Charge 5 GPS inaccurate

[Peter-S]

Hi,

I replaced my Inspire HR with a Charge 5 because occasionally the watch was loosing the connection to my phone when I was running, and bits of the track were missing, I figured that the Charge 5 with the built in GPS would be more robust.

So far I've found that

• If I use the Charge 5's GPS only, it's hugely innaccurate - as in the track appears to somewhere within about 50m of where I am (the track regularly goes either side of the raod).
• If I use it in auto Mode, it primarialy uses my phone's GPS - It's more accurate than in stand alone mode, but is much less accurate than it was with the Inspire HR

I'm finding that is's miss-calculating my runs - yesterday I did a longer loop than the previous time - I did the same loop, but added in some additional pieces. The total length of the run was less - this means that all of the pace data is junk, and it means that if I try to compare how I'm doing running up some hills I cant.

I'm hugely dissappointed with the Charge 5 performance am I the only person who finds the GPS tracking really inaccurate / useless?

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, welcome to the Fitbit Community forums, @Peter-S. 

Thank you for sharing this information about the trouble you've been experiencing with your Charge 5.  

If you continue to experience the same behavior and your GPS is getting disconnected, make sure to try following the steps listed in this article to complete a restart using the charging cable, as this has been useful for other users experiencing something similar. 

If the GPS is getting disconnected during your activity, the Charge 5 may track different information for the the distance. Before considering other options, make sure to follow the steps suggested in this article as well. 

All devices with GPS sensors require a direct path to GPS satellites to calculate location. A weak GPS signal might affect the accuracy of your route and other activity data. Your device uses your step count to calculate distance until it finds a signal, so the total distance calculated for a workout may be slightly less accurate when GPS isn't available for the entire time. In particular, please make sure of the following: 

• That you are  in open sky and moderate trees
• Adjust how you wear the tracker when you want to use GPS 
• Make sure the Location in your phone settings is set to Always or All the time for the Fitbit app (if you're using connected GPS).

Thanks again for all the feedback and comments that you've provided so far. The team continues to work to improve the Fitbit experience and your feedback is big part of that process. 

[Peter-S]

Hi,

So I've been concucting an experiment over the last couple of weeks (was interrupted by some freezing weather. I ran the same route three times, twice with GPS set to "Dynamic" and the last time with it set to "Built-in".

Run 1

GPS setting = Dynamic

Distance = 6.29 km

Steps = 5,838

Time = 34:23 mins

Pace = 5'24"

Run 2 

GPS setting = Dynamic

Distance = 6.06 km

Steps = 5,791

Time = 34:14

Pace = 5'35"

Run 3

GPS setting = Built in

Distance = 7.1 km

Steps = 5,840

Time = 35:07 mins

Pace = 4'54"

As you can see the distance with the built in GPS is a long way from the others. Map my run puts the actual distance as 6.11 km.

Looking at the gps tracks, there's a lot of difference - I'm going to try and find a way to compare them.

Does anyone else have issues with built in GPS / GPS on the Charge 5?

Thanks,

[Peter-S]

Hi DavideFitbit, sorry for not seeing your response sooner - I wasn't able to run much over the last weeks due to Icy conditions. My problem isn't with the GPS disconnecting - it's just that the GPS seems to be very inaccurate.

I've tried working through the reset process and it meant that the GPS does work now, but very inaccurately (I just added a post where I compared a number of runs).

Thanks

[Flyairth]

You are not the only one. When using the built-in GPS, my tracks are much less accurate than what my partner gets on the same run with Garmin. I don't understand why, since Charge 5 advertises using the same GPS + GLONASS sensors as Garmin, but I guess I'll switch.