Blaze Inaccurate Distance (Even W/GPS)

[BLMBG]

I have no problem linking my blaze to my phone's GPS.  It tracks distance and route.  But it is dreadfully inaccurate.  What is the point of a device that "uses" the phone GPS when it doesn't pay attention to the distance the more capable device is registering.  Regardless of stride length settings (which should have zero impact on distance anyway, using the phone GPS instead), my Blaze always records wildly inaccurate distance compared to my phone and other workout apps.  I read that, after a few uses, the blaze is supposed to adjust based on differences it encounters between it's internal distance estimate and the real distance per the phone/GPS.  But that's not happening, and I've got lots of linked runs with this setup.  Don't need it if it can't track distance somewhere in the ballpark of reality. Help!

[amgermain]

I spoke to someone @Fitbit this morning. They assured me it's just *my* Blaze and not a known problem; ha! They're actually sending me a new one. I told them if I have the same issues with the new one I want my money back.

[PKB76140]

See 2 maps below. The top was captured from my Samsung Galaxy phone using Mapmyrun app. The bottom was from Fitbit using Connected GPS mode with the phone. The phone was on my right arm and the fitbit on my left wrist (implying that both were within 2 feet of each other). 

The Fitbit app tracked the map pretty accurately until mile 6 (see picture below), then it went haywire, then reconnected somewhere between mile 6 and 7 and stayed connected for the rest of the run. 

During my run, I had no way of knowing that Fitbit had disconnected and reconnected, and all I could see was that the distance indicated by Fitbit and Phone was off.

This behavior has happened more than once, so it is very annoying.

Let me know if anyone needs more details.

from mapmyrun

from fitbit

[bbarrera]

@retailgirl Only suggestions I've seen are to a) swing arms while walking, and b) experiment with moving Blaze position on your wrist. 

[shipo]

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@bbarrera wrote:

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@dlou4him wrote:

I am having the same trouble with my Blaze tracking inaccurate mileage. The other day I jogged/walked 5.3 miles using my Map My Run App in the morning, and my Blaze read a distance of  4 miles by the end of the day without reaching my 10,000 steps.   When I had my old Fitbit, if I walked a distance of 5 miles, I would have no trouble reaching 10,000 steps.  I love my Blaze, but get very frustrated with the apparent inaccuracies.

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@shipo thought the problem statement was very clear:

- walked/jogged 5.3 miles in the morning, Blaze only shows 4 miles

- at end of day hadn't reach 10,000 steps

Pretty hard for anyone to not reach 10,000 steps by end of day if you walk 5.3 miles in the morning.

and

- with old Fitbit, walking 5 miles resulted in 10,000 steps by end of day

Stride setting has nothing to do with the problem statement.

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Okay, so I'm stupid becase the above is far from clear.

From my perspective, unless and until a Blaze is tethered to a smart phone's location services (which as I understand it requires the Fitbit app to be running on said phone), any distance related reports will be flawed.  Trying to compare a non-tethered run or walk with what MapMyRun records will virtually always yield a rather substantial difference.

[BLMBG]

Swinging arms doesn't do anything b for a tracker that's supposed to use the phone's gps. Unless arm swings are all you want to count.

Sent from my iPhone

[BLMBG]

Nope. It may narrow the gap, but that would just mask the basic problem: the tracker isn't using phone gps data as it should and as is advertised. A linked blaze should show the same, or super similar, distance as the phone it's connected to. I love all my Fitbit products. But this is a product flaw that needs to be fixed. I've tested across phones and with multiple blaze's. Whenever I go biking or running, I link with my phone, but I have to run a separate fitness app besides Fitbit because Fitbit can't come close to reporting the gps's distance, even though they're supposedly linked.

Sent from my iPhone

[BLMBG]

Tethered, they don't record distance any better.

Sent from my iPhone

[12HourWalker]

I can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere. Why does my Widget distance report approximately 1.5 times the distance reported in the basic app? If I walk 10 miles my widget will always display about 15 miles while the app reports an amount closer to the truth.

[Corvettekid]

FYI....most of us reporting accuracy problems (w/out GPS) were at about 75% accuracy.  20-30% off is the range that most got.

