Why is my Spark slow to react to changes in pace?

brian_bugle

Before anyone jumps in with the obvious and first-to-mind answer that no watch on the market can provide 100% accuracy due to GPS and satellites and positioning etc, please take a moment to look at the pictures attached.

This is the exact same run done by myself (first image) and a friend (second image). He has an older TomTom Runner and I have the TomTom Spark Music.

I accept that sometimes it can take a few seconds to react - but as you can see, my first interval was entirely inaccurate. I ran beside him for the duration of the entire run. My final sprint speed is slower than his, despite the fact I was running ahead (and faster) than him. Can someone help me out as to why the variations?

This is an ongoing issue by the way - it doesn't just refer to this one run above. I just used this as an example as I had someone else using a TomTom beside me.

Today's fifth interval (picture below) suffered from a similar issue. I know I'm running faster than the stated pace on my watch, but it's as if the pace takes a full minute or two and even at that, it doesn't reflect anywhere near the pace I'm actually running at. I can take 10-15 seconds either way, but that fifth interval was a full minute-plus out the entire way.
All help greatly appreciated.


Just to state that I was doing a set TomTom workout and heart rate strap when running with my friend (in the top pictures) but as an experiment ran without strap and no workout on watch for this latest one.

brian_bugle

Anyone with any thoughts?! Anyone from TomTom able to reply?

AntoineT

Hi,

About this topic there are already a lot of posts
For instance:
https://en.discussions.tomtom.com/spark-and-spark-3-runner-2-and-runner-3-473/pace-when-running-1019650
I have also noticed a wrong "smoothing" in the pace calculation. This problem is really well known but they have done nothing in the last years to correct it. I have really no hope that something will be improved...
As workaround you can import your data into Strava and it recalculates your instant pace.

brian_bugle

Thanks for the reply. I think I'll have to reconsider upgrading to a different brand the next time I need to replace my watch. It's just not good enough that this issue has been going on for so long for so many people and they don't seem to have addressed it.

tfarabaugh

brian_bugle wrote:

Thanks for the reply. I think I'll have to reconsider upgrading to a different brand the next time I need to replace my watch. It's just not good enough that this issue has been going on for so long for so many people and they don't seem to have addressed it.

That would be a wise move considering that TomTom has left the wearables market and is no longer producing devices. I would assume at this point any updates will be limited to bug fixes (and even that may be limited - it has been over three months since the last update broke connectivity for many users and introduced battery drain issues and that is still unresolved). I would not expect much more development and certainly not something major particularly on the watch side (they may continue to tweak the MySports site and app, but not the watches themselves).