The watch has only been in people's hands for a week so not sure anyone has raced with it yet. I pre-ordered mine and received it last Thursday. Still in the box so can't help with specific questions.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Ahh I thought it was released last month .. ok no worries I’ll probably purchase today (before sale ends and will just give it a whirl ..)

I bought it on release upgrading from a 735xt. I raced with it at IM70.3 Gulf Coast. Optical HR and GPS accuracy weren't an issue and seemed on par with what the 735xt provided. The HR sensor does seem to be a bit less finnicky and more stable. That being said, I don't really check HR much during a 70.3 and don't spend the time putting on a strap. OWS GPS seemed spot on but that has always fluctuated for me day-to-day.

Haven't paid attention to the altimeter. I live in FL so any elevation change is minimal. There's more fluctuation just in background air pressure than there probably is in actual elevation change where I am.

Battery life has been really impressive to me as well as the performance stats, though I don't really do all that much with them other than drool. Again, this is coming from a 735xt which wasn't the best for battery.

Overall, I really like it so far.

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Blog | Strava

where did you find it on sale?

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Mike Plumb, TriPower MultiSports
Professional Running, Cycling and Multisport Coaching, F.I.S.T. Certified
http://www.tripower.org

Ditto trihawg. I raced with my 945 at Gulf Coast. It was flawless. The screen is fantastic. I liked seeing the swim and run temperature too. It confirmed my run misery.

can't seem to find it available anywhere, where did you buy it?

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Mike Plumb, TriPower MultiSports
Professional Running, Cycling and Multisport Coaching, F.I.S.T. Certified
http://www.tripower.org

I pre-ordered mine on Clever Training the morning of release. A friend pre-ordered his about 30 minutes after me, and his came about a week later. I think they sold out fast.

If you are an REI member you should be able to get 20% through this week on it. That isn't too bad.

Read the fine print. Usually the 20% off doesn’t cover electronics.

thanks for the tip, just checked and apparently they actually have it in stock at my local store. The 20% off is not good on GPS products though :-(

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Mike Plumb, TriPower MultiSports
Professional Running, Cycling and Multisport Coaching, F.I.S.T. Certified
http://www.tripower.org

Bummer you usually can use your 20% off coupon for the April sale. So nevermind. Good catch.

For the record, many may be able to get this on sale (any Garmin product 35% off) if you have a specific type of health insurance. It's a little known benefit. The Garmin Forerunner 945 is $389.99 after discount via their site.

can you provide some more info? how do i find out about this? thanks

Have a read of DC Rainmakers in depth review.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/...armin-forerunner-945

Looks like BCBS offers this through some of their state programs. Mine's not signed up yet:(

https://www.blue365deals.com/...A/offers/garmin-30-s

I was just googling and found blue365 and I'm also screwed, not offered with my bcbs either. Bummer

Found this list of participating states: https://www.blue365deals.com/...ating-blue-companies

Sorry, meant to provide this info/more details last night but was in a hurry. The blue365 is the program (I believe the parent company, which is Highmark Blue Shield?). If you use their program, I believe it's called Healthways, you get all the discounts and nice gym membership deals (I pay $25/month and can access almost any gym and get the discounts). I may try to see how a bulk order works and how many they'll let me purchase and if it works, can likely assist those looking to purchase.

Thanks TRobTri. I wasn't aware of this!

I'd be down for a bulk purchase if you're able to swing that TRob.

DC Rainmaker had a 10% off coupon, might still be there if you look at his discount codes, I used it (UK) but I'm still waiting for the watch to arrive :(

Jeff

The 35% discount also works if you are a Kaiser Permanente member. You can use this link to register with Choose Healthy:

https://www.choosehealthy.com/home?pc=AB


Once you register, just click the Garmin box about halfway down the page.

Curious to know if any of the new features are likely to drip down onto the 935 - the one that I could benefit most from is the Training Load Focus (if this isn't dependent upon the new spo2 sensor)

In the UK, the 935 can be had for £350 (Wiggle for example). I'm not convinced the 945 is worth the extra £170 - so at the moment I'm thinking I'll hold out and wait to see what's available around Black Friday...

Wow. That's the wholesale price.

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Trent Nix
Owned and operated Tri Shop
F.I.S.T. Advanced Certified Fitter | Retul Master Certified Fitter (back when those were things)

Dude. Thanks for the info. You can’t beat that price for the 945. Really shocked SC is on the list

PSA: the 945 is back in stock on the Garmin website, finally! Just placed an order and received a $210 discount.

