Garmin Forerunner 201 Accuracy Test

This small amount could have easily been the result of your
taking what looked like the "honest" track as opposed to
the actual measured course. Your results are similar to
mine for a two mile loop I usually run. Garmin seems to
have put together an incredibly accurate unit in a small
package for very little money and if the 101 is as accurate
for less money there are going to be a lot to Timex units
showing up on eBay.

For addtional resources join:

groups.yahoo.comGarminFOpen ↗

Red Dot said:

I have seen discussion in here about the accuracy of the
Garmin Forerunner. I tried a test of my own. I ran in a
certified 10K race yesterday:
crrclub.comracing.htmlOpen ↗ A 10K race is 6.21
miles. My Forerunner clocked it at 6.26 miles. So it was
off by 5/100ths of a mile. Not bad!

[email hidden] (Bumper) wrote in news:1gaa3r8.2hfoiu7j7nagN%
[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

This small amount could have easily been the result of
your taking what looked like the "honest" track as opposed
to the actual measured

course.

Quoted message said:

Your results are similar to mine for a two mile loop I
usually run. Garmin seems to have put together an
incredibly accurate unit in a

small

Quoted message said:

package for very little money and if the 101 is as
accurate for less money there are going to be a lot to
Timex units showing up on eBay.

And durable. OK, here's my "I'm an idiot" story of the week.
I wanted to reset the satellites on my unit. I turned it on
inside so that I could have it think that I have moved and
have it look for the satellites again. I took it outside and
put it on top of my wife's van (you probably know where this
is going now). I asked my wife if she'd be going anywhere
soon. She said she'd be going to the store in about an hour.
OK. Fine. I can remember to get it in about 30 minutes. An
hour went by. I forgot about the Forerunner on the car. My
wife was already at the store. NOOOOOO!!! Just as I started
to walk to the store looking for it on the side of the road,
my wife came home. She knew right away what the problem was.
We drove very slowly to the store looking for the Forerunner
on the road, in the dark, and it's starting to rain. I was
already thinking of buying another one, when on the way home
she spotted it on the side of the road. It was just a little
scraped up by the Garmin logo, but it still works fine. It
was probably traveling at about 50 MPH when it hit the
asphalt. Maybe it was run over a few times as well.

Phil

--
If you can empty your own boat Crossing the river of the
world, No one will oppose you, No one will seek to harm you.
-Chuang Tzu

I have had very poor accuracy results with my Forerunner. I
ran a course one day and got a distance of 8.4 Km. I ran the
exact same route twice more and got distances of 7.4 and 7.1
km. This kind of information is useless. Am I doing
something wrong? Did I get a lemon? Is this gadget
worthless?

ejg

Phil M. said:

[email hidden] (Bumper) wrote in
news:1gaa3r8.2hfoiu7j7nagN% [email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

This small amount could have easily been the result of
your taking what looked like the "honest" track as opposed
to the actual measured

course.

Quoted message said:

Your results are similar to mine for a two mile loop I
usually run. Garmin seems to have put together an
incredibly accurate unit in a

small

Quoted message said:

package for very little money and if the 101 is as
accurate for less money there are going to be a lot to
Timex units showing up on eBay.

In my few runs with the 201 I have found the accuracy to be
equal to the Nike SDM 100, ie within ten to six yards of a
measured mile, with multiple run repeatability of accuracy,
that said Sunday I went for a run on the lakefront which is
a treeless route, everything worked fine until I got in the
northern exposure of a twenty plus story building which must
have blocked the satillites because it missed the auto lap
for that mile. If there are any trees on your route they
could explain the problem, also you might try a full reset

Quoted message said:

while the unit is off, hold the reset and mode buttons down

and then power on, you may lose all your data. If the
problem persists I would contact Garmin and throw it at
their feet (for a replacement)

FWIW the GPS guru's over at the yahoo site seem to feel that
the unit is very accurate and I haven't heard any similar
compaints about repeatability.

ejg said:

I have had very poor accuracy results with my Forerunner.
I ran a course one day and got a distance of 8.4 Km. I ran
the exact same route twice more and got distances of 7.4
and 7.1 km. This kind of information is useless. Am I
doing something wrong? Did I get a lemon? Is this gadget
worthless?

ejg

Phil M. said:

[email hidden] (Bumper) wrote in
news:1gaa3r8.2hfoiu7j7nagN% [email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

This small amount could have easily been the result of
your taking what looked like the "honest" track as
opposed to the actual measured

course.

Quoted message said:

Your results are similar to mine for a two mile loop I
usually run. Garmin seems to have put together an
incredibly accurate unit in a

small

Quoted message said:

package for very little money and if the 101 is as
accurate for less money there are going to be a lot to
Timex units showing up on eBay.

In my few runs with the 201 I have found the accuracy to be
equal to the Nike SDM 100, ie within ten to six yards of a
measured mile, with multiple run repeatability of accuracy,
that said Sunday I went for a run on the lakefront which is
a treeless route, everything worked fine until I got in the
northern exposure of a twenty plus story building which must
have blocked the satillites because it missed the auto lap
for that mile. If there are any trees on your route they
could explain the problem, also you might try a full reset

Quoted message said:

while the unit is off, hold the reset and mode buttons down

and then power on, you may lose all your data. If the
problem persists I would contact Garmin and throw it at
their feet (for a replacement)

FWIW the GPS guru's over at the yahoo site seem to feel that
the unit is very accurate and I haven't heard any similar
compaints about repeatability.

ejg said:

I have had very poor accuracy results with my Forerunner.
I ran a course one day and got a distance of 8.4 Km. I ran
the exact same route twice more and got distances of 7.4
and 7.1 km. This kind of information is useless. Am I
doing something wrong? Did I get a lemon? Is this gadget
worthless?

ejg

Phil M. said:

[email hidden] (Bumper) wrote in
news:1gaa3r8.2hfoiu7j7nagN% [email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

This small amount could have easily been the result of
your taking what looked like the "honest" track as
opposed to the actual measured

course.

