I have a Garmin Fenix 5X and the basic Stryd Footpod (non power version). Currently I have it setup when running indoors to use the footpod for speed\distance using auto calibrate. Everything I had read was that the Stryd is pretty dead on out of the box but not seeing that, depending on the treadmill (personal one that is about 5 months old, the woodway at the gym or the technogym ones at the gym) they are all usually about 30-40 seconds faster than the footpod. Trying to decide if I just continue as is and see if it comes in line the more I use it or if I should just change from auto calibrate to a manual calibration factor.
Personally, I’d recommend leaving it at manual calibration and 100.0 calibration factor.
My experience with two Stryd’s is that they’re within 5 seconds of each other on a treadmill and the treadmill is 30 seconds different i.e. treadmill says 7:30 min/mi and both Stryds will say around 8:00 min/mi. One Stryd is going to a Garmin watch and the other to a Galaxy S4 or another Garmin watch. Outside they are almost always within 0.01-0.03 miles over, say, 3 miles of total distance. Straight out of the box.
I’ve done some track runs and verified my old Stryd (May 2017) reports distance within 1% repeatedly, and the new Stryd (Nov. 2018) behaves similarly.
The Garmin footpod calibrates outdoors, using the GPS distance and a conversion factor to make the accelerometer-based distance/speed correct.
I’d assume Styrd works the same way. Otherwise, how can it calibrate without an external measure?
I am curious on how accurate it will get if calibrating it outside with GPS or if just doing it manually is a better solution.
I was going to try manually change it based on the formula provided on the Garmin Support page.
The Calibration Factor formula is:
Actual distance traveled, divided by (÷) distance displayed on watch, multiplied by (x) current Calibration Factor. To illustrate, you perform a 4 mile run, but the watch displays 4.47 miles, and the current calibration factor is 100.0%. The new calibration factor will be 89.5% (4 ÷ 4.47 x 100.0).
I am curious on how accurate it will get if calibrating it outside with GPS or if just doing it manually is a better solution.
Reading around, it says that Stryd’s are usually pretty good out of the box. You care comparing it to treadmills, which are notoriously lousy. But, since all the treadmills seem to agree…
You need a good, quality external measurement. Go to a track, turn off the watch GPS, ensure that the Stryd is paired and run two laps on the inside lane. What does that watch say for your distance?
But what is your true distance that you are calibrating to? I wouldn’t assume your treadmill is most accurate. However, if you want your distances to match more closely, than you can use your treadmill distance for calibration.
If you ever run anywhere other than the treadmill after making an adjustment to the calibration factor, the distance, pace, and power (since it’s tied directly to acceleration and speed) will likely be wrong.
I am curious on how accurate it will get if calibrating it outside with GPS or if just doing it manually is a better solution.
I’d avoid using GPS to calibrate a footpod. Go to a track if you can or wheel off an 800 meter path for back and forth laps. This works well for verifying how good your Stryd measures distance.
I used to have it autocalbrate, but recently changed to fixed. The reason for this is that I changed my run routes for summer and was doing a route that started off with a wavey boardwalk beside the ocean. What this meant is at the start the auto-calibration from the gps was straight lining that, and then that was making the rest of the run out by about 30s / km. Previously, where I was doing ‘normal’ runs then t was great. However, now I’m on fixed then there’s very little variation / error run to run. Just need to recalibrate for new shoes.
Note that I used the footpod calibration tool / application that you can download.
I don’t leave mine on auto-calibrate because I frequently run on trails and it straight-lines like you describe.
I have an indoor track I run on and calibrate to. It hasn’t changed much in the 11 years I’ve been on it.
For best results don’t auto-calibrate; use a track. This is relatively easy since you can set the 5X to take its distance from Stryd. Just run several laps in lane 1, look at the distance reported for that section, and adjust the calibration factor as needed. I sometimes subtract an additional 0.3-0.5 from the calibration (i.e., 94 to 93.5) so that the distance more closely matches the mile markers when I am racing and not able to run perfect tangents.
I would not auto-calibrate for a few reasons. First, the watch may decide to do the calibration at a non-optimal time, i.e., on a winding course with poor GPS signal, and give you a much less accurate calibration. Second, you may not even know that the change has happened, and find yourself in training or a race with bad speed and distance data. Finally, Stryd doesn’t really need re-calibration very often. I recheck mine every 6-12 months (and it does move a little), but you don’t need to adjust more frequently than that.
If you are seeing different paces reported on the treadmill, I would assume the problem is with the treadmill, not Stryd. Many low-end treadmills are not calibrated. And even for those that are, the pace the treadmill reports may be too fast since the belt speeds up while you are in the air, and slows down when you land. Stryd studied this and found that to be a significant factor in the difference between the pace reported by treadmills and Stryd.