Wonder if the long delay was Garmin fixing all the gps and battery issues. I’d love to get on to replace the 935 but the issues folks have/ had for the first batches make me nervous.

And WHERE is the Wahoo watch????

how did you get that discount?

I've gotten a couple of questions about how to get the discount - I just did what was previously mentioned:

The 35% discount also works if you are a Kaiser Permanente member. You can use this link to register with Choose Healthy:

https://www.choosehealthy.com/home?pc=AB

Once you register, just click the Garmin box about halfway down the page.

I am not a member of Kaiser, but I was able to register, then use their vendors page to link to the Garmin site...when you Add to Cart you'll see the discount in the cart. I think not all items are discounted, but the 945 and even the MARQ are. Hope it works for y'all.

Received the 945 just before my summer holidays as a replacement for my 935 (still 100% satisfied with that one, however could get a great deal via my employer ... also for the 830). Not used it for races yet however must say that I definitely think it does have some great features that are worth it over the 935.

What I'm most impressed by (and used quite extensively during my holidays) was the mapping and especially route/round-trip suggestion (for running in my case) ... this feature alone is worth the premium vs the 935 in my opinion; just start your run (or bike) and let the 945 come up with a route-suggestion of desired length. I did some great runs this way in absolutely unknown environment; always comes up with new route-suggestions based on the heatmap data and the underlying map/navigation really does work great!
(for cycling (MTB during holidays) I've also used the similar functionality on the 830 and this unit is equally impressive!)

Only minor issue I've encountered on the 945 is that gps-lock seems to take slightly longer than on my 935 however even when starting the run without a gps-lock I've always had it return realistic pace-info and also perfect routes afterward (on the 935 this could give me some issues afterwards when checking the route afterwards, however only happened once or twice).

Regarding the OW-swim issues that have been reported by some users; I've only used it twice in open-water and in both cases it seems to have tracked perfectly!

PS, seems that optical heartrate during swimming might also be added, however in current firmware (2.70) this is not yet included; there was a 2.6x beta that did have this feature enabled but I didn't install that one.

I've migrated from a Polar V800 and been using the FR945 for about 2 Months (inkluding a couple of races) now.

It's a solid watch, but there are some pains which I've written up on hte garmin forums if anybody is interested:
link garmin forum

the main points are:
1) No Lap-Feature during multi-sport activities.
2) No convenient way of doing "spontaneous" interval workouts.
3) Changing pool-length
4) No alert when continuing activity without un-pausing.
5) Swimming Intervalls & Button pressing
6) Menu structure

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Is this still working. I can sign up and follow the link, but I do not see the 945 in the featured products...

Great catch. This would be huge. I would love to have the watch capture my HR during swims. I do not care about precision, just directional accuracy...

I had to use the search bar to find the 945 since it didn't show in the list.

My bet: probably not. The 935 is yesterday's news, a now obsolete product. The only time I can recall that Garmin retroactively upgraded a product with latest features is the 1030. That one is getting most (but not all) of the new features introduced with the 830 & 530. However, the 1030 is currently their top tier product, so that scenario is a bit different from the 935.

WOW! thanks to everyone posting about the health insurance discount. I checked and was able to get one through united healthcare too. My insurance only gave us 30% off, but its still a great deal. For anyone that's interested I needed to create an account through myuhc for their rally health and wellness thing. After I finished their questions I had enough tokens to purchase the garmin discount. It says its for their vivo line, but it worked on any of their wearables that I tested it on (935/645). I also got greedy to see if it would work on their garmin edge computers, power meters, or their trainers, but it didn't.

Thanks for the tip, almost ordered a Fenix 5 Plus when I didnt see the 945 listed in the featured products and thanks TRobTri for saving me $210.

I was waiting for a Wahoo watch, but at $390 I don't see Wahoo beating that price point.

As of yesterday this is still working - although you do have to search for the 945 once redirected to Garmin's website.

Is there any way a non-US person can set up a shipping redirect service? I'm in the UK and shipping is only possible to the US. Was wondering if there's something like ebays Global shipping service I can take advantage of. The 945 is £519 over here, a bit too spicy for me so I intend on pulling the trigger when I can pick one up at sub £400 - this deal brings the price down to £321...

I managed to get one yesterday too. Amazing deal.

When you go through final check out it explicitly states that they will not deliver to mail redelivery services. So I think that will not work for you.

