Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
I have a Garmin GPS watch for hiking and running and swimming, and also an Edge computer. My experience is pretty much like yours. I have to go about 30 miles before they disagree by 1/10th mile.
We have plenty of dense tree cover in the Pacific Northwet. A good GPS (not yours apparently) is fine with dense tree cover at cycling speeds. It's a problem hiking because the speed is so much less but the speed you carry on a bike (really the inertia that comes with that speed) rules out 90 % of the jitter in the signal.
Good for you. Do we know the OP's nemesis was using a "good" GPS? I merely gave real life examples where consumer electronics gave bad readings, as proof it can and does happen.
By all means, if it makes you feel good that your couple hundred dollar GPS watch works better than my $30 phone, feel free to continue mentioning that. I'll fully admit that it is not a top of the line piece of electronics. That said, many people use phones as their tracking device, and I have little doubt that any GPS or software controlling it in a phone is prone to errors from time to time.