Disappointing battery life

Have anyone tested battery life during ultra marathons. How long does it last? 18 hours as stated by Garmin or is that too optimistic?

Really depends on your settings (ultra track or not) , galileo , etc ... but Garmin is pretty accurate in battery estimations (unlike others)

Received my Fenix 5 Plus from Clever Training yesterday, did a full charge and then configured the watch, GPS/Glonass and set up to get alerts from cell phone (email, phone calls, text). Did a short run and my track was within 2 meters of where I ran. I calculated the battery should be at 90.4% after 24 hours, the battery was at 89%. Very pleased with the performance of the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus.

Have anyone tested battery life during ultra marathons. How long does it last? 18 hours as stated by Garmin or is that too optimistic?

Hello,

i ran a 65 kms trail running race last saturday, it lasted 12h37 minutes and i had 30% battery remaining at the end, so that would have taken me to 18hours.
GPS only (no galileo) with BT on, smart notifications on, livetrack activated.

I'm reading about the expected battery life here:
https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/fenix5plus/EN-US/GUID-694C4E14-D875-479F-AFB1-2A6A582FF506.html

I'm using the Fenix 5S Plus and the sheet above says that one charge (100%) of the battery means either 7 days in smartwatch mode or 4 hours with GPS, heart rate and music.

I'm not sure if you can really trivialize like this (each % is not equally worth the same for these batteries), but I'll do this anyway:
168 hours (7 days) as smartwatch = 100% battery
4 hours GPS-training with music = 100% battery
1 hour of GPS-training with music = 42 hours as smartwatch (168/4) = 25% battery drain (100/4)

For the Fenix 5 Plus, it's 12 days as smartwatch and 8 hours training with GPS/heart rate/music. Here, one hour of GPS-training with music translates into 36 hours of smartwatch use which would also drain 12,5% of the battery.

And for the Fenix 5X Plus, one hour of GPS-training with music should translate into 36 hours of smartwatch use which would also drain
7,6% of the battery.

What strikes me as odd here is that the relation between workout hours and smartwatch hours match up on the 5+ and 5X+, but not for the 5S+. Maybe it's in the nature of Garmin using different batteries/battery sizes for the watches.

I'm currently tracking my usage/battery level closely and will post my results, but so far, the battery life is on par what Garmin has advertised as I've pulled just short of 3 days (24/7) of smartwatch usage and about two hours of working out with GPS and music out of the watch and it's still at 34%.

On the watch I found Display Group Track on map turned on, I never use it on my watch so it is of no use to me. I do have the map as one of my screens on my GPS activities and rarely display it but I was wondering if maybe the watch uses this as a queue to communicate and update details during and maybe some time after an activity.

On the phone I had the option auto-update apps turned on, I don't actually think this works too well anyway as when I connect to Garmin Express it is still reporting that 4 apps are out of date and need updating. Again I wonder if the watch is trying to update after an activity (and perhaps failing) drinking more power.

I have tested this now too. After first activity on Tuesday, it looked that post-activity battery drain could be diminished. But today, my Fenix 5 plus again dropped 5% in 2 hours after GPS activity:
* 8:34 - start run, with HRM-Run and footpod, battery at 38%
* 9:10 - end run, battery at 34%
* 11:10 - after 2 hours in watch mode, 29%

So as before, I am getting about 3%/hour consumption right after the activity, that over time tappers to normal - and generally the longer activity, the longer it takes for the watch to normalize.

I will continue testing this, but I am rather pessimistic it has much effect.

I have tested this now too. After first activity on Tuesday, it looked that post-activity battery drain could be diminished. But today, my Fenix 5 plus again dropped 5% in 2 hours after GPS activity:
* 8:34 - start run, with HRM-Run and footpod, battery at 38%
* 9:10 - end run, battery at 34%
* 11:10 - after 2 hours in watch mode, 29%

So as before, I am getting about 3%/hour consumption right after the activity, that over time tappers to normal - and generally the longer activity, the longer it takes for the watch to normalize.

I will continue testing this, but I am rather pessimistic it has much effect.

I fear you are correct, about 5 days in and my watch is now over 10% adrift from where I calculate it should be

Hi all

Bought the new F5 Plus 3 weeks ago and last week I used the watch for the SwissAlpine T88 race and must say that I'm pleasantly surprised with the watch and the battery life.

My intention was to run the race with GPS direction preloaded but I was not sure if battery would last the hole race. I planned to spend around 15 hours but ended up running for 17 hours and 5 minutes. Watch was on 100% from start and at finish battery was on 3%. WiFi and Bluetooth was off. To safe battery I used regular watch face. Last 5 hours I was running in the dark so backlight was only on when looking art watch. GPS course said 88K and my run said 87,9K so actuals versus course was spot on..!!

Is Wi-Fi the culprit for post-activity drain?

I mentioned this in a separate thread a couple of weeks back, but didn't get any responses so thought I'd just throw it out there one more time...

Even though I've got Wi-Fi auto-upload enabled, I've not seen any indication at all that this is actually working - I certainly don't get the near-instantaneous notification from Strava (linked to my GC account) within seconds of walking through my front door like I used to with my f3. It tends to be several minutes before my activities sync with GC (without any intervention by me) which is no different than it was with my non-Wi-Fi f5 syncing over Bluetooth. In fact, there seems to be no way of telling whether an activity has synced via Wi-Fi or BT, and the time it takes makes me wonder if auto Wi-Fi sync isn't even working - I certainly don't see the MAC of the f5+ in my DHCP logs which is odd as it seems to manually connect OK if I tell it to.

Wi-Fi's a big battery drainer, and the only time the f5+ should activate Wi-Fi is when it syncs an activity straight after completion (not regularly at other times, like it does with BT), or when you manually sync it. If it is having problems connecting to the network when it syncs, maybe it leaves the Wi-Fi connection open for several minutes while it repeatedly tries to sync which could account for the post-activity battery drain. Last week I disabled Wi-Fi sync and didn't seem to suffer the same post-activity drain that I had before, but I only managed to get two rides in, so that may have just been coincidence as I don't always seem to get the drain anyway.

So a few questions, especially for those suffering post-activity drain:

Do you have Wi-Fi auto-sync turned on?
Do you think it's working (rather than just syncing activities over BT)?
Do you see an improvement if you turn it off (there will be a slight battery life improvement anyway if you're not using Wi-Fi, but does the post-activity drain go away)?

As an aside, Garmin contacted me last week to exchange my f5 which I'll sort out with them, thought I'm still not convinced this is a hardware issue.

Neil