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Battery life - opinions

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Hello everyone,

I own a Garmin H1i Plus with an active inReach Plus (top tier) subscription, purchased mainly to test all its features.

The device is fully updated to the latest available firmware.

One of the first tests I did was to check the standby battery life. By this I mean: the device is powered on, all satellites are connected, the screen is off 99% of the time, no activity is started — basically just turned on.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are disabled.

The messaging service is set to Performance mode to reduce battery consumption.

Despite all this, the device did not last more than 4 days while turned on.

Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?

If I were to start an activity recording or connect an HRM sensor, battery life would probably drop dramatically.

Thanks in advance for any feedback

  • 0

    first of all: performance mode is far away from battery saving. quite the opposite. Please check the manual, where you can read:

    "Messaging Mode: Performance mode listens continuously for incoming messages, which reduces battery life. Low Power mode extends battery life by checking for incoming messages less frequently."

    what you didn't mention: is tracking turned on? 

    If tracking is on and performance mode enabled, the battery life is pretty much as expected - according to the Garmin specs

    All Satellite Systems + Multi-band: Up to 145 hours*
    Expedition mode: Up to 840 hours
    Performance messaging mode with 10-min inReach® tracking: Up to 48 hours*
    Expedition mode with 10-min inReach® tracking: Up to 425 hours
    Low-power mode with 10-min inReach® tracking: Up to 135 hours

    i hope that helps

  • 0

    Was the device placed outside with clear view to the sky?

  • 0

    When I had my eTrex Touch (same architecture as H1 series), I didn't think the battery run-time was close to being what is advertised. Yes the Touch does have a smaller battery than the H1 series with a rating of "up to 130 hours". I had the unit on continuously to monitor the barometer since there is no "Pressure Trend" recording as with the old units. I turned the GPS satellite receiver off (demo mode) and observed around 4-5 days of battery life (at 5 days, it was below 10%) with no activity on the unit other than periodically checking the barometer. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were off. The screen was off / unit was sleeping except for when I briefly woke it to do the barometer checks (no more than 30 seconds or so at a time). So that worked out to 96-120 hours with little to no activity on the unit.

    On the eTrex Touch, Garmin claims "up to 130 hours of battery life in all satellite systems plus multi-band mode (assuming typical use with SatIQ technology)".

    I would expect that with actual use, the eTrex Touch would not even come close to the claimed "up to 130 hours".