How accurate are GPS Units and GPS Watches

[@DarkCoffee2]

It's funny how accustomed we have become to this level of accuracy. I used to be impressed with my Magellan 315 getting me to within 20m of a mark. Nice quick review. Thanks!

[@ukgpstraining]

Many thanks, we had fun making it.

[@mboiko]

Beautiful scenery...the color and lighting make it look like a dream.

[@ukgpstraining]

Thank you very much, we have another 'how accurate are GPS units' video tomorrow as we have put the SatMap Active 20 against the winner of this video, the Garmin GPSMAP 65s.

[@snazzycracker2]

Very helpful. Good to see my new unit from yourselves came first :)

[@ukgpstraining]

Great to hear!

[@quinquennial]

Thanks for that. I enjoyed watching. I bought the Oregon 700 from you when I went on one of your classes at Rothbury a little while ago. I see I'm already lagging behind!! Only joking, I'm very pleased with it although it does need some attention now. I liked your recent video on the Etrex 10 too. That's my reliable standby. Keep up the good work

[@ukgpstraining]

Many thanks for your comment, you have an excuse now if you get a little lost! Hope you are keeping well and thanks for your continued support, it is appreciated.

[@lhmhn62]

Hi John, thanks for this review and comparison, comes at just the right time. I am considering buying the Garmin Fenix 6(S) Pro watch and wondered how accurate it would be when hiking and cycling. I am, after seeing this video, impressed with the results of this watch. Currently I own the Oregon 700 and the GPSMap 66S, I'm very satisfied with both devices, although it appears from your video that the Oregon 700 lags behind the rest of the (modern) devices such as the GPSMAP 65S and the Montana 700. The Oregon 700 is a little older of course. Thanks again for this comparison. Greetings from the south of the Netherlands, where we also have a beautiful hiking, (e)bike and mountain bike area called 'Het Heuvelland', comparable to the beautiful area where you live. It's been on our wishlist for one of our next holidays. I have been following your channel for a long time and will definitely continue to do so ;-) Best Regards, Lars

[@ukgpstraining]

I am glad the video helped in some way and many thanks for your kind words, they are appreciated. If you do visit the UK please do call in and say hello.

[@philiphart121]

Great video thanks but you only compared Garmin units. Is there a reason for this? Would have been better to have comapred the best Garmin unit againt others in the market. I use an Active 20 from SatMap and have found that to be very accurate and it is also multi-constellation.

[@ukgpstraining]

Thanks for your feedback, we will do another vid with some other units including the satmap, I would like to put that up against what I believe will be the most accurate Garmin, the 66sr. A best Garmin v best Satmap. I am never going to make friends doing videos like this LOL.

[@philiphart121]

@@ukgpstraining Thanks for the reply. I think active 20 will beat Garmin. Let's see!

[@ukgpstraining]

@@philiphart121 Lets see, I think it will be close.

[@andrewp8870]

I cant help but think does any of this matter. As a user GPS user from way back they have obviously improved considerably over the years ( particularly under tree cover) However i am not sure that multi band accuracy is really much of a game changer. How accurate do they need to be?

[@ukgpstraining]

Andrew, it was just a bit of fun ;-) We try and do videos on questions that people ask us and people do ask lots of times about the accuracy and before we just guessed we can now give a more knowledge based answer. You any ideas for future videos you would like us to do, as we try and produce one every week?

[@davemelling9520]

It would be useful to do a similat test with the satmap gps units

[@ukgpstraining]

Dave, could not agree more. We only had so many hands! Next time we need to take the Garmin GPSMAP 66sr (multi band) and the SatMap Active 20. I suspect the SatMap would certainly be up there.

[@davemelling9520]

It shoild be . I have been using a satmap active 20 for locating field cameras placed on the ground on moorland and in grykes on a limestone pavement in a wood.. The satnav guided me easily to within a few feet each time. The ony issue was learning to trust the gps and not my memory!

[@ukgpstraining]

@@davemelling9520 Trust a GPS, now that may take a few years for both of us I think.

[@GoVols]

This is similar to the process that I did to "test" my eTrex Touch 35. I walked a 5 mile route with a ForeTrex 401, a GPSmap 62 and my eTrex. The eTrex track looked like a drunken sailor. I do missing person search and rescue (and tons of training in the associated tasks) and I think that the last firmware update (4.50) messed up my eTrex.

[@ukgpstraining]

Thanks for your comments, I am going do this test again with some other GPS units and I will cross reference the 35t in one of those and see for myself if there is an issue. Thanks for the heads up.

[@geoffmoss4843]

Couldn't quite see the scale properly so it was tricky to see the answer to the question "How accurate". I didn't watch the video from start to finish so might have missed the answer!? Were any more than 15 metres off, in the open?...in the trees?

[@ukgpstraining]

Thanks for your comment. Nothing was more than 15 metres off, it was an unscientific experiment but it was interesting to see how some of the products performed.

[@geoffmoss4843]

@@ukgpstraining Thanks. This sort of empirical testing which puts one receiver aganst another is good. It is scientific enough to be useful :-) A newcomer to GPS-land might not know whether to expect ±15m or ±100m. I've been using GPS for years and was still interested to see how they compared! Few of us have a clutch of modern devices we can do side by sde testing with. Keep up the good work :-)

[@paganphil100]

I was just about to order the Oregon 700......now I'll have to think again 😞

[@ukgpstraining]

You can’t really go wrong with an Oregon 700, proven technology.

[@dmacca54]

Get your hands on a large scale OS map. Find out detail that's been supplied by GPS accuracy should be around 0.02m and compare to that. OSM great but no standard for data capture, only as good as GPS used then plotted. As you fun on a Sunday evening.

[@ukgpstraining]

Many thanks for your feedback. Are you only classing a 1:25k map as 'large scale'? Thanks in advance?

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

You have to be careful of ‘cartographic licence’ at 1:50,000 or even 1:25,000’. If you look at the conventional signs you’ll see that the symbol for a typical minor road is around 100m wide! I think if you’re going to compare with a paper map then I think you need to be using 1:10,000 The only way to compare GPS is to take 30+ observations at the same place and make a plot of the variations.

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

Have a look at this. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_error_probable What you really want to be doing is to test the unit’s ability to hit its own stated reliability. If it tells you it’s +/- 4m it’s good to know how accurate that is

[@ukgpstraining]

@@bob_the_bomb4508 Thanks for your input, it is appreciated and the link to the article on Wikipedia. When I created the video I analysed the collected data on 1:50k maps and 1:25k but not on 1:10. maybe next time! Please rest assured I am not trying to make scientific exact videos here, I am just trying to answer some basic questions that we get asked all the time. There are better people than me to do that.

[@stevek8829]

0.02 meter or 20 mm is a little tight.