Disappointing battery life

"It is my hunch that these battery meters and other data rich widgets...."

I don't have any third party widgets or IQ watch faces on my 5+ but I am experiencing a battery drain in excess of 15% a day. It has gone from fully charged on Monday morning to around 48% in a little over three days - a period which included two hours of GPS-measured running.

This is the most viewed and commented on topic in the forum by a considerable margin and although we don't know whether the issue is hardware, software or some other configuration/operational issue, it is clearly a widespread concern. I am minded to return the watch as I am still within the 14-day "cooling off" period.

(For comparison, my 935, identically configured as far as I can tell, has gone down 6% over the same time. I also had an hour of GPS-measured running on it. The battery drain when both are doing nothing more than sitting on my desk, seems to be about three times greater on the Fenix 5+ than the 935.)

Ouch! Lost 15% in the last 12 hours with no activities! Stcock watch,no CIQ apps/faces.

The first week of usage, I saw battery draing on my 5+ between 15-20% per day (24 hours)
But after removing widgets such as "Battery Analyzer" and the watchface "SC9" The usage went down to appox 9% per day. (I use stock watchface, have HRM on, and take the watch off at night, but don't turn it off.).

It is my hunch that these battery meters and other data rich widgets/watchfaces that continously pull data from the system, are the "culprits" here.

I don't think so, because I experienced the bad battery lifetime already before I installed any 3rd party SW on the Fenix+ ... afterwards I started to investigate and installed some Software to check the battery. The same widget on my fenix5 works also fine and does not produce any issues...

I see. I did not mean to trivialize or discard the issue you guys are experiencing with your devices. ...if it came across that way. :)
Just wanted to mention what results I got on my watch when removing these "3rd party" software.

Have you tried the battery calibration? A technique for devices with battery measurement.
1. Full charge (100% + some extra hours charging)
2. Full drain (til device shuts down by itself)
3. Repeat step 1.

I'd also opt for the software issue.

That's what I did after my 1h30 trail-run yesterday: I waited for the activity to be synced and then I turned off the watch and turned it on again.
=> Until now the problem seems to be gone. But that's no prove because it did not happen everytime for me beforehand anyway. I'll keep rebooting it until a new firmware version is out or the problem occurs after reboot again.

Hello,

i did the same yesterday, with the same effect: turning the watch off and on after a GPS activity stops the crazy battery consumption.
Will try again tonight.

Cheers

There doesn't seem to be any explanation as to why some are reporting battery issues and others aren't. I've followed the forum carefully and can't see any configuration or circumstance that is consistently associated with the problem. It occurs to me that if it is not a manufacturing fault in some watches, it could be something to do with the mechanism by which the watch connects to the phone. This might explain why the battery drain is - counter-intuitively - sometimes reported as actually being worse in smart watch mode than during activity measurement, a time when, presumably, most watches are separated from the phones to which they are usually connected. The mechanism might be some bug which causes an over-busy connection to the phone or some issue with bluetooth in the watch itself. (I'm not proposing a technical diagnosis, just trying to find a pattern...)

For what very little it is probably worth, I am connecting to an iphone x and having what I would characterise as serious issues with battery life. Anyone with similar problems using an Android or other phone (or none at all)?

Ouch! Lost 15% in the last 12 hours with no activities! Stock watch,no CIQ apps/faces.

Turned watch off and back on again and that seems to have steadied the drain which suggests that this is a firmware issue and therefore fixable.

I'm using GCM on an iPhone X running iOS 12 beta.

Same problem here. I've contacted Garmin and they told me to let the clock go off, charge it for 10 or 12 hours. Then put it near a window with the GPS on and bluetooth off and leave it until it turns off. If the duration of the activity is more or less what is indicated by Garmin (about 19 hours), the battery works correctly. If not, I have to send it to them

I'm paired to a Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ and my consumption for a day with no recorded activity (watch mode) was 8.1% for the last 24 hours (this is with syncing once with GCM and dismissing several notifications). This is the second charge and so far looks promising compared to the first charge where it was chewing 15% in watch mode. Although it will probably be slightly worse today since I have a long strength training activity planned (should still not exceed 10-11% though, I will follow up with today's usage).

One thing that stands out is that I did not get to use the GPS on this second charge yet (all indoor training), another possibility is that I keep the phone within closer range of the watch possibly helping battery consumption as the signal transmission power does not have to be increased as much (just a theory). Before I would leave the phone in another room of the house and wander off.

A recap of my settings (Fenix 5+ 47mm Sapphire Edition):

- Backlight: 20% ON key tap
- Factory default watchface displaying date/time with seconds, altitude, heart rate and calories.
- Bluetooth ON 24/7 with notifications paired with Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ (SM-G928W8)
- Wifi ON with auto upload
- External Sensors: 1 Garmin HRM Premium Chest Strap ENABLED (says searching when in settings)
- Activity tracking ON with 24/7 wrist HRM
- No extra watch-faces are currently installed
- Factory default widgets except for Battery Gauge by torsteinvh

While this does not explain the problems we face with phantom drain, it hopefully allows for a good reference point for people to compare their unit and possibly rule out battery defects, It also shows that good battery life is possible without stripping out all features.