and boundary conditions are biased, so take these with precaution, but I would trust the result itself.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

As Bradley said it, I think it’s about the “free watches”.

The study had 3 polars vs the “rest” which the rest were just a few.

zhang965

Same place, same distance, same configuration, one year later

johann.fuehrer

@zhang965 sorry, maybe I have missed something above - what do we see here (except the obvious that the latter is better in GPS quality)? Which watch & which GPS settings for first and second picture? Thx

cosme.costa

@johann-fuehrer If you see the pictures there is a timestamp, and the newer is worse than the older.

johann.fuehrer

@cosmecosta said in Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race:

@johann-fuehrer If you see the pictures there is a timestamp, and the newer is worse than the older.

Sorry, yes! - you are right, I didn’t check this. All clear now…

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@zhang965 Beidou?

Bulkan

@zhang965 Nice park, I’ve ran there.

I remember saw a guy running fast with two watches…

zhang965

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos said in Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race:

@zhang965 Beidou?

both are gps+galileo

isazi

@zhang965 seems consistent with my Galileo experience: when it works, it works great; when it fucks up, it does it spectacularly.

Galmon also seems to point out to recent issues with Galileo satellites.

zhang965

@Bulkan said in Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race:

@zhang965 Nice park, I’ve ran there.

I remember saw a guy running fast with two watches…

last year, i ran a lot around of this park.

this year because of the obvious circumstance, I back to the park last month and my s9b gps got way worse than last year, sometimes I can see my speed dropping a lot even though I keep the same pace. (for example 4m/km drop to 7m/km during a while)

I don’t know what happened, does the covid affect the GPS satellites?

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

Despite me being super excited by gallileo , I never use it.

I get the same experience with most.

Either great or siiiiittt.

Beidou and glonass seem the best for me.

Fenr1r

@zhang965 said in Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race:

I don’t know what happened, does the covid affect the GPS satellites?

You may have it backwards: GPS went Skynet on us, created covid and blamed 5G. In this case it’s just messing with you for shiggles.

kabzior

@Brad_Olwin said in Suunto 9 with the recent GPS firmware was among least accurate GPS watches in today's 25K trail race:

I would hope so too, the only thing I can think is they donated watches? I am a publishing scientist, not in this field but it is hard for me to imagine why the study was sponsored. It is possible the sponsor paid for the salary of a student or technician.

There is no need to guess, the authors have revealed everything in Acknowledgments:

Polar Electro Oy (Finland) funded this experiment in part. Polar Electro Oy provided the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport Magglingen (SFISM) with financial support to conduct the study. The funding was targeted for data collection, results analysis, and Polar reporting costs. Additionally, the products tested were provided by Polar. The Polar products were from the company stock directly and the other products were bought by Polar from stores and given to us for the period of the study. After termination, all products were returned to Polar. As agreed beforehand, representatives from Polar Electro Oy had no influence on the data collection or analysis or on the outcome of the article or any right to stop the SFISM from publishing the findings. The manuscript content does not necessarily reflect the views of Polar Electro Oy.