Disappointing battery life

@Artivis

Not sure if you could characterise my post as “flaming” (def: “vitriolic and abusive post”). It may be I am misusing my watch in some way as you appear to suggest, but you have as little basis for suggesting it as I would have for suggesting you are responsible for the problems you are experiencing with Bluetooth just because on my watch it functioned flawlessly.

davidhurst that post was not addressed to you or to anyone else in particular, but I am sorry if you feel offended

I just want to point out that before anyone announces that Garmin did not keep his promises and the battery life is definitely below expectations, at least some reliable tests should be done ...

In my part of the world the watch was advertised that it will work in:
-Watch mode: up to 12 days
-GPS mode: up to 18 hours
-GPS mode and music: up to 8 hours

Which means, that:
-In the watch mode should consume: 8.33% of battery per day or 0.347% of battery per hour
-In GPS mode, it should use 5.56% battery per hour
-In GPS mode with music 12.5% ??battery per hour

Of course, we do not know how the battery consumption looks for other types or activity,.. for example exercises in the gym without gps but with a footpod and hrm strap... how would that impact battery life.
Other thing is, this are the consumptions for 'standard' use, however, many factors can affect the battery life, such as: continuous playing with the watch, weak GPS signal (tall trees, buildings), phone / headphones getting out of bluetooth range, etc...

So maybe before someone writes that the battery life is good for nothing, he should more accurately analyze his activities ... but ofc this is only my humble opinion

Now if your watch is really broken, the battery life really sucks or you think you found some glitch in the hardware/firmware.. I think writing to Garmin support or [email][email protected][/email] if you use beta software will give a bigger impact... they don't seem to watch this community forum too closely :p

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IMHO my 'Fenix ??5 plus' does not deviate significantly from the promises of Garmin in terms of battery consumption.

For now, that other inconveniences encountered by me, like the frequent bluetooth connection loss were solved by a hard reset of the watch and SW reinstall.

Since I reboot right after the activity Im OK with battery life. Its within my expectations. If I dont do That it goes down pretty fast. So Im confident that the issue is just Software.

I'm also alright with the battery life if you reboot after activities, otherwise the watch has a period of faster than normal drain and takes a hit. It definitely delivers the advertised battery life of 12 days if you only wear it. On days when I don't train, it drains at about 8-9% consistently.

I'm approaching the end of day 11 and I'm about to run out of battery, which is not bad considering I also did 5 strength training sessions with a chest strap during this charge.

That having been said, I definitely think that we have some software bug where something doesn't shut down following an activity. I will followup with Garmin in an attempt to clarify my observations and help out.

I can't help but think it's just weird battery level reporting OR ConnectIQ related, but I'm going with the former. After reading this thread yesterday lunchtime, I uninstalled all 3rd party faces, apps, data, widgets and restarted the watch. It showed 81%. That was 12:05pm. I did a 60 minutes strength workout last night and have worn the watch constantly since 12:05. It's now 9:24am and the watch shows 79%. 2% in that time is simply not correct. I would be very happy if it was! Something is amiss with this firmware.

Just reporting update on battery from my experience with a Fenix 5S plus.

Since the last full charge (which was probably the third) battery life seems a bit more consistent, and relevant - even though it's still not at the expected level : Yesterday morning when I woke up & unplugged my 5S plus, it was at full 100%. Wore it all day & night. Went for a 1 hour workout at noon today, it was then at 90% - which matches the basic 7/8% for 24 hours, same as my 5S did more or less. One hour run with only GPS (no galileo) + heart rate strap got the battery level down to 80% (10% for one hour is also close to what I experienced with the 5S). now it's 4.00 pm and the watch is down to 75%, which seems to confirm there is something wrong with post-workout (I didn't restart the watch after it synchronized).

Although the battery life seems to be getting a bit better after a few full charge cycles, it seems there is still some work to be done software wise...

My update on my 5S Plus is that I charged it 36 hours ago and it is now at 60%. I have only done 90 minutes of kayaking using only GPS. I have not been restarting the watch after activities, but will start doing that.

When I charge the watch, I usually do it during the day and take it off the charger when it reaches 100%. Is there any utility to routinely charge it for a much longer period of time?

Thanks -

Just reporting update on battery from my experience with a Fenix 5S plus.

Since the last full charge (which was probably the third) battery life seems a bit more consistent, and relevant - even though it's still not at the expected level : Yesterday morning when I woke up & unplugged my 5S plus, it was at full 100%. Wore it all day & night. Went for a 1 hour workout at noon today, it was then at 90% - which matches the basic 7/8% for 24 hours, same as my 5S did more or less. One hour run with only GPS (no galileo) + heart rate strap got the battery level down to 80% (10% for one hour is also close to what I experienced with the 5S). now it's 4.00 pm and the watch is down to 75%, which seems to confirm there is something wrong with post-workout (I didn't restart the watch after it synchronized).

Although the battery life seems to be getting a bit better after a few full charge cycles, it seems there is still some work to be done software wise...

Yes, I agree with you, the battery life is good until an activity is performed, then something goes wrong. If I reboot after syncing, my 5 plus (47mm) will last the full 12 days with light usage as quoted by Garmin.

I will be following up with them and I recommend that everyone else does as well if issues are being experienced, the 5s will especially benefit with it's smaller battery if bugs are ironed out.

My update on my 5S Plus is that I charged it 36 hours ago and it is now at 60%. I have only done 90 minutes of kayaking using only GPS. I have not been restarting the watch after activities, but will start doing that.

When I charge the watch, I usually do it during the day and take it off the charger when it reaches 100%. Is there any utility to routinely charge it for a much longer period of time?

Thanks -

There probably is no point, however since I don't have the necessary equipment to measure power draw from the USB port it is uncertain. I recommend you simply try and then observe if the successive charge cycle experiences lower drain or a different longevity.

So I guess I'll toss in my 2 cents, I'm getting about 8-9 days worth of battery out of my watch with mixed use (mtb w/gps & sensors). I will point one thing out, the battery indicator on this thing is balls. I was charging it and the screen said it was 100% did a soft reboot and it came back at 70%...put it back on charge came back 2 hours later, said it was 100% soft reboot 90%...1 hour later 100% soft reboot 95%. So to those that are getting poor battery life it might not really be getting fully charged it might be displaying 100% but really who the f knows what really it's charged to. My suggestion is charge it pull it from the charger soft reboot (hold the light button till watch turns off) then turn it back on. See what the battery says the charge is and go from there, I started to do that and I've been getting the 8-9 days worth of use out of the watch.

OK, so like everyone else (mostly) I did the math last weekend (published on this very forum) and it battery life does indeed stack up to Garmins claims, as long as you don't try to mix and match smartwatch & GPS usage throughout the week. Otherwise you will get the dreaded post activity drain, due either to the battery meter catching up with what was used or some mysterious activity the watch is performing in the background. As I would like to believe that it is a post exercise activity I have been looking around for possible causes.

Until today I have had Physio TrueUp switched off but as I was still experiencing drain and find the feature kind of useful I have now turned it on.

However I also noticed in the Android app setting a feature called Auto Update Apps which is turned on by default, it's a long shot but it may be worth turning this off to see if it makes a difference as the watch may be using the opportunity of being connected post activity to do some housekeeping and checking.

Also it would be interesting to know if anyone is actually using the watch not connected to a phone and if so are they seeing the post activity drain.