Ionic GPS Inaccuracies

[MP4]

Hi, 

I'm a new Fitbit user, bought an Ionic on Monday and I'm having some issues with the GPS. Went on a couple of runs (at a track) and the gps seemed to be completely out both on the distance travelled and pace per kilometre.

I'm a long time strava user so yesterday I went for a run with both the Fitbit Ionic going and the strava on my iPhone running at the same time. Here are the results:

Strava - 7.9km   @ 4:15/km

Fitbit - 7.2km     @ 4:34/km

The difference of 0.7km is quite big and the difference in pace is also worrying. I waited till both had connected to gps before starting the run and I run in London where gps signal should be good. 

Is my Fitbit Ionic GPS not working correctly? Any help/advice would be appreciated. 

Thanks

Matt

Moderator Edit: Updated Subject for Clarity

[groberge]

It seems that some people now have it working correctly where it doesn't use steps*stride to calculate distance but some people don't.

Personally, my GPS seems to be working better than it did, but it's still off by as much as .05 miles for a 6 mile run which may be a small percentage but still isn't acceptable to me.

The biggest oddity about this whole thing is that if I take the .tcx file and upload it somewhere else, it reads the correct distance so the GPS seems to be working correctly, it's how the software is reading it that is screwed up.

I guess if you already own an Ionic, you can take your chances with the new update.  I don't think anyone's experience has gotten worse from it.

In my opinion, if you haven't bought an Ionic and you would like a dependable run tracker for distance/speed, look elsewhere.  The Ionic is definitely not worth it at this point and I wouldn't suggest it for anyon.

[Tex52]

My update appears to not have fixed the problem, but not really sure what is going on. Yesterday it measured my 3 mile run as 3.01 which was acceptable. When I started on my run today at the 1/2 mile mark I was already aware that the distance was off. At the 2 mile mark I stopped the run and restarted after waiting for the GPS to connect. The final mile showed .95 miles which was better that the first 2. So the total for the 3 mile run was 2.73 miles which is totally unacceptable. I downloaded the TCX files into mygpsfiles.com and it showed a 2.0 mile track and a 1.0 mile track which is exactly correct. I then downloaded the TCX file from yesterday. Fitbit showed it as 3.02 which wasn't too bad, and MyGpsfiles.com showed 3.01. So I am lost as to what could be happening. It appears that the GPS data is correct but I'm confused as to how the software could be making the distance variable? Anybody have any ideas now? Fitbit help says the engineers are working on it and their is still a small group of people that the update did not fix the problem. None of it really makes any sense because there are people here that say theirs has worked right from the beginning.

[BahGahWah]

I tried the update at the weekend on the measured 5km parkrun.

There appeared to be some improvement but the distance was still not correct.

5km run was measured as 4.86km on the ionic.  Did notice the splits at the beginning  of the run were more representative of the actual pace.  Have been unable to download the .TCX files. 

@SantiR is this issue still be looked at?

[bmw54]

---

@grobergewrote:

It seems that some people now have it working correctly where it doesn't use steps*stride to calculate distance but some people don't.

Personally, my GPS seems to be working better than it did, but it's still off by as much as .05 miles for a 6 mile run which may be a small percentage but still isn't acceptable to me.

The biggest oddity about this whole thing is that if I take the .tcx file and upload it somewhere else, it reads the correct distance so the GPS seems to be working correctly, it's how the software is reading it that is screwed up.

---

This leaves us where we've been for months: Distance and pace are incorrect. GPS data is accurate. Those that are happy with their ionic's distance and pace are, probably, very steady runners. The only way I get accuracy from my ionic is by running in Bike mode. Then I get very responsive pace changes and accurate distance.

But even that happiness is only on the rare occasion that my jacket sleeve doesn't rub against the watch face; then I get pauses and random mode changes. Not one race or marathon training run has been recorded with anything close to an acceptable level of accuracy since I started with the ionic.

After 5 months of use, the only clear conclusion I can come to regarding the ionic is that when I need it most it always fails.

