Ionic GPS when running

[SunsetRunner]

Hi, 

I am having issue with the GPS of my new Ionic. 

I run normally at an average pace that goes from 5.40 to 5.50. I have bought the new Fitbit Ionic over the weekend and been running with it. I am worried something is off with the calculation of my pace.

An example is that without changing my speed, the watch would show 5.40 pace at some stage and one second after 8.30 pace, just as I get in the proximity of a tall building or if I am under trees. That makes my average extremely slower than I was doing with my other watch. 

I had a Fitbit Charge 2 for almost one year and the pace I achieved was closest to the 5.40. Same with the distance, it seems my running circuit got so much longer! 

Any ideas?

I have checked through this forum and through other forums and no one seem to have an issue with the GPS on the Ionic, understandable we are talking about a very new product.

Thanks, 

Chiara 

[NickAK]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Fitbit Charge 2 doesn't have GPS, does it? So, it probably relies on the phone that uses many other radios in addition to GPS (cell, wifi, and even Bluetooth triangulation) to find and maintain your exact location.

Ionic comes with its own GPS chip and like all things GPS, it's not precise to a foot (or a meter, or whatever lifts your boat). Moreover, tall building and trees would actually cause drops in reception and consequently change in pace. So will do the turns, especially sharp ones. On a plus side, I can virtually guarantee that for every time there was slowing to 8:30 pace, there was probably a speed up to 4:30 somewhere too 

I did several runs and walks with Ionic, and all I can say is that its GPS accuracy, both pace and distance, is on par with everything else I've tried through the years. Most recently: Polar M600, Garmin Fenix 5, Garmin Vivoactive 3.

[SunsetRunner]

Hi Nick, 

You are correct, I was using the Charge 2 and I had my phone with me. 

I understand the GPS might not be 100% accurate, but going from 5.40 to 6.30 is a big gap. 

Also what is the point of having GPS on my watch if it is that unreliable? 

Should I download other apps on my phone to have more accurate calculation? What apps are going to migrate the info to the Fitbit app? 

Thanks

Chiara 

[NickAK]

Ionic is a standalone device, so no phone apps are gonna change what you are seeing. Perhaps, somebody would build a dedicated running app for Ionic that drives off a raw GPS signal and does its magic differently from Fitbit. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

What I was trying to say: it's really about averages at the end of the run. Your drop in pace here will be compensated by a pick up there, and the average should still come to what you would normally expect.

If you absolutely require a per second precision in your instantaneous pace, I might have said Ionic isn't exactly a pro running watch. But then I remember similar behavior in Forerunner and Fenix where pace would drop off or pick up around tough spots.

Such is life... I personally run with Ionic on one hand (for activity and basic fitness tracking) and Fenix 5 on the other, for more running stats and data. And I'm only paying attention to an average pace along mile laps. Well, I'm not a pro runner. It's more of a conditioning exercise for me.

[SunsetRunner]

Hi Nick, 

Thank you for your response and your feedback. 

Will try to run on different path and hopefully the accuracy will improve with time as the GPS signal will. 

I am a bit disappointed with the product. I was looking forward to run with it... 😞 

Chiara 

[Goosse1962]

I have been looking at upgrading from the Blaze to the Ionic. I am watching this forum to help me decide.

I know something about GPS, and used it for walks when I wore a Surge. GPS requires a direct line of sight to at least 4 satellites, 3 if the Earth's surface is used in the calculations. Accuracy increases with the number of satellites receiving from. Signals are degraded by clouds and some materials. They bounce off others such as metal.

For a few years I was using equipment that displayed the number of satellites receiving from. It was always accurate when receiving from 6 to 7 satellites. At 5 it was almost always accurate with brief, short jumps. At 3 or 4 it regularly would jump my location up to about 500 feet, or two city blocks, sometimes for as much as 30 minutes. 

My Surge often jumped my location a few hundred feet or 1 city block. My Nexus phone also jumps about the same max distance, but much less often.

One reason I am looking at the Ionic is for the real time pace. My stride has a tendency to very a lot, which makes pace unreliable as a metric.

I am interested to hear how reliable the Ionic is for pace (GPS). I don't require complete accuracy, however, I hope that is it is at least mostly reliable.

Thank you for your posts on this topic and have a Terrific day!

[SunsetRunner]

Hi Gooose1962,

Thank you for your explanation. I hope the GPS will improve, but at the
moment it is not much reliable.
I love everything else about this product, but my runs are so important
that the disappointment is quite high.
I was hoping it might needed to be reset, hopefully someone that is reading
this post might give me some more info?
Thanks,
Chiara

[Snowcrash]

Just two thoughts from me.  You may want to check through the other gps thread here:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Ionic/Is-my-Ionics-GPS-off/td-p/2224572

Long story short is that the gps itself seems very accurate UNDER THE RIGHT CONDITIONS.  

And second-  NIckAK, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on how it compares to the Fenix 5, I’ve been considering one- because of the available footpod.  In theory this plus gps would boost accuracy...  my favorite runs are under trees.

[Jonathanbaker]

Hi Chiara

You are not alone!

I am having the same issues with the GPS and the automatic run cues. I set the cues a mile apart to give me a time for each mile and so I can manage my effort and pace. This function was rock solid and consistent on my GPS enabled Fitbit surge. As such, I don't think that running with your phone & Charge 2 amplified the GPS and made the GPS readings more accurate. 

There is clearly an issue with the GPS on the Ionic.

