Garmin Vivo 2s

[Onfroi Baird]

Yesthis was probably a case where the walk activity either didn't have the GPS turned on in the settings, or the watch couldn't both connect to the phone app and get GPS location from the phone app. Then the automatic stride length estimate somehow ended up with some sort of absurdly long stride length or something.

Basically, for the GPS to work, the Garmin Connect app must be running and must have permission to use the GPS, so if you want the GPS to work then check the settings for the app and make sure it has Location permission, and make sure it's running in the background when the activity is started.

Selecting the activity on the watch should show you a "Connecting to GPS..." progress screen before you start the activity. You then have to wait for this to complete before starting the activity or it will start without the GPS. If you want to start without the GPS though you can.

It's also possible to set a "custom stride length" for both walking and running in the User Profile settings of the device in the Garmin Connect app. You enter this in terms of how many steps it takes you to walk a known distance. The longer the "known distance" you use, the more accurate it will be. So ideally you find something like a running track at a high school, etc, and walk around the track or part of it you know the distance for, then manually count the steps and enter the distance and number of steps.

Since the vivosmart 5 doesn't have a built-in GPS, I tended to not use the GPS for walking and running by turning that off in settings and I just entered a custom stride distance information. The distance estimates won't be perfectly accurate this way but they were extremely close to the same results as using the GPS. (It can be worth doing this on other watches as well since it will save battery to not use the GPS.)

It also seems like the vivosmart 5 has some sort of issue where it can end up completely scrambled if not synced with the phone app for more than a day. My family member who has a vivosmart 5 encountered this, but I don't know if it always happens, if it's random, or only happens in some unkown situation.

As I wrote in my previous post, Vivosmart 5 has no built-in GPS. It uses so-called Connected GPS. It means the GPS data shared from the smartphone. The GPS needs to be enabled on the phone, and the phone has to be connected with the band. The device cannot detect any location when used standalone.

Still, disabling the Connected GPS in the activity settings is not the solution, since it is needed for calibrating the distance accuracy when GPS is not available. The Custom Stride length is used exclusively only on the all-day Steps stats. See what Garmin tells about it:

NOTE: Setting a custom stride length will only impact your calculated step distance. Your custom stride length does not have any effect on the distance recorded for timed activities.

Your selected paragraphs have been written by Garmin to explain device functions within a certain context, but you have presented them here outside of that context, as an answer to the GPS issues faced by VS5 users (though you did provide source links, so there's that). Your presentation in the context of the OP is mismatched to the context the quotes were written in.

"Setting a custom stride length will only impact your calculated** step distance. Your custom stride length does not have any effect on the distance recorded for timed activities." - relates to non-GPS activities. You can set a custom stride length but this is only used outside of an activity, for your **daily step total (asterisks are mine). The article also includes "The height you have listed under your user profile is used to estimate your stride length and thus will estimate the distance you have traveled.". So remaining non-GPS related. Devices with a built-in GPS do this calibration automatically during an activity.

"Using Connected GPS with your smartphone will calibrate your watch and can improve the distance accuracy for activities recorded without GPS, such as a walk or run." - in this instance it's explaining that if an activity is recorded without GPS then better calibration may arise from having performed an activity previously with Connected GPS as it may improve calibration of your step distance, which will in turn improve results when you next perform that activity without connected GPS (e.g. you left your phone at home). Your suggestion "Connected GPS ... is needed for calibrating the distance accuracy when GPS is not available." - once the oxymoron factor has been overcome - isn't a factor as the device may never ever see a Connected GPS in its life, but it will still estimate step distance reasonably well (certainly better than the distance issues we are seeing here).

Finally, Connected GPS can be used to provide location data during an activity and it is this that is causing issues with the VS5. Estimated step distance without GPS will not give 43 miles. There are many similar threads on the matter.