[SantiR]

Hello everyone! Thanks for your continuous participation on this thread and for your feedback regarding GPS functionality after the lat firmware update on Ionic.

The latest update offered changes that help the GPS distance accuracy. It is for sure a step in the right direction.

I thank you all for the feedback you have given so far on this thread. This information will be forwarded to our team. 

For the new users who are experiencing this situation with GPS, please check this post for some GPS best practices. 

Rest assured I will provide any updates once I get the information on me; as before.

Thanks again for your reports. See you in a while! 

[Tunah85]

To continue to beat a dead horse....

I have been on a few more runs since the update now...

I always bring my phone (for comparisons sake), and use Ionic at the same time... Start and stopped within a couple seconds of one another.

Total Strava distance tracked over 4 runs = 18.2km   (they weren't very far ones!)

Total Ionic dist tracked over the same 4 runs = 17.88

This adds up to a difference of 320m, or a roughly 1.75% difference.

The closest my Ionic has been on any run has been a 1% difference.  The worst my Ionic has performed has been a 2.25% difference.   None of these numbers are acceptable.

And as with all of them, when you export the TCX file to a different application, it corrects it almost perfectly... So once again, the correct GPS data is there... Fitbit's applications just aren't using it correctly.

I'm curious... has anyone tried measuring a run using both the Ionic, and Fitbit's app (phone GPS) at the same time?  This could perhaps tell us if it is an Ionic problem vs a native Fitbit problem.

Also just discovered you can't manually upload TCX or other file types into the fitbit dashboard...  That just seems dumb... All of your competitors have that feature.

[SunsetRunner]

If, as most posters seem to think, other websites seem to be able to
interpret the gps data correctly, then maybe rather than getting their
engineers to work on it, fitbit should consider asking some of these other
websites how it's done and offering them a few quid for their expertise.

[bmw54]

@SantiR, (assuming for a moment that you're not a bot) please consider a training run I did yesterday. It was warm, so I didn't need long sleeves and used the Run mod.

Somewhere after 12 miles I noticed I was no longer getting Pace displayed and, instead, the ionic displayed 'connecting'.

However, miles kept accumulating and overall pace was displayed. Here's the resulting map:

And here's the mapping I did on the net:

The distances are almost the same and overall pace was plausible for such a hilly course (altitude gain was 350 'floors'). But during the course of the run I had no idea if anything ionic was showing me was reasonably correct.

If I didn't have GPS, was this distance entirely determined by stepcount and stride length?

Is my ionic defective?

[Wizegeezer]

I regularly do 5K runs on a certified course and I'm finding that since the update, the GPS distance reported by my Ionic matches exactly the distance shown by MapMyRun on my phone.  Previously the Ionic distance was always short by .2-.3 miles.  Looks like a step in the right direction.  I haven't tested this on a longer run yet, but hope to see similar improvements.

[Tex52]

@SantiR, 

I tried another run today on my measured 3 mile course using the Run App. At the end of the run my Ionic indicated 2.83 miles.  Which is short by 5.6%. Still unacceptable. MyGPSfiles.com tracked it at 3.01 miles. I have a suggestion for the Engineers. Instead of trying to tweak this algorithm that combines GPS and stride data, take the Bike App and rename it Run II or whatever and replace the cue data for biking with the Run Cues. Or put another choice in the Run App that allows you the choice of using raw GPS data instead of just GPS off or on. This isn't working. I have 90 days on this one before I have to return it for a refund. But here's a suggestion. Everybody that can, should return the device for a refund and state the reason for return as GPS inaccuracy. When the retailers get tired of it Fitbit will probably get serious about fixing the problem.

[Smackems]

Definitely a step in the right direction.  Most of my runs have been much better since the update.  My 16 mile run on Sunday was measured at 15.31 by the watch.  The TCX file had it right on the money, so it still seems like a little bit of work needs to be done.

It was unseasonably warm and humid on Sunday, so my best guess is that I started to slow down a bit, which caused my stride to be different?  The watch started to understate my pace significantly around mile 5.     