Dan

I've been very happy with the OHR during the swim and it seems pretty accurate. They released a new beta (2.72) a couple of days ago with it enabled again.

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1) Yup, but if you set the autolap based on time/distance that still works. So no 'manual lap' is more accurate. Still, is a bit annoying.
2) Not sure what you mean here. You can set the interval to be 'lap button'. I do this a fair bit, or you can set a long time/distance and use the lap button to jump to the next stage/recovery
3) I prefer this to the old 910xt where it was too easy to change without realising it. Probably one of those things that is a big issue if you alternate every session between pools of different lengths, but if you almost always use the same pool length aside from the odd holiday then it's fine.
4) yup, but I don't pause often so not a biggie for me.
5) Not sure what is meant here. Is this 945 specific? It took me a while to get the hang of the buttons for swimming, but pretty much there now. The one that gets me is setting the distance of a drill set, those seem to be not quite 'right'. I think it's that the 'enter' for the distance should be bottom left not top right, so occasionally you stop the set instead of entering the distance.
6) With time this makes sense. Well, does to me, just took a while.

thanks for that! however, I might have made a 400 dollar mistake, haha. I bought one on the 1st from amazon (prime) and got the brilliant idea that I could buy one through blue365 and return the other to amazon. so that's what I did. the new one will be delivered Tuesday or Wednesday, and the old one has to be returned by the 29th. there is some other fine print as well, such as "has to be brand new unused". my second brilliant idea is to return the new one to amazon. its actually "deal usa" an amazon prime vendor. anyone have thoughts as to how this will play out?

FYI - The Vector 3 pedals are also included in the BCBS discount at $650

Shut up. For real?! That’s a way better deal than anywhere else. I bet you found something that not even DCRainmaker knows about.

Wow! I've been ok with my 735 and my mostly now one-sided Powertap pedals, but this is really tempting.

and so are Tacx trainers. That is a massive discount on the Neo

Dammit, the Kaiser/ChooseHealthy portal doesn't show the discount on trainers when I add to cart...

What about Wahoo heart rate monitors? I misplaced mine after the Cherry Blossom 10 miler and have really been aching to replace it. I got my original TICKR X with my leftover HSA from a previous job

The choose healthy discount is very tricky. Try adding the 945 and the neo to your cart, for me it makes BOTH of the 35%, but if I remove the watch, then its back to normal price. Almost as if you need to have something in the cart that gets the discount and then it will apply to the other item in the cart. Like the Varia headlight and the neo, that works too. So far I think the discount only works for 2 things in a cart, I guess just checkout twice if you need more things.

crap, you are right. Adding two items discounts both items, but removing the non-trainer item kills the discount on the trainer. Lame!

I used it to buy a 945. worked great.
But it got me curious and i checked the neo and vectors, and found out the same as you guys, but then i added the cheapest watch i could find, it was 50 bucks, added it to cart and it discounted the neo and vectors again, but not the watch. so maybe it just discounts the highest 2 items if any item is a wearable. thats what i noticed anyways. great discounts.

Holy crppola - that 35% off discount actually works!

I just bought a Garmin 945 with it, just followed the prior easy instructions, registered easily on the website and then went to the Garmin link and bought it.

Not even joking this is THE best electronics deal I have ever seen myself. 35% off a NEW Garmin unit for real?!?! They don't even discount this much after an entire year!

Much appreciated for the purchase tips - saved me a good $200 legit.

How did you get so many Rally rewards from just the survey alone? I just logged in after completing the survey a while back and only had 170 points from it... but require 2,000 points for the Garmin discount?

Ouch. It only cost me 100 points for the garmin discount. I just logged back in to check and now its 1,750 points for the garmin vivo (the one I did), 2,000 for the forerunner, and 2500 points for the fenix discount.

Adding another "wow, it worked!"....I did google around a bit and saw that my insurance (health net) actually has the choosehealthy affiliation too...what's a bit funny is I did that AFTER I registered and put the watch in my cart...nothing about the registration was directly tied to my health net member status. I get the impression that choosehealthy is maybe so universal, or their business model is such that they don't much care which insurance you have because they probably want you in their headcount whether your carrier has joined in to advertise for choosehealthy in their customer materials or not. I wonder if the health insurance link is even monetized in either direction. Anyway, crazy good discount. And Garmin is surely still making money - I don't even really need a new watch, my 920XT is more than adequate, but I couldn't resist.

