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My favourite kit and nutrition
- Maurten — the race nutrition trusted by elite athletes. Gels and drink mix engineered to be easy on the stomach.
- Garmin 90-degree charging adapter — the small adapter that keeps your charging cable tidy at the stem. Essential for race day.
- Garmin charging puck — the fastest and most reliable way to top up your Garmin before a session.
- Ravemen FR300 — front light that mounts directly under your Garmin or Wahoo head unit. Keeps your bars clean and your beam pointed where it matters.
- Garmin Varia RTL515 — radar rear light that alerts you to vehicles approaching from behind. Pairs with your Edge or Garmin watch.
- Stryd — the footpod that brings running power to your Garmin. The single most useful running upgrade I have made.
- Favero Assioma Pro RS2 — the power meter pedals most serious cyclists end up choosing. Accurate, easy to move between bikes.
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
Hi! Two silly questions: did you leave the phone at home? The AW uses its GPS only if it is unable to use the phone’s (to save battery).
The other question is regarding how you record the run. I mean, if the AW is somehow changing the raw data, it must be the Workout app. Maybe using the Strava or Endomondo app the results are more “real” and you can then separate the gps signal from the accelerometer correction.
yes i leave the phone at home and i start the test well away from home.
the workout app may be changing the data, the gps chip may be changing the data. I am planning to use the STRYD app at some point I wil lfind out from the developers their sampling rate.
Please, do not take my comment as criticism.
I’ve seen the comment of Lee Davis and my point is the same. I’ve been testing an AW the last few days but I’ve been unable (IT tendinitis) to test the GPS. But I’ve read several posts in different blogs talking about the differences between using Workout and another app (Strava mainly), and I wanted to know your expert analysis.
saludos! 🙂
😉
not to worry. as i say this is only one test and what i found . there wil be more to come.
I was NOT going to try STRAVA. but now I guess i have to.
There’s been lots of comparisons done in the past and results show that the default workout app cuts corners and ends up being comparable to Garmin (as you say), but using 3rd party apps like Strava or Workoutdoors which appear to have more frequent sampling provides very accurate results and no cutting of corners. I’m a 10+ Garmin user, but decided to try an Apple Watch from the S4 and must say I’m very pleasantly surprised. Just fails me on all day hikes though 🙁
maybe. but zooming into the details of the lines drawn on my maps (above) show that each line is the same distance from one point to the next which to me implies the same ‘sampling rate’
I’ll dig out the link to the YouTube video I watched just last week. The guy did the same track, running, walking, cycling with a garmin and an Apple Watch. The Garmin was simply there each time to provide a comparison because there’s no guarantees you can follow your last route exactly. But the one key finding was a difference between using Apple’s workouts app and the Strava app and the GPS plots were very different with no smoothing and greater accuracy.
that would be interesting. STRYD say they use an effective 1Hz sampling rate which they thought was what most apps used. HOWEVER there is a higher sampling rate which seemed to be intended for navigation BT which was very battery hungry. they didn’t know whihc sport recording apps, if any, used that mode. I’ll have a look at the FIT file as well and see how the gps points vary in there. (I don’t think any of this wlll affect my results…but could be wrong)
Hi there, just found this post and I’m facing a similar issue when comparing my Apple Workouts distance and the exported GPX file.
According to Apple Workouts I’ve run 8.190 meters but when I check the GPX file it says 7.970 meters.
Where this distance difference is coming from? if the AW is supposed to use the GPS, why the resultant GPX file shows less distance?
I’ve tried to get a response from Apple but they just say: The AW uses the GPS.
This difference between the Apple Workouts and the GPX file is driving me crazy.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
Dani
there could be an issue of the AW switching over to its own gps from that of the smartphone. as a test, start and stop the WELL away from the phone.
there could also be an issue with the start of a workout waiting a few seconds to capture sesor info (hr and gps). maybe start a dummy workout for 2 minues walking around. discard it and then start your real workout.
i’m not saying do it each time, just to eliminate these possibilities.
I go running without the smartphone, so the AW should only get its own GPS signal. Do we know how long it takes to get the GPS signal when I start the running workout? it could be the reason of the difference between the distance in the workouts app and in the GPX file.
test it. try standing still for 2 minutes and then starting