[shipo]

Other than the occasional run where my Ionic simply loses satellite lock and totally hoses the run (this is MUCH more rare than either my previous Surge or Garmin Forerunner), I don't see the distance variances many folks are frequently reporting.  Today's run, when I plot it on Google Maps is 10.15 miles, my Ionic reported 10.13.  I can live with .02 of a mile over that distance.  🙂

[Smackems]

I could live with .02 over that distance also.  I can't live with .75 especially when the GPS track is correct.  

[SunsetRunner]

I imagined it wasn't using stride length any more. Before the update, I
experimented by putting in an enormous stride length in the settings, and
it thought I was going very fast, but only at the beginning of my run. I
might try that again.

[shipo]

---

@SunsetRunnerwrote:
I imagined it wasn't using stride length any more. Before the update, I
experimented by putting in an enormous stride length in the settings, and
it thought I was going very fast, but only at the beginning of my run. I
might try that again.

---

Assuming you track your runs using the Run app which utilizes GPS, then your stride distance should be completely ignored unless you lose satellite lock (and even then only for the duration of the lost lock).

[Denodan]

Dont kniw why you guys are having issues with gps on the ionic. Mine is fine.

[pedris]

---

@Denodanwrote:

Dont kniw why you guys are having issues with gps on the ionic. Mine is fine.

---

Mine tracks the route pretty well and doesn't take long to find satellites.

Problems for me are it doesn't last close to ten hours and realtime info during runs is poor / difficult to use - e.g. hitting splits, upping cadence. My Ionic has even turned itself off at least twice during activities (one swim, one bike ride).

Really could be FAR better as a sports watch!

[pedris]

---

@bmw54wrote:

@SantiR, (assuming for a moment that you're not a bot) please consider a training run I did yesterday. It was warm, so I didn't need long sleeves and used the Run mod.

Somewhere after 12 miles I noticed I was no longer getting Pace displayed and, instead, the ionic displayed 'connecting'.

However, miles kept accumulating and overall pace was displayed. Here's the resulting map:

---

I've had the same problem (up to once a week). It also happened with my Surge, but less frequently.

Only solution seems to be to stop and let the Ionic reacquire a lock. This has taken up to five minutes in my experience! Restarting the activity is probably quicker. Fortunately, it hasn't happened to me in a race yet.

[Cyclonetog]

Due to the weather here in the UK, I haven't done any GPS or music activity this week, so I haven't been able to test the GPS accuracy any further. 

In 5 hours time it will be 6 days since charging my ionic and I currently have 14% battery.

The floor count is definitely improved, although it does occasionally miss a floor. It also seems to count extra floors sometimes, it probably works out about right. 

It does seem a little worse at filtering out false steps while driving. Previously it seemed very good at working out what was what. 

[Tunah85]

Did a slightly different test on my most recent run.

I ran with the ionic in one hand, and had the fitbit app tracking GPS on my phone in the other hand...  I was curious to see if it's an inherent fitbit problem, or just an Ionic problem.

The Ionic tracked my run at 4.94km

Fitbit app on my phone showed 5.1km

This run had a couple of tight corners, and I did find that the Ionic lost as much as 40m on these tight corners... and the map data does show a difference.

This is a 3% difference!

Splits:

KM                     Ionic                                          Fitbit app

1                         5:09                                           5:06

2                         5:32                                           5:15

3                         5:12                                           4:58

4                         4:57                                           4:47

5                         5:08                                           5:02

5+                                                                         5:02

The first km was close, but after that the Ionic continually lost distance every km, ending in a 3% difference overall!  I am going to go back and test out the 'bike' app again to see if it tracks the overall distance any better.

When I exported the TCX file to Runkeeper it showed it as 5.04km... a difference of 100m from what the Ionic is telling me... 

When I exported the TCX file from my phone tracked excercise it was 5.11... So very little difference.

Two additional conclusions:

1. The Ionic's running app still isn't reading it's own GPS accurately.

2. The Iphone's GPS might just be a little more accurate (or take more frequent readings?) than the Ionic's GPS.