I am looking at buying the Garmin 301. The feature I am most interested in is the “pace” information, and the consistency of the instantaneous pace. Maintaining the same pace, does it stay fairly steady (within 5 sec/mile), or jump around, thereby only giving good average pace over a longer distance? Also, when you change the pace (i.e. speed repeats), how long does it take to adjust to the actual new pace? Is it a matter of a few seconds, or longer? Any information, good or bad, would really be appreciated.
I don’t have it set on the smoothing function, but it still seems to take about 20 seconds to indicate the true pace given a pace change. This is okay for me because I am interested in the pace of steady runs - and it does seem accurate.
i’ve turned mine onto ‘less smoothing’, the middle of the 3 (none, less, more).
i find it’s ‘just right’. (call me goldilocks i guess…?)
it takes a few seconds to kick in, but nowhere near the 20 seconds that the ‘more’ mode does. maybe 5 @ most
Kevin,
I haven’t played with the setting, but from what you said I think I will change mine to “less”. Thanks
Adrian,
I am using the 201, not sure if it makes a difference. There is still a lag time, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the ‘more’ setting, and not as jumpy as the none setting.
on a side note, ever used the same model as someone else to run the same course, and gotten a different value.
i ran a 5k race as this other guy who was also wearing the 201. He got 4.5k, i got 4.39. We knew it was short, but 100m seems like a lot of variability over such a short distance?
I just keep my 201 on average pace all the time. That function works great, but the instantaneous pace jumps around too much for me.
-Colin