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Disappointing battery life

I have just upgraded from a Fenix 5 to a Fenix 5 plus and so far I am finding the battery life to be a lot less than I would expect.

I used to get nearly 2 weeks battery life out of the Fenix 5 but so far the Fenix 5 plus has used 25% in 2 days, both watches are set up and used exactly the same.

I know the Fenix 5 plus is supposed to have slightly less battery life but at this rate it is not even going to last a week.

Does anyone know if this will improve if I cycle the battery a couple of times or if this is normal for this model

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0 NeilJonesOnline over 7 years ago

All I know is that where my f5 used to give me about 2 weeks between charges, with a similar profile of activities I'm currently getting somewhere between 3-4 days with my f5+, and that's charging it up to 100% and a couple of hours more, and running it down to the point it turns off. Rebooting it after each activity seems to improve things significantly though, as I definitely see the biggest indicated drop post-GPS workout (typically about 5% until it seems to stabilize again if I don't power off/on).

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

On my latest charge, I was able to squeeze out of 5+ little over a week of battery life, with under 3 hours of GPS on. That's with turning the watch off after activity (I am still not sure how much that helps, I see some drain after that, but it may be smaller). And after several complete discharge/charge overnight cycles.

Imo, this is not very impressive. Any way I look at specs, the watch should have couple more days left. This is from full charge to watch turning itself off, to eliminate known battery meter issues.

0 Christophfe over 7 years ago

All I know is that where my f5 used to give me about 2 weeks between charges, with a similar profile of activities I'm currently getting somewhere between 3-4 days with my f5+, and that's charging it up to 100% and a couple of hours more, and running it down to the point it turns off. Rebooting it after each activity seems to improve things significantly though, as I definitely see the biggest indicated drop post-GPS workout (typically about 5% until it seems to stabilize again if I don't power off/on).

Hi Neil,

this is exactly the same story I observe with my Fenix 5 and Fenix 5+ ... For me it was ok maybe to get a little reduced battery lifetime from 14 days on Fenix 5 to maybe 12 days on Fenix 5+ - but now in reality I get around a max of 4 days with Fenix 5+ - which is something I don't like and can't accept from this High-End Garmin Device... :-(

BR
Chris

0 davidhurst over 7 years ago

In spite of my earlier optimism that this is a calibration issue, the watch has resumed its hefty 12-15% daily drain in smart watch mode. It may yet be something that can be addressed in firmware, but I have decided to RMA the watch while I still have an option to do so.

0 jimoestman over 7 years ago

In spite of my earlier optimism that this is a calibration issue, the watch has resumed its hefty 12-15% daily drain in smart watch mode. It may yet be something that can be addressed in firmware, but I have decided to RMA the watch while I still have an option to do so.[/QUOTE

Unfortunate that the calibration did not help. Since you have not downloaded any connect iq sw onto your watch, I would also do the RMA.
Let us know the result.

0 Artivis over 7 years ago

Now... before you RMA your watch or even write a forum post flaming the battery life, I think you should test it more thoroughly.

I restrained myself from constantly checking and playing with my new watch for 48 hours (which with backlight set on 50% would influence the battery life as you can imagine) trying to simulate a 'normal smartwatch use' with some messages, reminders and alarms, checking hour, heart beat, etc... it came out somewhere around 8.5 % discharge per day, where couple of times I went outside the BT range and it disconnected from the phone (that would also influence battery life). This gives something near 11.76 day battery life.. which is not much short of what Garmin claims.
Ofcourse to be sure what the real battery life is I would have to go on with this test until the watch goes to 0%

Later I went on couple GPS activities in different environments, and the battery drain was around 5.5-6 % per hour.. .which again is very near what Garmin says...

I also don't see any 'post activity drain'...

So overall I am really satisfied with the watch, it is the best fenix I owned (and I think I had all the models). The only real issue I have for the moment are the rather too frequent dropouts of BT connection with the phone, where the watch cannot reconnect again without switching BT off and on... but I can wait with that for the next SW release.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

That's actually all the more reason to RMA. If post-activity drain affects all the watches, then I can either live with it, hoping for firmware fix sometime in the future, or return it. But if that is something that happens only to some watches, it may be time to exchange it. I'd just like to know what are the chances I will get non-broken watch.

For the record, my backlight is off during the day. It's only on after sunset with 4 second timeout @ 20%. It's on during activities (default 8 second timeout, @20%). No gestures or anything. I use stock watchface. I don't play with the watch anymore. I can probably hit the numbers you post on the good day, but not with activities. As I posted above, with three hours of GPS use my watch was down to 5% in 7 days. With the numbers you post I should have over 23% and easily two more days in watch only mode. But the missing percentage can be at least partially explained by post-activity drain.

And yes, this is several discharge cycles in. As I said above, I don't take one or two day discharge rate very seriously, since it's influence by battery meter inaccuracies. But complete discharge cycle should be pretty reliable estimate.

But the biggest question here still is why some of us experience post-activity battery drain and others don't.

0 yago77 over 7 years ago

After trying a lot of configurations with no favorable result, Today I sent the clock to Garmin. It cannot be battery drain is about 20-25% per day in smart watch mode (no GPS activities)... bluetooth on or off, wifi on or off, with or without connect IQ widgets or watch faces... nothing change the battery drain for me. I hope to obtain a favorable result.

0 JaymO over 7 years ago

Just wanted to chime in to note that I am also seeing the large post activity battery drain. I'm hoping this is a fixable issue, as otherwise I really enjoy this watch.

0 rob-tech over 7 years ago

Same with mine, the post activity drain is annoying. My watch was doing about 8% per day, however after yesterday's strength training activity it used up over 4% in under 5 hours doing absolutely nothing but sitting on my wrist within Bluetooth range.

For those who decided to RMA, please let us know of the outcome (I'm still convinced that it's a software issue).