Inaccurate treadmill distance reading

[jirose]

Hi gang, just got finished running a 5k on the treadmill. I selected the exercise treadmill option before I started, and hit the stop button just after I finished. The treadmill itself recorded three miles run in 24 minutes, but the Blaze only recorded 1.7 miles. Anyone know why? This isn't a deal-breaker or anything...I really like the watch, but that's a pretty big disparity.

[rayphillips]

I do not believe that my fibit sense is calculating distance when I am walking on the treadmill.  I just finished a session where I had the treadmill set at 3.0 mph.  I walked for 40:02 minutes and the treadmill said I walked 2.00 miles.  My fitbit sense recorded 4072 steps.  My stride length for walking is set to 36" and I have set automatically turned off.  If fitbit calculates distance as steps x stride length then the distance should be (4072 x 36"/12")/5280 ft/mile = 2.31 miles.  The fitbit sense only recorded a distance of 1.34 miles! I have tried changing the stride length to other values and it makes no difference - stride length seems to be ignored when I am walking on the treadmill. 

If I do a regular walk outside, the fitbit does seem to accurately measure distance but it is using gps for distance - no caluclating it.

[Dacus]

Hey Ray, What was your fitbit exercise set at? If it was auto, no
exercise selected, it will not track correctly on the treadmill. If you
select walk it will use GPS and not track correctly. If you selected
treadmill and your step length is close you should track close to the
correct mileage.

Hope this helps.


--
Dacus Grant

[rayphillips]

I had selected treadmill for the exercise.  I do not use any of the auto selection - I always select treadmill or walk explicitly.  Like I said in my post the mileage does not compute correctly no matter what I put in for the stride length even though the number of steps is appropriate for the distance showing on my treadmill.

[Amber.007]

I think it’s kind of ridiculous that Fitbit has had this issue since 2016 and it’s still a problem. I have the Versa 3 and I run into this problem still to this day in September 2022. You’d think the newer devices or software would improve the issue. They should at least make a way to edit the distance after the run. The part about people holding the hand rails is kind of silly. I see people checking their heart rate on the handrails for a few seconds but nobody exclusively holds the hand rails that actually makes it really hard to run.