Amazing discount. I’m not even going to say what new watch it worked on!

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http://www.teamodz.com
http://www.endurancelab.fit

Fenix 6 probably. I saw it on there yesterday and tempted even though my 935 has been flawless.

Bingo! Yep - and could have added on a Neo 2 at same discount.

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http://www.teamodz.com
http://www.endurancelab.fit

I don’t think it works on the Tacx products, only wearables.

Put a wearable in the cart and then add the tacx. Have to keep the wearable to keep the tacx discount.

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http://www.teamodz.com
http://www.endurancelab.fit

Not sure if I should thank you or curse you. I had no idea that I could use those damn coins in Rally to "buy" a Garmin discount code. I'd been looking at the 945 for months but couldn't justify the price. Sure enough, Rally had the discount code for the Forerunners or the Fenix. After reading DC Rainmaker's review of the Fenix 6, I blew past the 945 and pulled the trigger. I'll be the happy owner of a new Fenix 6s Pro in a few days!

I'm very happy with my 935, and even though it's going on 2 years old, they sent me a new one in the Spring (a strange issue with the display that Garmin CS helped with, even though it was OOW), but I was saving for the 945 just because...well, I'm single, have no kids, and make a good living, lol.

However, I got a great deal on a Descent Mk1 from a dive shop and couldn't pass, so the 945 upgrade got deferred. However, this deal is too good to pass on, so I'll be ordering a 945 as soon as they're back in stock.

Thanks, OP, would have never known about this otherwise!

Just took my new 945 for its first run, 10 miles easy today, thanks!

I'm coming from a 5+yr old Garmin 910xt black and white workhorse, so I've been due time to upgrade. I've been otherwise using a Scosche+ for a HRM for the past 2 yrs, which has worked fine.

I was shocked today though, to find that at least for this run I did today, that the Garmin 945 locked on to my HR even better than the Scosche does and I didn't even cinch it down super tight (but it was def snug.) I left the Scosche at home for the run, was testing out the wrist HRM. My Scosche usually gives about 3-5 mins of errant readings at the very start of an activity, not sure why, but none of that with the Garmin, and it seemed to get it right thru the entire run (I've been running with HR long enough to peg my HR to nearly the beat at nonmaximal levels, and the 945 was spot on.) Very impressed, as the Scosche can't even pick up my HR if worn on the wrist crazy tight (must be worn on high forearm for me.)

We'll see if this good HR reading scenario keeps up with much harder efforts, but so far, I'm impressed.

Is the chooshealthy still working for everyone? I was logged in yesterday and the discounts were showing in my cart, but on the site today and not seeing the discounts when I click through the link.

Same here. Got a 945 last week. Workers great. Tried to get a Fenix today for my dad but no luck. Bummer

not working for me either (today 8/31)

I checked as well. Seems to be dead.

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http://www.teamodz.com
http://www.endurancelab.fit

Some findings after first race with the 945 (1/4 tri with lot's of short laps)
As expected, in general all functionality was perfect during the race; however no meaningful difference wrt the 935 (when racing).
What I did notice afterwards was that the GPS-tracks look way off around corners (both in Connect as well as Strava), however speed and distance seemed ok esp. for bike & run; swimming I think it might have missed/undercut the furthest buoy on both laps. See attached picture as well.

with the 935 I've never experienced this; does someone else have similar observations?

Do you know what GPS mode it's in (plain GPS, +GLONASS, +Galileo)? It's a new chipset from the 935 and the reviews seem to indicate that Garmin did a good job but likely still has some more work to beat the 935 performance (GPS+GLONASS is solid, GPS+Galileo is promising but sometimes it's great and sometimes it's meh). The DCrainmaker review gets into this in much more depth.

OWS performance has been a focus of the more recent firmwares so make sure you're also up to date there.

My 945 GPS tracks have never looked anything close to this. I have done a few deep zoom-in comparisons to my 945, Apple Watch, and 735XT. They are all basically identical. (I was actually looking for the corner cuts on the AW, but was surprised to see it tracked as well as the others on my routes.) Your tracks look like something was way off, like maybe the 945 never had its GPS lock.

Device was in GPS+GLONAS mode with 1sec recording.
In training rides/runs, I cannot remember seeing these issues before. So suggestion that it might not have locked could be the case as well.
Will check whether tracking is working fine with 2.72 beta.

