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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 zoonamai over 7 years ago

I also think the battery life is strange.
Thus I installed the following widget for watching the battery.

Battery Meter v2
https://apps.garmin.com/en-EN/apps/e54849a1-cc77-4c6d-a01f-99b68e7503f2;jsessionid=E67C8063F4A816A7F27815F9BA713749

0 AdiosEsposito over 7 years ago

First-time Garmin wearable owner here. I bought my Fenix 5S Plus less than a week ago and I'm on the latest firmware. Last night I fully discharged (or run the watch down until it turned itself off) once and then fully charged for about 7 hours (the watch reported 100%). Today I've worn it for about 14 hours and haven't done much of anything aside from read and dismiss a few notifications and phone calls. My battery is currently at 68%.

At this rate I'm not getting anything close to what I expected for smartwatch-only usage (stated to be 7 days, but I'd understand if it was a little less than that). Battery life was one of the main reasons I bought this watch, but it hasn't lived up to my expectations. I'm going to try discharging and charging a few more times to see if it improves, but if not I'm thinking about taking it back.

0 ImDisaster over 7 years ago

Been using a battery monitor the last couple days and only smart watch mode...no tracked events. 5+ used 8-9% a day.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Been using a battery monitor the last couple days and only smart watch mode...no tracked events. 5+ used 8-9% a day.

That's what I want to see. ;)

Was this with notifications and heart rate monitor on? Did you wear the watch the whole day? Thanks!

0 zaragozamj over 7 years ago

So is it just the 5S+ that has the erratic and rapidly draining battery?

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Nope. There are several posts in this thread alone made by Fenix 5+ owners. Myself included.

0 Letoxeroy over 7 years ago

The battery meter is definitely weird. It will jump higher when you unplug the watch sometimes. This has been observed also here: https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-t...03#post1366703.

Mine has all kinds of other quirks. Fof example:
on last charge, which I was pretty carefully monitoring, it jumped from 85% immediately to 100%
After taking it off from the charger it would show 100%. Rebooting immediately, it went to 92%
Putting it back on charger with 92%, it would go back to 100% in a minute or two
It would then stay at 100% for 6 hours with no sing of discharge until reboot. Which would bring it to 95%.
And so on.

It also seems very nonlinear. My discharges really fast from 100% to about 75% (unless it gets stuck at 100), quite slow from there to about 50. Quite fast between 50 and 25 and really slow under 25. You can't create 100% accurate meter, so it's not so much of a worry, but it seems to be a bit on the extreme side.

Maybe this can be fixed by firmware. Or maybe couple more discharge cycles will fix it. But I have to wonder if the battery issues we're seeing here aren't more of a battery meter issues.

I can confirm the same here. Had the watch in front of me on a charger. It was normally climbing in charge % up to 85, then 100%. Reboot -> 95%, in 10 seconds up to 100%.
Discharge was ok so far, had it on 75% on Friday, ran twice with maps and navigation (2.5 hours), plus normal usage brought it to 30% by this morning.

So for me the batter itself seems ok both to charge and discharge it is "only" the display % which has a rounding issue to get the right %.

0 zaragozamj over 7 years ago

Did 3 full charge/discharge cycles so far on my 5S+ but not much of an improvement in battery drain rate. Before cycling it was losing 3% points per hour, now it's just under 2%. This is using it just as a smartwatch/activity monitor.

0 Crispin_Ellisdon over 7 years ago

I’ve done some tests over the past couple of days after I started experiencing a 20% drain per day, without recording any activities, but after I had installed a CIQ watchface and the Battery Analyzer widget. I firstly deleted the Battery Analyzer widget and then got 13% drain over 22 hours. I then further removed the CIQ watchface yesterday and am now back to a 7% drain in 24 hours (what I had before anything CIQ was installed). The CIQ watchface I was using (Time Flies) doesn’t have any noticeable impact on battery life on my Fenix 5, so the 5+ seems more “sensitive” to (some) CIQ watch faces and widgets from this limited tested.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

This seems to be the same for me. After removing all CIQ watch faces battery life is back to what I would expect.