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ZDNET Highlights
- Your Apple Watch workout data may not be accurate.
- Calibrating your watch improves accuracy.
- Here’s how and why you should calibrate.
People wear smartwatches like the Apple Watch to get iPhone-like features on their wrists and to keep track of their exercise and sleep data. By recording workouts or tracking daily activity with a smartwatch, you can get a clearer picture of your movement patterns and a more detailed idea of how many calories you’re burning each day.
The device can accurately measure a wide range of activity metrics including speed, heart rate, calories burned, distance traveled and more. I regularly use the watch when I weight train, run, walk, cycle, practice yoga, and use the watch to keep an eye on my heart rate zone and exertion level, and to recover well before my next intense workout split.
Also: I walked 3,000 steps with my Apple Watch, Google Pixel, and Ora Ring — this tracker was the most accurate
While Apple has invested millions of dollars in research and development to make its health trackers as accurate as possible, there is a way to capture even more accurate data when you exercise with the Apple Watch. This is a simple feature change hidden in your Apple Watch settings.
I’ll tell you how to improve your Apple Watch’s workout accuracy by enabling this feature and explain why it’s important.
Why should you calibrate your Apple Watch?
By calibrating your Apple Watch, metrics like distance, speed, and calories burned are personalized to you, effectively improving data accuracy. Calibrating your Apple Watch is the technical equivalent of getting your clothes tailored: once calibrated, both will fit you a little better.
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This stitch is especially helpful for your Apple Watch when you’re exercising in an area with limited GPS. Let’s say you’re recording a long run in a park with poor signal quality. With a calibrated Apple Watch, the device can more accurately track your steps, even with a poor signal.
This capability also improves distance, speed and calorie measurement, according to appleSo it’s especially helpful if you also keep track of your intake.
How to Calibrate Your Apple Watch
Calibrating your Apple Watch is as easy as opening the app and recording a 20-minute walking or running workout with a few minor tweaks.
First, you’ll need to enable the correct location and privacy settings on your iPhone. This step ensures smooth communication between your Apple Watch and iPhone.
Go to your iPhone’s Settings app. Click into Privacy and Security, and select Location Services. Make sure Location Services is enabled. Then, scroll down on the same page and select System Services. Then enable Motion Calibration and Distance.
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Now it’s time to calibrate. Go to a flat outdoor area with a good GPS signal. If you’re using an iPhone (you’ll probably do the same if you’re wearing an Apple Watch), you can check the GPS signal strength by opening Google Maps, selecting “My Location” in the bottom right, and checking to see if a blue dot appears. This blue dot indicates a strong GPS signal.
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Now, open the Apple Watch Workout app and select Outdoor Walk or Outdoor Run (whichever exercise you want to do for 20 minutes). Walk or run at your average pace for 20 minutes. If you walk and run regularly, you’ll need to calibrate your Apple Watch twice: walk for 20 minutes and run for 20 minutes.
“Whenever you walk or run outside using the steps above, your Apple Watch continues to calibrate the accelerometer by learning the length of your steps at different speeds,” Apple explained in a blog post. As you calibrate the smartwatch to your workout, the device continuously learns about your exercise data.
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How to reset your Apple Watch fitness data
Resetting your Apple Watch fitness data can help recalibrate and clear up errors in your tracking. To reset this data, open your Watch app on your iPhone. Select Privacy, and then select Reset fitness calibration data.
