Are Garmin watches knackered? Worldwide reports surface of fitness watches crashing - which models are affected and is there a fix

Owners of a variety of different Garmin products report the watches stop working when attempting to start an activity that would track their location using GPS. Instead, the watches just show the blue triangle that is displayed when the watches are turned on or restarted.

A message on the Garmin site reads: “We are researching reports of devices displaying a blue triangle when starting a GPS activity. Holding the power button until the unit powers off, then turning it back on may restore functionality temporarily. We will provide more information on a permanent fix when available.”

Sports technology expert DC Rainmaker, who was among the first to report the problems, speculated that the issue related to the “satellite pre-cache file” that is stored on the watches. That is a quick map to where satellites are in the sky, allowing the watches to acquire their location much more quickly.

The file is updated every few days to ensure that it is still correct, and those updates are automatically passed to the watch. As such, watches may have received the broken update and are then unable to start the activities that rely on it.

That same file has caused issues in the past. Previously, errors in those files meant that watches from a variety of different manufacturers were showing incorrect locations, rather than crashing.

Which models are affected?

According to TechRadar, there have been nundate reports of issues with many of the best Garmin watches, including every Garmin Forerunner, Garmin Venu, certain Garmin Fenix watches. Forerunners of all kinds (265, 965, 255 and 955), Venu 3, Fenix 7, Epix Pro Gen 2, but more devices are possibly affected.

One user told TechRadar: "Just sharing - my Garmin Forerunner 255 Music was faced with the infinity loop issue currently ongoing. No particular trigger, the one moment I received a Teams message, the other it was black-screen and rebooting. Happened at precisely 12 (midday).”

Is there a fix?

Garmin’s official support website was displaying an acknowledgement of the ongoing problems on Tuesday afternoon (28 January). The message said: “We are researching reports of devices displaying a blue triangle when starting a GPS activity.

“Holding the power button until the unit powers off, then turning it back on may restore functionality temporarily. We will provide more information on a permanent fix when available.”