Blaze GPS isn't accurate

[SallyFB]

I've got the blaze and my husband has the surge. We run together and for every mile he does I only get approx 0.98 sometimes less. We do officially measured runs and his is always spot on but mine is always short. I feel cheated as it looks as though I've not completed the full run.

[SallyFB]

I run with my husband. I have the blaze and he has the surge however our distances are always different. He is ahead of mine. For every mile he does I'm only at about 0.98. We've done officially measured runs and his is spot on and mine always comes up short. I feel cheated!!

[SteveH]

Are you using your phone's GPS to track your run or are you just using the Blaze? If just the Blaze then it may be that your stride length needs adjustment:

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1135

If you are using connected GPS I'm not sure anything can be done if your phone's GPS is inaccurate.

[SallyFB]

Hi Steve
My blaze is connected to my iPhone. I will try and adjust my stride length and see if it's any more accurate that way. I take it I wouldn't get maps that way?
Thanks

[SteveH]

I'm afraid not. If you don't use the connected GPS feature then your Blaze will calculate distance by multiplying your steps by your stride and there will be no map available.

[bcalvanese]

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@SallyFB wrote:
Hi Steve
My blaze is connected to my iPhone. I will try and adjust my stride length and see if it's any more accurate that way. I take it I wouldn't get maps that way?
Thanks

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You need to do a few things.

1. make sure it is counting your steps correctly. people swing their arms many different ways while walking/running, and sometimes all the steps do not get counted. you can check this while doing an activity and monitoring the steps as you go to insure they are all being counted.
2. insure your stride length is as close as an average as you can get. your stride length can change from activity to activity depanding on speed, terrain, etc... this can be done by getting an initial measurement, and tweaking over several activities to find a good average.
3. connected GPS should be used, and it is probably only as good as your phones GPS signal. I think that during an activity that uses GPS, if the signal gets lost at times during the activity, it will start using the stride length and step count to calculate the distance until it gets the GPS signal again. Maybe fitbit can chime in to confirm that though.

If your husbands GPS is accurate, you can calculate your stride length based on the distance from his GPS and the step count from your fitbit. I have been wearing my Garmin fenix3 (GPS with GLONASS) and my Blaze, and using the distance from the Garmin and the step count from the Blaze to get a better stride length.

Also, I think the default stride length is calculated by height/sex and that to me is not accurate. I'm only 5'8" and my stride length when I power walk is close to a yard. But again, maybe fitbit can chime in to confirm this too.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.