@DavS All my testing is done from starting the exercise from the Blaze, not the app. I wait until I see the gps connection on the blaze, then start the watch and Endomondo on my phone at the same time.
I did a 5k run this morning.
Both are using the same gps signal. There is a 0.1 mile difference between the blaze and endomondo. However, as you can see on the map, that difference came up at the start of the run and stayed constant the whole time. For some reason, there was a glitch on the blaze. Other than that glitch, I think accuracy is pretty good, at least for use with my phone. I have an original Nexus 5.
The current pace shown on the blaze seemed ok but not very precise. It's hard to validate because it's not stable at all on endomondo either. If my main goal is to have a very accurate current pace, maybe a phone gps won't cut it. I love the blaze and fitbit in general, but I'm not sure it's aimed at runners who want to improve their pace.
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I just repeated the same walk this morning that I did yesterday, initiated from the "walk" exercise on the Blaze. I had increased my stride length by 8" to see if that had an impact on the distance reading. I made sure I had a good connection to my phone prior to starting, and today is a clear day. My Blaze ended up logging 0.73 miles (should be 0.98), so it is still coming up short on the distance even with the change in the stride length.
Later today I am going to repeat the walk but initiate it from the "run" exercise on the Blaze to see if that makes any difference. It is interesting that some people are getting shorted on distance while others have the Blaze showing increased distance. That is why I was curious to see if the stride played any part in the variability.
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Ok, so I just did the walk 2 more times. The first time, I initiated it from the Blaze in the "Run" exercise tile. Prior to this, I had only entered in a walking stride, since I'm still not at a point where I can run. I had updated the walking stride prior to this morning's walk to see if that made any difference in the distance measurement (it didn't). I thought that I should probably put something into the running stride, so I put in a number that was the same as the walking stride (currently at 3.3 feet after increeasing it this morning). I then went on the walk and got a distance of 0.92 miles (actual distance is 0.98 miles). This is considerably better than the 0.73 miles I got this morning.
Immediately after I completed the above walk, I stopped, initiated a walk from the Blaze using the "walk" tile and got the following:
While it is still off, it is better than the 0.73 from this morning. I'm not sure what any of this means. Did putting something into both the walking and running stride settings improve the readings? I may clear both of those out and try it again later this afternoon. All I can say for sure is that I get inconsistent readings when I initiate a walk from the Blaze compared to doing it from the fitbit app.
Best Answer@MuzDownUnder That kind of sounds like a canned response, but I hope they are taking it seriously and working on a solution.
I did another couple of walks today. For the first one, I wasn't getting a good connection between my Blaze and my phone, and it didn't end up using GPS data (at least I didn't get a route plot). I discovered that somehow my phone was set to "GPS Only" instead of "High Accuracy". I changed this setting and was able to get a good connection, so I did another walk. During both of the walks, I had SHealth running as well, and both walks gave me the same distance of 0.97 miles. My Blaze gave me distances of 0.8 miles (the one without route data) and 0.82 miles (seen below).
I am still getting somewhere between 15 and 20% low on distance measurements initiated by the Blaze, using the connected GPS. An interesting thing is that even though the two plots above should look identical (presumably using the same GPS signal), there are some differences. Maybe it's because SHealth is using thicker lines, but that is something I'll have to investigate.
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