Disappointing battery life

Possibly my bad as I am referring to a 5S+.

Philip, how are you finding the 5S+ compared to the 935 in terms of battery life and build quality?

Battery life is much, much lower than the 935. The 5S+ has a more solid feel to it than the 935 and the buttons have a more positive feel. Not surprising really as the 5+ series is the top of the multisport range. I am looking to swap to the 5+ as it has a battery life closer to the 935. I went for the 5S+ because I was attracted to smaller form factor. Hadn’t appreciated the battery life was quite so low. Apart from that, it’s a great device and works well. This run today https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3150423784 had a tunnel on the out and back. Handled it well.

philipshambrook I have just gone from the 935 which I have owned for about a year to the 5+ battery life for the 935 was about 10 or 11 days for the 5+ after 4 days I am at 42% and I don't use music. I think I will be lucky to get a week out of it on average. I like the positive buttons and build. But I don't like the extra weight and significant extra thickness.

I’ve had the 935 since launch last year and have had three replaced due to build quality and button feedback. Battery life has been great. I tried the 5+ this summer but ultimately returned it due to battery life problems, specifically the post-GPS battery drain. For the money, it felt like an unfinished product. I’d almost rather have the F (non Plus) if I knew that they fixed the ANT/Bluetooth sensor issues.

We’re still on our original 935s here after close to 18 months so happy enough with the quality, It’s the battery life that is really a standout compared to the 5S+. This weekend for instance, two days of 24/7 useage, 5 hrs of GPS with chest strap and Bluetooth and down to 19%. I was aware the battery life was much different, but for what we do the 5S+ just won’t cut it in the long-term. I

My new 5+ battery doesn't seem as bad as many have made out so far. Low usage I get around 6-8% a day (similar to my F5) , but it does drop quite a lot, as expected, with GPS and music. I turned wifi auto-upload off as I did this with my old F5.

Charging on the other hand is just so wrong though - wouldn't usually let it run down too low but I charged from 3% up to '73%' earlier in 1hr 40m. Rebooted then went out for 4 hours, didn't drop at all. Charged again when home and the indicator changed immediately to 93%. Rebooted and still 93%. Then took half an hour to hit 100% and now 99% after 2 reboots.

So rather than it reporting higher than it was like many others including myself have noticed, it's the other way around now. Either way, I will aim to just charge mine for an hour or so when it hits 50% and hope that they can fix this bug.

Running the latest stable release.

Other than minor battery woes, I'm loving this watch!!

So it look slike the battery issues with the 5 plus are not so much poor battery life but a bug that improperly reports battery life?

HeliosJim That’s a good summary. My experience is that if my 5+ is left to fully charge to 100% (charged overnight) then, if I ignore the battery gauge, the battery life is approximately what should be expected from the Garmin specs. That doesn’t make the unreliable battery gauge any less irritating, but suggests there’s no underlying hardware problem (well, other than the hardware relating to the battery gauge perhaps).

To be fair, the only time I see issues with the battery gauge is if I’ve recorded a GPS+Galileo activity whilst playing music; after a one hour activity I typically get around 4% post activity battery drain in the first hour after finishing the activity and syncing (it’s been called ‘post activity battery drain’ earlier in this thread, but is probably better called ‘post activity battery settling’). With GPS+Galileo and Music the Fenix 5 Plus battery is under a far higher load than the Fenix 5 battery would experience, so maybe it’s just a phenomena of that higher load on the battery.