GPS Accuracy

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.

sartoric

@stefan-sheriden
Out of curiosity … what’s the difference of the distance (from watch) compared with a planned route ?
I don’t mean the mapping software distance of the recorded activity, but just a planned (drawn on map) one

Stefan Sheriden

@sartoric I didn’t get round to comparing with a planned route. I was just comparing routes led by other people so tracking not navigating.

sartoric

@stefan-sheriden
So you don’t really know if the distance was wrong, isn’t it ?
… just from a “debug” point of view

That said , you returned it and you’re happy , so it’s ok

Stefan Sheriden

@sartoric I have enough experience of tracking walks to know that the watch was overstating tracks every time I used it.

MarcW

Also just one point to be wary about, if you are downloading routes that were recorded by different people/devices, they could have some of the same issues of poor GNSS, and as a result, when you import that route it could be +/- from the reality.

freeheeler

@stefan-sheriden
we used to ask for activity links. if you don’t mind sharing both activities publicly (S9P and phone recording from the same day), place the links in this thread and we could have a look on the track and make ourselves a picture of what the issue could be.

Stefan Sheriden

@freeheeler This is the track recorded on my phone https://www.komoot.com/tour/733967292?share_token=aJDV8kyPi1lU7vt3qUdKcauCNgNNf36fdLx8mOw9cxGaZqEK1m&ref=wtd

And this is the track recorded on the Peak 9 https://www.komoot.com/tour/733969562?share_token=aefWiNPrXkg2ccwGr6ddnFC63LHLJL46EZmivRtHa7AjuOFMAg&ref=wtd

I returned the Peak 9 yesterday and have a new watch arriving tomorrow.

I should mention that I bought the Peak as a refurbished watch from Suunto so it is possible that it was faulty.

Hopefully my new watch (different make) will perform better but if not it will be returned and I will continue to use phone and / or gps. I have a Garmin etrex and a Satmap gps gathering dust in a cupboard because I find the mapping on my phone much better and the gps tracking reasonably reliable.

Having used lots of devices over the years, I recognise that there are variances between devices but modern phones seem much more reliable than in the past. I find my current phone so reliable that my standalone gps are redundant.

isazi

@stefan-sheriden yes, your S9P track looks bad. Not sure why though, mine are usually excellent.

freeheeler

@stefan-sheriden
that’s sad to see, also that Suunto couldn’t convince you.
Refurbished products are tested afaik and shouldn’t have any technical restrictions. maybe only few signs of wear.

anyway, I hope you’ll be happy with your new watch and enjoy the nature

Tomas5

@sartoric I had similar result with S5 multiple times. I compared to my parents cheap watch and my wife smartphone. All of them had similar distance around 8.5km. It was almost identical with hiking map distance. But my Suunto 5 (most expensive from all of them) measured more than 10km. Lot of that difference happened because i didn’t use autopause. And while we had break for lunch or break for photographing, it measured distance around my position because GPS was jumping randomly and get few hundreds meters every time we stopped. But I don’t use autopause, because when hiking in steep climb, watch constantly pause/unpause because i walk just around threshold value 3km/h. So now I try to pause manually every time. But still it is annoying that I have most expensive watch from my relatives. And still they don’t need to do anything and it measures correctly but I must remember to pause / unpause manually.

Tomas5

And another thing from my observation is that with slow walking, track usually looks like this:

Even i walk in strait line, it is zig-zag on map so it adds up to real distance. It would be great if there was some smoothing algorithm applied. This doesn’t happen with cross country skiing, cycling, and possibly running. It generally is like this when I walk (3-4km/h or slower).

freeheeler

@tomas5
it looks like this is an activity in the forest.
since I am a veeery slow skitourer, I just checked one of my activities for reference.
I see the same behaviour when going thru a forest but it becomes better once I leave the forest…

DMytro

@tomas5 can confirm this on my s9. Not just slow walking, 6 kmh also looks like this.

Tomas5

@freeheeler yes in this particular part there was trees around, but sky was visible.

When on open area it is usually much better, not smooth but better. But this doesn’t bother as much. It adds up to real distance maybe 3-4% which is not so much. And hiking maps can have some error in distance too so comparing is hard. I just wanted to point out that this is maybe not just S9 issue but more overall. But still I don’t understand why cheap amazfit has it usually better. But i think there must be some algorithm included for smoothing this kind of measures.

surfboomerang

@tomas5 Slow speeds and rough terrain can be hard for every GPS device. Faster speeds and open terrain works always better.

I can’t complain about the S9P if it records running tracks like this:

Tomas5

Only autopause could somehow combine speed + stepcounter so it would allow walk slower than 3km/h. It would make it much easier. Since only big issue with measured distance is when i have a break in forest, under some high rocks etc. Than i must pause manually or reconcile that measured distance would be longer. As it circle around when not stopped.