Enduro vs Fenix 7x battery specs

Hi, I am thinking about upgrade to Fenix 7x or Enduro, I don't really care so much about maps. What I really want is to have the longest GPS activity life and there is something that make me doubt about the specs between both models.

Looking at the Garmin webpage for the battery life I see the following:

Enduro:

Smartwatch: Up to 50 days/65 days with solar

GPS Only: GPS: Up to 70 hours/80 hours with solar

Fenix 7x:

Smartwatch: Up to 28 days/37 days with solar

GPS Only: Up to 89 hours/122 hours with solar

As I understood the Enduro has the Sony chipset and the 7x the Mediatek.

As I have read the Sony GPS chipset is the one with the lower consumption in the market (it means a little less accurate also). Adding also the thing that the Enduro has less memory and is engineered to battery savings, I don't understand how is possible that it lasts less than the 7x on the GPS mode.

Maybe the information is not accurate? Can we relay on this figures ?

Really appreciate your feedback.

0 silentvoyager over 2 years ago

Enduro CPU is intentionally underpowered so it consumes less in everyday usage. That's why it lasts longer in smartwatch mode.

However the new Arioha chipset is more efficient than the Sony chipset. The same Arioha chipset is also used in Coros Vertix 2, which also has superior battery life in the GPS mode.

0 bartbouse over 2 years ago

I've looked at this also and it's just not clear which one lasts longer. Maybe Enduro in smartwatch mode but 7X in gps. Although, I don't think it's clear in that with the 7x you are likely to use maps or music at the same time which will drastically bring down the gps run time. Ultimately, if you want to recharge less often, it still appears the Enduro is King.

0 brian.reiter over 2 years ago

Another possibility is that the sampling frequency for daily health metrics through the oHR is about half in the enduro vs the f7X.

For example, Coros achieves their better watch mode power in the Vertix 2 by sampling much less frequently than Garmin. You can actually adjust the settings in the Coros firmware and it will then burn faster. In the case of Coros watches it generally means that they made an engineering trade off to have health metrics that are of poor quality but a battery lasts a long time.

0 NoTrux over 2 years ago in reply to brian.reiter

I'd be careful about invoking "Coros" because for people who had one and had a frustrating experience, it's conspicuous to not discuss how Coros somewhat fakes its battery ratings. For reference, I had a Vertix and it was an utter disaster. Coros locks out most all custiomizing so as to minimize variability in battery consumption. Even the storm alert is locked out so it's constantly going off because you have to trust an engineer in Ghangzhou who set the rate according to whatever he or she felt was good. Garmin tends to do a bit better than what it states due to customizing options, IMO. So I think the comparability, even with the same hardware, is less than just "limited". The Vertixes are incredibly crippled in order to force those crazy battery numbers. The next issue is that Coros has crazy problems with their battery management and the company refuses to fix them. After some charges, the monitor has no clue where the battery level is. We've all been complaining in the Coros Facebook group which they have tightly locked down. If you don't charge to full to extend the battery life, the meter goes off faster and you can see 1%/minute of capacity drop after unplugging. So then they force you to do a "battery calibration" procedure which is to overcharge it for one hour (instructions on their own homepage!) until the monitor figures it out. During this time, the battery gets extremely hot, so it's not a wonder they have rampant battery failures across the entire line. So I don't know how comparable a failed battery is to one that has proper battery monitoring in Garmin.

0 bluefish over 2 years ago

JeyJey said:
As I understood the Enduro has the Sony chipset and the 7x the Mediatek.

The Fenix 7 replaces Sony's GNSS chipset with Airoha's AG3335M chipset.

0 brian.reiter over 2 years ago in reply to bluefish

Yes. And Airoha Technology Corp. is a subsidiary of MediaTek Inc.