Apple Watch Series 2 GPS inaccuracy

[-BA-]

Hi all

I am not looking to spark an Apple debate here; I am looking for solutions/advice to poor GPS performance from my watch.

I have a series 2 and would like to be able to use it in watch only mode to run without my phone, should the desire take me. I also wanted a one watch for everything scenario but am struggling to make that happen with the Apple watch.

Consistently I am finding that the Apple watch is 3-400m short on distances around 5k and this morning I wore my TomTom Spark on one wrist and Apple watch on the other. Sure enough the Apple watch was 400m shorter and both had excellent GPS reception.

Has anyone found similar issues and ways to correct it? I really wanted to have a watch that did everything in my life but the GPS just doesn't cut the mustard for me.

Ideas welcome

 

[D.P.]

Are you sure the distance you are running is actually 5000m, e.g. why do you think the TomTom is at all accurate?



Anyway, I do a lot of running and ave used 2 different phones, with several different apps, a Garmin 610 and 920Xt and they all behave very differently. Even using the same watch and doing the same run will result in slightly different distances. Also, in general the phone does much better than a runnign watch, a larger antennae and better software helps it a lot. But a watch is more reliable and better to run with.

At the end of the day I really wouldn't worry. There is never really a scenario where accuracy matters. Run an official race if you want to get an accurate split time over a certified distance. The only times when accurate pacing/distance/speed really maters for training is doing some interval wok on a track, when distance is fixed so you are just using a stop watch. Sure, knowing that times yo runa certain distance is decreasing or whatever is nice to know but there are huge number of variables to keep an eye on, e.g. heart rate, elevation gain, weather, sleep, prior training in the preceding days.