Fitbit, when are you going to resolve??

[Julia_G]

Hi, @SunsetRunner, this is definitely a general feature of GPS.  You probably didn't notice it when you were running with your phone connected to your Charge 2 because you probably weren't running with your phone in your hand and checking your pace.

You can get a better idea if you set it to show "average pace" rather than pace, and when you are back home and sync to your app these GPS "catch ups" should smooth out and you will find a much more consistent report of your pace.

I hope this makes sense!

[shipo]

A few comments in no particular order:

• I help coach runners on both my company running team as well as for a local running club; many members have Fitbit trackers which require Connected GPS (i.e. Charge and Blaze).  A few of us, myself included, have trackers with in-built GPS, either the Fitbit Surge or Ionic, or any number of the Garmin units.
• While all of the devices and their associated tracking mediums are generally accurate, on average, the Garmins/Surge/Ionic with their in-built GPS are more consistently accurate than the devices which rely on the phone for course tracking.  However, none of the units are 100% accurate.
• My own personal observations show the Garmins/Surge/Ionic are more affected by heavy tree cover, mountains, and tall buildings than are the Connected GPS units.
• The Connected GPS units seem to be either accurate or not on any given day with no consistency as to the when or why they deviate from the course actually walked/run.

I hope this helps.

[Snowcrash]

There are a few different issues being discussed here....

1) Phones must have a larger gps “antenna” than these tiny watches.  Used alone I think phones are most accurate.

2) Connected GPS can have issues where the watch loses the signal from the phone- regardless of how well the phone is receiving gps signal.  This can cause erratic results.  Best advice I have is to keep the phone as close to the watch as possible.  My Blaze worked great like this.

3) The watch based gps must rely on a smaller antenna.  I think that’s why it struggles more under trees- the signal must be weaker with leaves blocking it.  Under wide open sky my Ionic GPS is almost perfect.  Under tree cover my runs are coming up 4-8% short.  

How “fixable” this is, I don’t know.  Software patches aren’t going to make the antenna any bigger, or the signals from the satellites any stronger. At least up north the trees are about to drop their leaves, it won’t surprise me at all if gps performance improves...

[shipo]

@Snowcrash, over the last three winters, my Surge definitely improved in its accuracy when the leaves fell.  That said, my fellow runners with Blaze and Charge trackers never saw any corresponding improvement in their accuracy.

[MFLitchfield]

I've noticed the same but realized I was looking at 'pace' not 'average pace'.  The first moved around a lot but there average had been spot on.

[Snowcrash]

@shipo Your friends with phones who did not see improved accuracy when the leaves fell, would you say their results were already more accurate with or without the leaves?  

If the phone is already getting accurate data with the leaves, it isn’t like the data is going to get more accurate without them.

That is what I’d predict, but I haven’t really spent time testing the idea.

[shipo]

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@Snowcrash wrote:

@shipo Your friends with phones who did not see improved accuracy when the leaves fell, would you say their results were already more accurate with or without the leaves?  

---

No, that's not what I said; per my observations, as a general rule, the folks with phones had less accuracy year-round than the folks with Garmin, Surge, or Ionic trackers.  The only difference was the gap between the accuracy narrows during the summer months when there is heavy foliage overhead.

[Snowcrash]

Interesting.  That’s what I was trying to clarify, phones vs. wrist based trackers.

My Surge was not especially accurate with any sort sky blockage.  The Ionic seems better.

[shipo]

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@Snowcrash wrote:

Interesting.  That’s what I was trying to clarify, phones vs. wrist based trackers.

My Surge was not especially accurate with any sort sky blockage.  The Ionic seems better.

---

With the exception of the one run where the Ionic got lost, I would say the Ionic is maybe slightly more accurate than the Surge over the same course.  Granted I've only tracked 39 miles with my Ionic versus well over 4,000 miles with my Surge, but the Ionic plots seem to follow the roads and trails more accurately than the Surge plots; things I notice the most are curves and corners being cut by a few degrees versus being dead on.

[Goosse1962]

@Snowcrash makes some good points.

I have been wondering if antenna size might have an effect. The other similar issue with size is the phone being larger, it might have the processing power to use the Earth's surface to help in the calculations.

I do have all three devices on the same side. When the ear piece was on the opposite side from my phone, the music would often cut out for a moment when I turned my head to the right. Moving the ear piece to the left side where the phone is solved the issue. The same my be true with the Blaze Bluetooth connection as well.

I have had a few times on a walk were my Blaze would vibrate and then show an icon for the loss of connection to my phone. I finally verified that it wasn't the Bluetooth connection. It was occurring when either I used the internet to look something up, or when an app in the background, such as Messenger, was processing internet traffic. I found that when I stopped and brought up the Fitbit app and let it sync, the Blaze would regain its connection keeping the map intact. If I just kept going, the connection would eventually reconnect with a straight line jump on the map between the point of loss and reconnect. The one time that I stopped the walk and attempted to restart the walk function, the Blaze couldn't get a connection to the phone until the Fitbit app completed a sync.

I much appreciate the information provided in this thread.

Thank you and have a Terrific day!

[SunsetRunner]

Hi all,

I emailed the Customer Service to ask about my issue.
Maria advised me to reset it and I went for a run with the Ionic and the
Strava App opened and recording my run. Only 0.05 pace difference between
the two. Great news!

Also I want to add a feedback about the Hart rate, it is extremely
accurate.

Very happy with the product at the moment, it is exactly what I wanted it
to be.