After the most recent sale, I couldn't resist to at least try the 945 despite my previous horrible experiences with Garmin music on their other watches. I was quite harsh--and, justifiably so, in my opinion--in criticizing Garmin that the music function would fail miserably when trying to run outdoors.

So, I was bracing myself for similar failure on the 945 and was VERY pleasantly surprised to find that the music works great. Since my BT earbuds have the "master" on the right ear, I decided to switch my watch to my right wrist. I figured after a couple runs, I would be used to it and I am. Music/connectivity in this watch works perfectly. I'm not sure what changes were made by Garmin, but they made all the difference. My primary motivation for switching to the "45" series was (1) wrist-based HR and (2) music. The idea of having two less tings to bring on a run (i.e., HR strap and Ipod or phone) was/is very appealing to me. I have done about 7-8 runs with the 945 and I am very happy. So, at least for me, the music issues that I had in other Garmin watches is not present in the 945.

Rally regularly discounts the Garmin discount to 100 points - check the app regularly!

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~Kevin

How is the running auto-pause accuracy for everyone else? I am coming from an apple watch 3 with the strava app and it would auto-pause nearly instantly if I stopped at a water fountain, crosswalk, or even slowed to a walk. I'm finding the 945 in 1 second recording with pace based autolap at even 1 minute above my easy pace takes 8-15 seconds to pause and 5-10 seconds to restart. It doesn't seem like a lot but at the high end can add 15 seconds to my pace every time I stop in a lap.

Is anybody else seeing weird GPS accuracy issues, specifically in bike-legs of triathlons?

I posted this up in the garmin forums, but wanted to check back here aswell.
BTW: Same GPS Settings for standallone bike-profile and tri-bike-profile (GPS+GLONASS)

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Yes, I am getting the exact same thing. My last tri I had both my 530 and 945 tracking the course. The 530 maps to the road exactly. The 945 cuts lots of corners. I will post comparative pictures later...

Interesting! Not sure whether you had seen my post of sept 2?
However I also observed this behavior 2 weeks ago (in Triathlon mode on a multi-loop bike course (and run-course); GPS+Glonass; firmware 2.60 (I think)
This has actually been my only multi-loop triathlon on the 945, so cannot comment whether this issue is still persistent however I have never before or afterwards seen this behavior in single-sports workouts.
currently on firmware 2.80

EDIT: quickly checked some recent workouts as well as last saturdays race (firmware 2.80, GPS+Glonass, 1sec recording):
1) bike-workout, wed 11-sept : track was perfect (2x 13km loops on same course)
2) triathlon Almere, sat 14-sept: INCORRECT track, same issues as you have and what I had on sept 2 as well)
3) bike-workout, mon 16-sept: track is perfect (15km commute)
Note that in sept-1 race the run was incorrect as well (didn't run last saturday due to flat tire that I couldn't fix); training runs seem to track better (in run-mode).

Do you also notice issues in swim-tracks in races (tri-mode)? from what I've observed, it seems that my swim-distance is 10-20% shorter than other competitors (typically I have by far the lowest distance of all fly-by's in races, maybe 1 other swimmer with similar distance .... possibly using a 945 as well)
Actually in the sept. 1st race the track also seems to undershoot the furthest buoy

see Strava links below to sept 1st race:
swim: https://www.strava.com/activities/2670458358
bike: https://www.strava.com/activities/2670458470
run: https://www.strava.com/activities/2670458512

This is interesting to read... I ended up getting the Suunto 9 after my OP. Didn't think my thread would still hang around but I'm glad lots of people found great deals. :) :) :)

My watch has the same problem where corners are being cut. I'm not happy about this at all. I will be doing more testing and if it's still no good, I'm going to send it to their repair centre for a check. I am wondering if both Garmin and Suunto use the same GPS chip, or is it the software that causes this? My older Suunto watch was way more accurate so I'll continue to read the comments about the 945 if I need to switch back to Garmin...

I love that the watch can hold music as I used to always carry a phone and headphones (that popped out of my ears, the cable getting caught in my arms...) .. how's the wrist HR? Is it pretty accurate? I still use a strap as the wrist heart rate on my watch is still no good.... my band is falling apart, stinks (even after washing it a lot!), and at times gives me cramps and stitches, so I'd really like to ditch it one day but I'm not willing to compromise and end up with crappy data.

I think this is due to the new GPS chipset. My 520, 810 and 735XT are spot on. Pretty unhappy with the performance and chunkiness of my Fenix 6.