I now rarely use the GPS (connected to Samsung 10e) . I have calibrated my Stride and for a known 1 mile walking route (verified many times with my Venu 2 (onboard GPS) I am recording a Very-Very close 1 mile on my VS5. Needless to say I think the whole problem is the fact that it is a phone-connected GPS that is causing all the errors. Maybe it's switching towers, maybe partial blocking by buildings, trees, etc,, or it is just poorly designed. Whatever. I solved the problem on the VS5 and my wife's VS4, yeah, you don't get the cute map, but that's so minor we don't care.

The vivosmart records a correct map of the ride but wrong distance. It must be getting GPS from the phone to create the map. Why does it not measure the map correctly? Sometimes mine is correct (about one out of three rides). I've tried giving it more time to connect, refreshing the connection to iphone, turning off wifi to force it to use cellular data. Nothing seems to fix this.

For some bizarre reason I have to remove the device from Garmin Express to get my garmin Edge to be the default calculator for VO2max during a workout. I usually pair the watch and the Android phone after immediately but today although the watch was getting recognised in 'Add Device', it then stuck on the start of the phone pairing screen also. Rebooting the phone and watched seemed to allow it to progress through the pairing sequence.

Hi, I have the watch for 2.5 years, today the HR sensor stopped working - reset didn't help. I am afraid it's the end. I wonder what is a usual longevity of these watches as this seems to be very short life. I'd had Fitbit Charge 2 before and those are still functioning, my sister have been usig them after me and they are about 5 years old.

Interesting Some friends and I used to have some Fitbit Charge (can't remember version) watches, and they were very short lived. They failed every few months, and we kept getting new ones. The housing fell apart, charging stopped working, and the bluetooth dongle died multiple times. Eventually I got tired of the poor build quality, and converted to Garmin. That was in 2016. My Vivoactive HR from back then still works. Since then I bought a Vivoactive 4S, which has been working fine for over 2 years.

We do not have an official life expectancy of our devices. Please see this FAQ about devices that have a rechargeable battery: Life Expectancy for the Rechargeable Battery in My Fitness Device. This would be a factor in the lifetime of a watch. Can you please go into your watch settings and first make sure the Wrist Heart Rate sensor is turned on? If it is not, turn it on. If it is already on, turn it off. Then, turn off the watch, turn the watch back on, and turn the heart rate sensor back on. Does this resolve the issue? If it does not, please check your sensor version on the watch. To view this, you will bring up your menu (Press and hold the bottom right button > gear wheel for Settings > System > About > SW versions. Does the Sensor version display 0.00?

Hi, Garmin-Sierra, you may, of course. But in between it seems the issue has been resolved, at least for the time being. After I posted the question to the forum, I kept resetting the watch for couple of times more. Then it started to work again, fortunately. I'd only lost one night of HR recording, actually. Hopefully this will last :-).

My vivoactive 4s is about 2 years and it blacked out. Right after the warranty expired. I'm so disappointed... My dad uses fenix 5 for over 5 years, my husband has 735xt since it's on sale. Even my mom is very pleased with her vivoactive 4. So i had confidence in Garmin products. And now i'm so unlucky with this piece...

OK, since Garmin's official statement is that the life expectancy of your watches is 3-6 years that means that your products have expiry date! A classic company selling politic in order to force customers to buy more and more so as you to have recurring revenues, sales and earnings.

It's absolutely ridiculous that there is no bicycling mode but it has it as a Move IQ event? This makes no sense. A lot us like to bicycle for fitness and if we choose cardio it doesn't track distance whereaswhereas other does. With the higher speeds of cycling, it needs its own mode.

There is a bicycling activity, but you have to add it in activity settings. Also make sure you are running firmware 4.0 or higher. When I first updated to 4.0 it didn't show up on device till I had done something, I can't remember if that was syncing with express on computer. I have been told that it reboots when connecting to charger, so that might also do the trick.

is this still the case? the manual that came with my new vivosmart lists bike activity in the activity list - but when I got to the app on my phone to select it is not shown as an activity option. if the watch doesn't have the functionality why include it in the manual?

It has the functionality since version 4.0. Check on device settings-info-software. Since the device only have 4 activity type besides walk and run (which are fixed) you have manage which one you want in Garmin connect settings for the device and make sure bicycle is one of them.

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