I’ve owned my 5X+ since June 29th, and in the “interest of science” and for the benefit of my fellow Garmin owners I have recorded the battery usage in a Google sheet. This has simply been done by noting the charge state reported by the watch at the change from watch mode to activity mode and back again and the corresponding date/time. These figures can also be found in the FIT file for the activities. Additional interesting data I record in the sheet is Activity type, FW/GPS version, Recording mode, FIT file size, GPS mode, and GC/GCM version.
After having owned and used the 5X+ for more than three months I do have some data to play with……
My preferred watch setup/usage is as follows:
- Always connected to my phone (Android)
- 20 % backlight, 4 sec time-out and gesture/push-button/notification enabled.
- Notification on for mail, messages and some other phone apps
- WIFI enabled for my home network
- 24/7 OHR and Activity tracking enabled.
- Move IQ and movement notification disabled
- Widgets: Notification, Calendar, Weather, Steps, Last sport, ABC, Performance Status, HR, Daily Stress, and Intensity minutes.
- Send HR during activity enabled
My main activity is cycling, with the occasional run, walk, hike and trail run.
The watch is as default set to Smart recording, but since I have a power meter on my bikes and the Running power data field installed for running, most activities are forced to 1 sec recording.
So to the results of all this……
My average consumption since June 29th, with my setup and usage, is 0,49% pr. hour, which gives me a possible 8,5 days between charges. In pure watch mode I get 0,32 % pr. hour corresponding to 13 days, and in pure activity mode the average consumption is 4,66% pr. hour corresponding to 21,5 hours. A fair bit up to the figures stated in the manual, 20 days/33 hours, but these are “up to” figures with a minimal set of features enabled. I definitely didn’t spend NoK 8000,- to disable all the features I paid for. I’m happy with what I get with my setup.
An interesting topic however is: What is drawing the most power?
Backlight is obvious and well documented. Keep it as low as possible, with a short time-out. Other candidates are Screen drawing, data collection and processing, navigation, writing data to file(s) and communicating to phone. TbT navigation with map displayed is heavy on the juice in my experience.
I have similar data for my Edge 520, and 1 sec recording draws approximately 2% more battery pr. hour than Smart recording (FIT files are three times the size). I don’t have similar data for the 5X+, but will try to get some data next week. (If I can sustain one week without power data….). Similarly I have disabled all widgets to see if that has any influence on the watch-mode consumption. After all some of the widgets are continuously updated.
My spreadsheet may be viewed, using this link
I will update it continously as new data becomes avaiable
Stig
