Garmin Edge 130 plus altitude sensor problems

I recently noticed totally inaccurate climb data on rides I had done using my Edge 130 plus.

I have owned the unit for around a year and up to about a month ago it was fine and a great compact and simple unit..

The climb data on some rides was coming out below half of what is should be. When riding I noticed that altitude is only being updated on the screen occasionally.

From what I have read online it seems that when auto pause is enabled the new software turns down the frequency of altitude updates. That seems to result in it missing a lot of climb data. Hardly useful for mountain biking!

I have now turned off the auto pause and will update if this fixes the problem.

I would be interested to hear if others are experiencing the same issue?

The barometric altimeter is always rubbish on very device. They don’t auto recalibrate unless you tell them a known point (mine does it on the driveway) so over the course of a ride as the weather changes they think you’re going up/down hill. Then it gives some vaguely useful data, altitude from the GPS, and barometric pressure corrected to sea level.

Somewhere in the settings menu you can tell it to ignore the barometer and take the altitude from the GPS signal.

Not an edge 130, but my Garmin vivoactive watch has a barometer. It always shows an epic amount of climbing and then in Strava I correct the elevation and it drops by 50%, which seems more realistic.

A friend in follow on Strava always had crazy altitude profiles from his Garmin watch, bearing in mind he lived in the flatlands of Lincolnshire, would show him climbing 1000ft in about 2 miles 🤣

Thanks for your explanation. . It seems on this unit there isn’t the option to choose between the altimeter or GPS in the settings.

As it’s just the basic very small 130plus possibly it might not have an in built altimeter?

Thanks very much Jeffi that is really great! I just used Strava’s data to correct the ride as you suggested 👍👍👍😊

The climb went from 500ft to 1600ft so shows how silly the Garmin stuff is!

Not an edge 130, but my Garmin vivoactive watch has a barometer. It always shows an epic amount of climbing and then in Strava I correct the elevation and it drops by 50%, which seems more realistic.

I’ve got a Vivoactive 3 and it’s a great watch except for the elevation recording. I’ve actually stood on my drive before now and watched it register me climbing over 30 floors of stairs when not even moving.

It’s good indicator of a change in the weather coming though 😉