battery life montana 700

Garmin sales literature claims that the battery in a 700i will last for 18 hours with 10 minute tracking enabled. YMMV

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/699779#specs

[That's assuming that the unit does not shut off unexpectedly. Battery last longer when it's off :-D All kidding aside, there is a known problem where the 7x0i shuts down for no apparent reason. Although it might be two different problems, there are reports of this occurring both in a powered mount and under battery power.]

I got:

 - powered mount on GS / motorbike
 - UNpowered mount on ATV
 - sometimes powered mount in car

I can live on single battery charge for a whole day. Just turn down brightness a bit... but its a transflective display, so under sunlight its perfectly readable even without backlight.

sorry to say,   feel the battery life on the montana 700 is a joke,  the battery pack is so small,  they could have made a long life battery and the standard,  i will use mine to do a track back quiet often,  and the battery life if poor,  even with the back light off,  they could have made the screen much brighter   like the 6XX series,  i find the  visabilty in the daytime very poor if its not on a power supply at night it great but day time if its mounted on the boat,quad,snowmobile,  visabily is poor on battery

I doubt you even have this unit.

Montana 7xx has transflective display.. under sunlight you dont even need any BACKLIGHT... display is comparable, for example, to the one on Fenix watches...

Also, the battery lifetime is phenomenal. I dont even have powered mount on my ATV.

(I have it on LC though).

Mounted on bike: between 6 to 10% for every ride hour (screen on). It very much depends on setting the screen backlight. So it will last 10 hours. You can get better times with switching screen off, which I normally do when on hike. When riding the bike, I want to have screen always on 

thank you for all of the replies; i have bought a wired handle bar mount so problem solved