how accurate/inaccurate do you find your garmin?

[jifdave]

everytime i ride with friends we all get different readings from our garmins two of us with 200's one with a 500.

for comparison.... http://connect.garmin.com/activity/223427060 me
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/223424735 mate.

same ride, i climbed 1304m he climbed 1388 i did 66.17miles he did 65.53.

why so different? anyone else have this problem?

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Is that degree of accuracy a problem?

Mine has a barometreic altimeter. It's garbage so i ignore it.

distance wise I'd say less than 1k error in 100k is close enough.

 

[Wayne Tully]

Funnily enough I find Endomondo on my Android phone more accurate than my father in law's Garmin,

 

[400bhp]

everytime i ride with friends we all get different readings from our garmins two of us with 200's one with a 500.

for comparison.... http://connect.garmin.com/activity/223427060 me
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/223424735 mate.

same ride, i climbed 1304m he climbed 1388 i did 66.17miles he did 65.53.

why so different? anyone else have this problem?

Unless you ride exactly the same lines as your mate, the distance will always be different.

By how much.. - my educated guess would be a 5% error for the different lines you take. Add on top, say, a 5% GPS error, it's unsurprising that when 2 people do exactly the same time the difference in distances can be +-10% out.