Real Life Battery Performance

That is poor battery life indeed! Definitely a concern for ultra events and much less than advertised :(
I'd love to see more of these real activity tests, and not just the static tests. Were you using HRM?

Yes, I was using the HRM run belt. I'll add that to the post! Thanks!

It is indeed very poor battery life. Much, much worse than my Fenix 3.

Put recording on "smart", turn off Glonass and if you have your phone with you and bluetooth on turn it off!

Something's wrong there as I've done a couple of all-day hikes with my F5x since getting it (~10 hours of actual "moving" time) with the 5x and consumed ~45% of the battery. Mine is set GPS only, "smart" recording but I don't shut off Bluetooth (although in the backcountry the phone is in "airplane" so it has nothing to talk to anyway.) And I was using mapping -- not on a "every second" basis running a course, but I was certainly looking at it from time to time.

BTW Sunday is my usual "charge the Fenix" day and I'm at 49% right now (and about to plug it in.) My training was a bit light this week but not THAT much reduced from normal; I did update to 2.96, and at first blush something has improved in the battery life with that rev.

I did 50km in 5:10 today and used 32% of the battery. Settings as per the OP. Map used frequently but not on the map screen the entire time.

Definetely something wrong with the OP's device.

So, yesterday I did 75Km race and used my F5X with the following:

Software 2.9, GPS/GLONASS, 1 Second Recording, Navigation against a course, Map page on mostly on, HRM Run belt paired.

The race took me 8:40 and the battery levels on my F5X went from 98% to 5%!

This makes the watch almost completely unusable for ultras over 75K. Might be because of the map page but there's not much point in paying the extra if you can't use it I guess.

Anyone else seen this type of performance? I was expecting to have around 40-50% left when I finished!

D.

Sounds like you may have had the backlight ON most of the time. Did you?

HTH

The race took me 8:40 and the battery levels on my F5X went from 98% to 5%!

Anyone else seen this type of performance? I was expecting to have around 40-50% left when I finished!

D.

I am getting over 10% drain per hour when navigating during an activity (like you). Are you using the default maps or have you loaded the OSM maps? My battery performance deteriorated after either the 2.9x beta firmware upgrades or as a result of using the OSM maps.

No backlight was on during the run. Interestingly I do have non-default maps and a contour overlay installed.

I did have the phone connection on - I'm going to turn that off when I do a long run next time. However, I always had my F3 connected to my phone on long runs and nothing was wrong.

I'm not putting it on Smart recording as I find it's not particularly great. I'm fairly sure that will not save battery much - it's more of a sampling change to save file size.

There's definitely something up with it - I did a 50K at the start of April with it but didn't pay attention to the battery consumption....I'd be more than happy if I get 15 hours out of it! :-)

I raced 50 miles last weekend. 1 sec Recording, GLONASS on, navigating the course with watch in Course mode. 10:30hrs, had 39% left. My buddy had his in smart recording and NO navigation and had 49% after 10hrs. Very impressive!

I haven't found any material difference in track performance between "Smart" and "1 second" on the F5x. There WAS a significant difference on my F3. Garmin claims they have improved the use of the watch's accelerometers to discern when you're doing something that requires more-frequent position information recording on the F5 series and as far as I can determine they weren't making that up.