[Aclobos]

I've notice I'm having the same problem. My wife has the Alta and I have a blaze. My wife always gets her 10000 steps and her 5 miles, my blaze will only give me about 9000 steps and 3.8 miles. We walk the same distance together. I guess I will need to try and adjust the stride length. Today I used pacer to track my steps and mileage to compare with Fitbit. With pacer I had 16816 steps with 5.3 miles. Fitbit only showed 8647 steps with 4.66 miles. Note sure which one is off the charts but blaze not registering correctly.

[12HourWalker]

Mine is not a problem of GPS accuracy. Regardless of whether I have GPS turned on or not, my WIDGET records a completely different mileage than the fitbit dashboard does. Typically the widget records 1.5X what the dashboard does. If i could find another thread that covers tis I would post there, but it seems nobody has noticed this but me. I am using the Blaze on a new Motorola Turbo 2 /Android.

[qualitie]

The issues with distance with and without GPS are real, the larger the distance the bigger the error (12 mile run on a marked trail and verified by iPhone showed 11.3 miles with the GPS option on)

Fitbit sent me a new Blaze when I reported the issue, the new one has the same issue.

Looks like they have chosen to ignore this issue, so have to conclude it is fundamental design issue they are unable to overcome. Will be returning this one too. Very frustrating particularly as Fitbit has been my companion for 5 years.

Will wait for a week if anything comes of this post, otherwise slowly starting to look at competition options!

[amoran06]

I have contacted Fitbit twice. My blaze is wrong every single day. I ran a formal 10k ( so the distance is known) and my blaze gave me 4 miles. I sent an email to Fitbit with a picture of my 5 miles on my thread mill and 3.6 on my blaze ... They just said they could go in and edit the data and give me the correct number... (Uh, yeah no that's okay). Then I chatted with them and they basically said it was fine after troubleshooting for an hour. This is my fourth Fitbit product... They normally work great but this one doesn't!

[BLMBG]

They are useless to track distance. Don't work alone, and don't work linked to iPhone. Useful for alerts and step/heart/sleep monitoring only.

[qualitie]

That's an accurate description of its capability but I bought it primarily to track my run!

[BLMBG]

Me too. It's supposed rob accurately track distance on its own. But since I carry an iPhone, no worries, right? Nope. Tracker in no way uses the phones gps or gps data as advertised.

[shipo]

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@amoran06 wrote:
I have contacted Fitbit twice. My blaze is wrong every single day. I ran a formal 10k ( so the distance is known) and my blaze gave me 4 miles. I sent an email to Fitbit with a picture of my 5 miles on my thread mill and 3.6 on my blaze ... They just said they could go in and edit the data and give me the correct number... (Uh, yeah no that's okay). Then I chatted with them and they basically said it was fine after troubleshooting for an hour. This is my fourth Fitbit product... They normally work great but this one doesn't!

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In your case your Blaze isn't the issue, it is the stride length you have set in your profile.  Even when you get it set so it is close it will virtually never be accurate when you're on a treadmill or when you're outside and not using tethered GPS (i.e. tied to the Location Services of your phone).  Why?  Because not only does one's stride length change from walk to walk and run to run, it changes during a walk or a run, and as such, the stride length is at best, a guess.

[shipo]

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@qualitie wrote:

That's an accurate description of its capability but I bought it primarily to track my run!

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You probaby would have been better served with a Surge; I've had one for nearly 18 months now, during which time I've run nearly 3,000 miles, and my Surge is typically accurate within a tenth of a mile on 19 runs out of 20 (more in the summer with heavy tree cover; virtually always accurate in the winter).

[imoksoami]

@BLMBGYou are correct, of course. My Blaze is wildly inaacurate compared to my Charge and my Garmin.

[imoksoami]

The 1st mile of our run or walk is the same route everytime. My Blaze tethered to GPS is randomly off by a city block everytime, if  not more. My Charge and Garmin were consistenly within a few paces of a tree  that is right at 1 mile. A poster is being obtuse about the reality of this problem for some reason  but it is fact.