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Stryd / Polar external sensors Impact on fenix 5 Plus Battery life?

6373159
over 4 years ago

Hi,

Trying to optimise Fenix 5 Plus battery life so it'll last me through an Ultra (10hrs+). 

Last two times it either ran out after about 7hrs (using normal gps) or had a very poor tracking of the run using Ultratrac (over 10km wrong on a 50km mountain route)

So I was thinking perhaps I pair my Stryd and use it for distance/pace (for as long as that one lasts, it'll fall back onto the watch if it runs out) and perhaps even the external heartrate monitor to provide HR? Does anyone (or garmin) know if one or two ANT+ paired devices in this fashion would either help or hurt battery life? 

I don't really want to use Ultratrac again as its results were so poor.. but perhaps when stryd is connected and takes care of distance/pace (which seems to be more accurate anyway) I could use ultratrac to get some gps samples indicating the route geographically? However does ultratrac mode have any impact onto the frequency of sampling external devices?

And with the external HR I would hope that means the watch doesn't need to take those measurements (?) which would help battery life..?

All depends if the communication w the external sensor(s) isn't more of a battery drain vs these assumed optimisations?

Any thoughts welcome :) 

Thanks

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    ANT+ is very energy-efficient, and based on subjective 'feeling/experience' an external ANT+ HR strap may be easier on battery life than the internal OHR sensor.  I've only used OHR during a few runs when I had forgotten the HR strap, and thought that the battery had drained faster than usual. But again, that's not evidence. In my case, having Bluetooth off on the watch (no phone connection) results in significantly less battery usage - but my phone may be the most important factor in that. I've run many times with the Fenix 1 and 2 with HR strap and a foot pod, and many times without, and for those older watches it didn't make a noticeable difference.  

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Stryd for pace/distance and Ultratrac to have a rough map is a good idea for battery life. I couldn't find my evidence on this, but awhile ago I tested the setup with and without BT on and maintaining the live connection to the phone took up "a lot" of watch battery. I'd suggest turning that off as the heaviest hitter. My impression is that an Ant+ HR strap is going to be easier on watch battery life than keeping on the 3 LED's, especially since the Ant+ receiver is going to be on anyhow for the footpod.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    The Fenix 5+ manual cites "up to 19 hours" of battery life when using GPS and wrist-based HR. I assume that's probably a little optimistic, but if you only get 7 hours, there might be something else that's consuming a lot of battery in addition to GPS. What data fields do you have active? Do you use the map display (consumes a ton of battery, especially if you have set it to rotate based on your heading)? It could be worth testing what the battery consumption is if you use regular GPS and back down to the regular watch face when you run (and return to the activity data screens only when you need to).

    But I agree with others in that ANT+ is quite battery efficient (and consumes less battery than bluetooth). I vaguely remember reading someone from Garmin saying somewhere that there's not a big difference between wrist HR and ANT+ HR strap in terms of watch battery consumption (i.e. other things eat most of the battery, anyway).

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    The ANT+ and Blluetooth protocol are very low power consumption. Connecting an HRM by ANT+ or Bluetooth and disabling the built-in oHR should reduce power consumption.

    However the Stryd Zones CIQ data field does consume noticeably more power than an activity of similar duration without the data field installed. 

    Ultratrac disables the GPS for 45 seconds and then samples for 15 seconds. It greatly increases your battery life at the expense of location accuracy.

    You could theoretically get accurate distance and pace and extremely good battery life but a poor GPS track by using a Stryd connected via ANT+ for pace and distance but without the Stryd CIQ data field (or any other CIQ fields) and Ultratrac for the GPS track. You can also go add in oHR disabled and ANT+ for the HR.