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Realistic battery life, fenix 5?

Former Member over 8 years ago

Hello all,

So last week I bought a fenix 5. Store had it in open box and on the shelf but it was off, I was worried about it having been on for months on the shelf but they told me it had never been powered on, they only had the 5X on display powered up. Bought it, no discount got home and charged it. The battery was completely discharged.

One of my main reasons for buying the fenix 5 vs a 3 or another less expensive option was battery life - as I am starting to run ultra marathons.

Last Saturday ran my first. I started with 95% charge. GPS only mode (no Glonnass). I played occasionally with the watch during the race, and often moved it into view to see my HR (with backlight at 50%). Halfway into the race, 7 hours in, I notice it is at 40% battery. I changed it to Ultratrac in the activity settings menu, and start avoiding using the backlight or play with it(still glancing at it often to see HR).

My race time was 14 hours 30 minutes. When I made it across the finish line, literally 1 minute after, I glance at the watch to stop the activity and it powered down.

I know actual, realistic device times are often lower than what the manufacturer advertises. Still, advertised GPS mode at 20 hours and Ultratrac 60 hours, seems I should have gotten to the end of this race with a good battery reserve. I am planning longer races later in the season so... this watch might not cut it, apparently. My iphone 7 plus in airplane mode, but doing GPS tracking, went through all of this with 30% power left and me taking some pictures and listening to podcasts on the way.

So question to the group - is this the normal battery life I can expect from this device while tracking activities? Or did I get a dud or a battery affected by it being a showroom device?

Unsure if I am just being paranoid and need to enjoy the device and go Ultratrac from the start, turn off the backlight (not needed to be honest).

Thanks all,

Juan

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Garmin-Heath over 6 years ago +1 verified

If you are experiencing rapid battery drain, where your watch is only lasting a few days, first verify on latest software version. If you are using any third-party Connect IQ watch faces, try changing…

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0 Former Member over 6 years ago

seilogramp I just wrote about my experience with Garmin Support in the thread I opened today in this forum section, you can read about it.
Recalibrating does not seem to be the solution to this issue, nor the hard reset seems to fix anything, so I and not convinced to try since even Support is telling me that I have to wait.
I come from a Polar device, which had some glitches but overall was ok. I thought that by switching to a Garmin I was making a step forward but now I'm not so sure anymore :confused:

Hi Pistapoci, I read your experience about the battery...I had the same situation. I receive Fenix 5 for Christmas, the first step was immediately the connection to the computer in order to update it. From 25 December I have to charge it every 4 days (25% a day), during January first I use the RUN application for 30 minutes and not longer. Until today all the BT connection is off, the illumination OFF and when i push the light button keep on for 4 seconds. A user perform a downgrade to older version but the issue was not solved, no more information from the suppor? My fenix come from amazon.it but at the moment a substitution is useless.

Attendo tue, ciao e buona serata.

0 pistapoci over 6 years ago

Ciao IL_BARONE, if you bought it from Amazon, you can easily return it and have them replace it with a new unit. Actually I encourage you to do so and let us know if the new watch behaves the same.
In any case, please try yourself to reach the italian Customer Care and push this request further. It could be useful to make as many complaints as possible ;)

Here's how to contact Garmin support:

Per fornirle un’assistenza più veloce ed efficace e per effettuare gli opportuni controlli la invito a contattare il nostro Customer Care telefonico 02 36 699 699 da lunedì a giovedì dalle ore 9 alle ore 13 e dalle 14.30 alle 16.30 e il venerdì dalle 9 alle 13.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Ciao IL_BARONE, if you bought it from Amazon, you can easily return it and have them replace it with a new unit. Actually I encourage you to do so and let us know if the new watch behaves the same.
In any case, please try yourself to reach the italian Customer Care and push this request further. It could be useful to make as many complaints as possible ;)

Here's how to contact Garmin support:

Thanks for customer contact. Ok I will ask to amazon the watch replacement but, when will arrive can I pair with the smartphone? is better to don't update it correct?

0 pistapoci over 6 years ago

You'll pair it as a new device

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I am wondering if you are experiencing bad altimeter readings also?

?????? An ongoing problem in high volume manufacturing in China, is counterfeit parts. It happens in the US also, but not as common. As a company contracting with a turnkey manufacturer, you sometimes get hit by these bad parts slipping into the supply chain. The part will look and mostly behave like the real thing, but with critical flaws, like terrible power consumption. It is one of many reasons manufacturing is being brought back to home countries with better processes and controls. We could be seeing that here.

It is quite difficult to find these problems, usually requiring a component manufacturer to perform forensics on the parts to see if it is real or counterfeit. Usually by X-Ray of the innards. As you would expect, an expense with engineering that may mean just tossing the bad run out and going somewhere else to have them built for lower costs. Good luck with getting this resolved. Now I'm glad my F5 was a shelf model a few years old. No problems like this. Yet.

0 RobKenjiwhe over 6 years ago

Can you tell more about how you use your watch? Do you have bluetooth notificatinos on? Do you use the step counter? Do you have on sleep and wrist HR tracking on?

Everything on except for GPS. I also don't do weather watch faces or other stuff that needs constant internet cause these will suck your juice.
And look for power efficient watchfaces anyway. Personally I've (mostly) always used nofrills as it seems to be best for battery combined with maximum info. Plus good esthetics.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Update:

Mine since 22. December(bit less than a month that i had it) till now works fine.
0.2-0.4% per hour.

0 pistapoci over 6 years ago

I just wish Garmin (US) could give an official answer on the matter. It would be enough to know that they acknowledge the issue and plan to fix it.

0 Calusa over 6 years ago

I hope it's a software thing. I'm on my 3rd fenix 5 and I'm hoping third time is a charm. So far this one has lasted 3 days and is still at 59%. I can live with less than a week, but 3 days was unacceptable.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Hi, I have a similar problem. I purchased a Fenix 5 last week from Amazon, upgraded the firmware to v12 first thing and have experienced poor battery consumption. I've tried a few things to try and improve it, using the Garmin digital watch face without seconds, disabled activity tracking, disabled HR, reduced the backlight brightness and timer, nothing has helped so far. I've tried a soft reset, I'm on my 3rd charge cycle and the problem remains so this isn't looking good. I re-enabled activity tracking and HR today and installed the battery gauge app to better understand the rate of consumption and it appears to be losing 1%+ each hour without any activity, whilst battery performance while in an activity seems good, so this is very disappointing. Unsure whether to return to Amazon or live with it.ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1441870.jpg