Autopause... ah... I learned the hard way that this shouldn't be used all the time especially in races. My times were totally off on my watch when I was going up steep hills (pause), getting stuck behind a few walkers (pause), hung around the aid station food buffet (pause)... I'm thinking of taking it off completely even when I'm training but I generally don't stop often unless it's at traffic lights.

Well I'm not sure this is entirely the case as the issue seems only apparent in triathlon-mode and NOT in single-sport mode.

With all due respect: How would you then explain that it tracks perfectly during bike-only workouts?
No: This is clearly a software-issue where - in Triathlon-activities only - the GPS-mode, recording interval or other smoothing and interpolation settings are overwritten/changed as compared to standard single-sport workouts...

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Garmin switched to the Sony GPS chipset for all of their new 2019 products... including the bike computers. The route below is captured from my list ride. The 530 is the track on the left and the 945 is the track on the right. Both devices have the same chipset. The course was a huge lollypop, and the right line on each is the return-- a couple hours later. So, it is not an issue of GPS lock. The 945 looks like it is doing a ton of smoothing and not capturing GPS points as frequently. I plan to check my settings and change it to 1-second recording. My hunch is that this is an artifact of Garmin's Smart recording on the 945.

nope, hadn't seen it - sorry

No, they seem quite ok, but my tolerance for messy swim-tracks is much higher. It is just a tricky thing to get right because the watch is under water half the time...

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Can you please post what the map looks like after you've changed the settings? I've done this on my watch (Suunto 9) and it hasn't solved the problem. I'm quite certain they use the same GPS chipset, not sure about the software though.

OK, so there is a Data Recording Option in the main menu, but it is a global setting (not per activity) so why would it affect bike workouts differently depending on them being part of a multisport activity or not...?
Anyway: mine was set on "smart". Somebody could try doing a triathlon with it set to "Every second" and check if results improve...

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Yes, Suunto has been using Sony GPS chipsets for a while now. Garmin just switched (across their product line) in 2019.

Given that the 530 tracks perfectly, my guess it is more likely a firmware issue in the 945 rather than a general chipset issue.

I am sidelined for a while, but I will do some comparative 945/530 comparisons with different settings in a few weeks.

Never use smart recording. There's no logical reason to in 2019 (nor any other year prior).

The only thing is saves on is space on your watch, but the amounts are trivial anyway. A 1hr activity with GPS/Power data/HR data/etc... is about 100kb (1/10th of a MB). The FR945 has 16,000MB on it (albeit a bit less than that once you apply maps/music/etc...).

There's no battery savings with smart recording (that's UltraTrac mode). It just makes a smaller file which in theory saves Garmin on their Amazon storage costs each month. Don't save Garmin any money, there's no reason too.

(I've long argued with Garmin about this, as it leads to threads just like this, since smart recording by its very definition cuts corners to reduce the sampling rates.)

(Secondary note: Yes, the Sony GPS chipset can still be the cause of much suck, but I'd easily argue that smart recording has a far greater suck factor.)

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-
My tiny little slice of the internets: dcrainmaker.com

Actually my races were recorded with "Every second" so this doesn't solve the issue.
(Unless there's a problem in triathlon-mode which overrules/modifies this setting temporarily?!
the tracks actually look like some sort of smart recording was used, or a longer fixed interval (10+ sec's or so))

Regarding the chipset; I'm currently using 830 + 945 during races and the 830 tracks definitely look reasonably ok.
Also during training I typically record both (however will delete the 945) however my commutes are only tracked with 945 and these look fine (in bike-mode)

Really think this is a firmware issue.

Is smart recording turned on? That is a huge part of issues I think. Still with it turned off the Sony chipset seems to be less accurate from the data I can see. In single sport mode as well.

Smart recording OFF (I'm always using "1 second")
Indeed Sony chipset seems to be less accurate in general in single sports mode as well however there the performance is a LOT better than in triathlon-mode.

One last comment, I do think that the disctance/pace info (during run) is actually ok, also in triathlon-mode. So the issue might "only" be a data-storage issue?!?

Sorry I didn't see you had already posted that.

Interesting information regarding your second point.

My 945 showed something like 1200-ish yards on my last supposedly 1 mile open water swim. There is no way that was only 1200 yards based on my time. I'm doing a 1.2 this weekend and plan to wear both my 945 and F3 for comparison purposes and I'm going to be pissed if the 945 isn't tracking properly.

