How to calibrate an Apple Watch for accurate pace & calorie measurements

Here is my personal observation on this. Both the wife and I have the watch and we do various outside activities together, like hike, walk and bike. We both go the exact same distance and I am talker so my stride is longer. However, No mater what I always show more steps than my wife. I am not talking about 10 or 20 more, more like 100's and some days 1000's more step for the exact same activity. This does not make sense, you would image a the shorted person with shorter stride would register more steps. Yes we gone through the calibration steps.

That "Motion Calibration" setting is good to know about.
I have an AW Gen0 and it was never mentioned (that I remember) during setup (But I just checked and it is on anyway).

But, at least for runners, I would question how accurate pace could ever be without a GPS either in the Watch (Gen2 & 3) or in a connected iPhone (Gen0 &1).  I figure that Apple threw it in just as sort of a "better than nothing" kind of thing where they count steps and use the average distance per step to calculate distance and therefor pace.   But typically, runners run differently from run to run:  Tempo runs, Speed Workouts, Hill repeats, Intervals, long (slow) runs, recovery runs, etc., etc, etc...   And each of those use a different stride pattern which would throw off the calculation.
...  I would suggest that, for an accurate distance and pace measurement, always use a GPS.

For walkers I would suspect it would be more accurate because they would tend to be more consistent (unless hills are involved)

maestro64 said:

Here is my personal observation on this. Both the wife and I have the watch and we do various outside activities together, like hike, walk and bike. We both go the exact same distance and I am talker so my stride is longer. However, No mater what I always show more steps than my wife. I am not talking about 10 or 20 more, more like 100's and some days 1000's more step for the exact same activity. This does not make sense, you would image a the shorted person with shorter stride would register more steps. Yes we gone through the calibration steps.

Perhaps your arm motion and hers are drastically different? I'm assuming that you both wear your watches on your arms and not somewhere else like attached to your belt.

linkman said:

maestro64 said:

Here is my personal observation on this. Both the wife and I have the watch and we do various outside activities together, like hike, walk and bike. We both go the exact same distance and I am talker so my stride is longer. However, No mater what I always show more steps than my wife. I am not talking about 10 or 20 more, more like 100's and some days 1000's more step for the exact same activity. This does not make sense, you would image a the shorted person with shorter stride would register more steps. Yes we gone through the calibration steps.

Perhaps your arm motion and hers are drastically different? I'm assuming that you both wear your watches on your arms and not somewhere else like attached to your belt.

I did think of that, since I figure out I can cheat on the steps by racking my lawn, I notice every yr when I rake I get lots of steps even more then when I cut the grass. Arm motion plays into it, that seems to be evident. But when we hike we both use hiking poles and we both use similar motions. For racking it could be translating that into step which then allows them to figure activity level and calorie burn. It would be interesting to understand the algorithm they are using.

maestro64 said:

linkman said:

maestro64 said:

Here is my personal observation on this. Both the wife and I have the watch and we do various outside activities together, like hike, walk and bike. We both go the exact same distance and I am talker so my stride is longer. However, No mater what I always show more steps than my wife. I am not talking about 10 or 20 more, more like 100's and some days 1000's more step for the exact same activity. This does not make sense, you would image a the shorted person with shorter stride would register more steps. Yes we gone through the calibration steps.

Perhaps your arm motion and hers are drastically different? I'm assuming that you both wear your watches on your arms and not somewhere else like attached to your belt.

I did think of that, since I figure out I can cheat on the steps by racking my lawn, I notice every yr when I rake I get lots of steps even more then when I cut the grass. Arm motion plays into it, that seems to be evident. But when we hike we both use hiking poles and we both use similar motions. For racking it could be translating that into step which then allows them to figure activity level and calorie burn. It would be interesting to understand the algorithm they are using.

As an experiment, you and your wife could switch watches on a few occasions. Independently test it while walking, riding a bike and other activities, and compare your results with those obtained over the same routes wearing your own watches. You may be able to pin the anomaly down to stride length, arm motion, etc. Or perhaps your settings (gender, height, weight, etc.) are key to the mystery. I am curious what would cause the results you observe.