Quoted message said:

Your results are similar to mine for a two mile loop I
usually run. Garmin seems to have put together an
incredibly accurate unit in a

small

Quoted message said:

package for very little money and if the 101 is as
accurate for less money there are going to be a lot to
Timex units showing up on eBay.

In my few runs with the 201 I have found the accuracy to be
equal to the Nike SDM 100, ie within ten to six yards of a
measured mile, with multiple run repeatability of accuracy,
that said Sunday I went for a run on the lakefront which is
a treeless route, everything worked fine until I got in the
northern exposure of a twenty plus story building which must
have blocked the satillites because it missed the auto lap
for that mile. If there are any trees on your route they
could explain the problem, also you might try a full reset

Quoted message said:

while the unit is off, hold the reset and mode buttons down

and then power on, you may lose all your data. If the
problem persists I would contact Garmin and throw it at
their feet (for a replacement)

FWIW the GPS guru's over at the yahoo site seem to feel that
the unit is very accurate and I haven't heard any similar
compaints about repeatability.

ejg said:

I have had very poor accuracy results with my Forerunner.
I ran a course one day and got a distance of 8.4 Km. I ran
the exact same route twice more and got distances of 7.4
and 7.1 km. This kind of information is useless. Am I
doing something wrong? Did I get a lemon? Is this gadget
worthless?

ejg

Phil M. said:

[email hidden] (Bumper) wrote in
news:1gaa3r8.2hfoiu7j7nagN% [email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

This small amount could have easily been the result of
your taking what looked like the "honest" track as
opposed to the actual measured

course.

Quoted message said:

Your results are similar to mine for a two mile loop I
usually run. Garmin seems to have put together an
incredibly accurate unit in a

small

Quoted message said:

package for very little money and if the 101 is as
accurate for less money there are going to be a lot to
Timex units showing up on eBay.

In article said:

I have had very poor accuracy results with my Forerunner.
I ran a course one day and got a distance of 8.4 Km. I ran
the exact same route twice more and got distances of 7.4
and 7.1 km. This kind of information is useless. Am I
doing something wrong? Did I get a lemon? Is this gadget
worthless?

You're probably not getting enough satellites on the days
it's underreporting distance. If the unit has a way to tell
you how many satellites it's getting, pay attention to this.
You need 4 or more satellites to get a 3D position fix, and
if you have 6 or so, that's better.

I'd suggest comparing the tracklogs from the different
runs (by overlaying them). You should see visible "course-
cutting" in the shorter measurements. Generally, if a
track log comes up way short, it means you had some
dropouts on the way.

If you're using a GPS to measure distance, you should take
the longest reading (the 8.4km). It's rare that a GPS over-
reports distance, since dropouts and corner-cutting due to
discrete sampling are the main two sources of systematic (as
opposed to random) error. The random errors "average
themselves out" over distance.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

In article said:

I have had very poor accuracy results with my Forerunner.
I ran a course one day and got a distance of 8.4 Km. I ran
the exact same route twice more and got distances of 7.4
and 7.1 km. This kind of information is useless. Am I
doing something wrong? Did I get a lemon? Is this gadget
worthless?

You're probably not getting enough satellites on the days
it's underreporting distance. If the unit has a way to tell
you how many satellites it's getting, pay attention to this.
You need 4 or more satellites to get a 3D position fix, and
if you have 6 or so, that's better.

I'd suggest comparing the tracklogs from the different
runs (by overlaying them). You should see visible "course-
cutting" in the shorter measurements. Generally, if a
track log comes up way short, it means you had some
dropouts on the way.

If you're using a GPS to measure distance, you should take
the longest reading (the 8.4km). It's rare that a GPS over-
reports distance, since dropouts and corner-cutting due to
discrete sampling are the main two sources of systematic (as
opposed to random) error. The random errors "average
themselves out" over distance.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

In article said:

I have had very poor accuracy results with my Forerunner.
I ran a course one day and got a distance of 8.4 Km. I ran
the exact same route twice more and got distances of 7.4
and 7.1 km. This kind of information is useless. Am I
doing something wrong? Did I get a lemon? Is this gadget
worthless?

You're probably not getting enough satellites on the days
it's underreporting distance. If the unit has a way to tell
you how many satellites it's getting, pay attention to this.
You need 4 or more satellites to get a 3D position fix, and
if you have 6 or so, that's better.

I'd suggest comparing the tracklogs from the different
runs (by overlaying them). You should see visible "course-
cutting" in the shorter measurements. Generally, if a
track log comes up way short, it means you had some
dropouts on the way.

If you're using a GPS to measure distance, you should take
the longest reading (the 8.4km). It's rare that a GPS over-
reports distance, since dropouts and corner-cutting due to
discrete sampling are the main two sources of systematic (as
opposed to random) error. The random errors "average
themselves out" over distance.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