Just did a run in triathlon-mode to compare the track with a run I did 2 days ago in run-mode.
Again I see that the triathlon-mode smooths the track whereas the run-mode tracks the actual route more accurately (not saying that one is perfect either unfortunately)

find Strava links below; issue is easily visible around km ~1.6 as well as ~2.8 where the tri-track passes through the water instead of over the bridge and around the sharp corner. In both cases though the total distance as well as pace seems to match my expectations....thus my theory that it's a storage issue might still hold?

tri-mode run (sept 19):
https://www.strava.com/activities/2721970159

run-mode run (sept 17):
https://www.strava.com/activities/2716144800

My only measured OWS in tri mode with my 945 was pretty good... 2,149 yards measured on a 1.2 mile swim. That said, I take OWS results with a huge grain of salt given the impossible conditions for the watch and higher likilhood of course distance errors.

Just heard back from Garmin. A pretty standard canned answer - they want me to:
1) Do an update with Garmin express
Doesn't the watch update over WiFi anyway? What is that supposed to solve?

2) Do a hard-reset
If all of you guys have the same issue, I don't see how a hard-reset would change anything

3) Send in the watch
basically: same as 2. If it is a firmware issue, the only way to fix it is to release an update adressing the issue and to get that I then need none of 1,2&3...

---

if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Anyone not yet seeing software v2.8 yet on Garmin Express?

v2.8 was supposed to enable wrist-based HR while swimming. Yet when I go into Garmin Express, it's saying that my watch which has v2.7 is up to date. The only option it gives me to update is for an update to maps for the rest of the world (which I don't have an immediate need for).

I'm in Canada if that matters

https://www8.garmin.com/...details.jsp?id=14823

Does that work for you? I did mine manually a week ago because my auto-update showed 2.7 as current.

I got v2.8 last week. The swimming HR works fine for me, but then I don't swim by HR I just look at it afterwards.

I wonder if the 935 does this as well. Clearly the edge's don't.

No, never observed this on my 935.

Regarding Garmin's response:
I've already updated/synced recently and did a hard reset last monday (device was frozen).
Sending back just doesn't make sense as this clearly looks like a firmware bug!

Any other users with direct tech contacts at Garmin (DCrainmaker?)?
(I will try to get in touch with their engineering team as well; might have some possibilities via the company I work for (some of our chipsets are used in these devices...)

I must be missing something. That page is just a link that says "Use Garmin Express to install the file" and a list of change histories. I tried re-downloading Garmin express, but no luck.

Anyone have issues with the race predictor?

I just ran an open half marathon this morning 12 minutes faster than the new predicted time it gave me, the time it gave me as a result of this morning's race. I have 70.3 run segments faster than the time its giving me. The odd part is that the VO2 max is in line with what the internets tell me from this morning's race.

I understand that it is supposed to take 2 weeks to learn the user (I got the watch a week ago), but shouldn't it account for the fact that, you know, I just ran a race faster than its predicted value? (the course was long, too, so that shouldn't be a problem - I ran through both the 5k and 10k faster than prediction)

Just to update users - did the Oceanside Tikiswim 1.2 mile today with 945 on left wrist and Fenix3 on the right. 945 had 2267 yards and the F3 had 2740. The 945 has a noticeably smoother track, however I used to think the F3 was pretty accurate...now I'm second guessing that. This is with the 2.80 software on the 945.

Yes, same I’m running 70.3’s faster than my predicted open time on the 945.

Dan

Thanks for the update; not aware whether your swim was a race or not? however in case you were swimming with other athletes, did you also check their Strava and what swim-length they had?
In my view, the 945 also looks very smooth (935 as well).
So maybe these 2 watches are more accurate and others are overestimating?

Also noticed the same last week when I ran a PR 5km and the 945 estimated my best 5k at 30sec's slower ... although this could be related to the latter part of the run (ran a slow-pace second part of the run (10k total) however heart-rate was still very high then; so VO2max even ended up lower after this run) well I never really took these estimates seriously anyways...

Yes this was a race, I was only able to check with one other athlete who had 2500-something on her 920XT, so right in the middle of my two watches.

I'm about to jump in and get a 945 that that some UK retailers have them at around the £400 mark - but part of me is paranoid that these could be a refurb unit rather than new. (Didn't the early units suffer from sticky buttons?)

Is there anyway to tell whether a watch is brand new or not? (broken seals, serial numbers etc)

Thanks in advance