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Realistic battery life, fenix 5?

Former Member
Former Member
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
  • Am I the only one who did not experience any improvement from this 12.21 update? :(
    My battery is still draining ~1%/h with all settings on except MoveIQ
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    All seems good first 4 days, it was 0.2% per hour, and after that 75% drained in 2h.. For me problem not fixed. Today i charged it full, and after few hours was 3.4%/h...right now its over 6%/h
  • Certainly the upgrade improved very much the the battery consumption. It has diminished noticeably battery drain. I am on 0.2-0.4% per hour, mostly on 0.4%. I don't know if it can go under that.
    Nevertheless, for unexplained reasons there are periods that for 4-5 hours the consumption amounts to 0.9% per hour.
  • So far so good for me since the 12.21 update since a few days ago. On average around 0.35%/hr.

    At one point I noticed a higher drain briefly....went to my heartrate widget to notice it was having a problem measuring my heartrate. I've seen this behaviour before on other software versions and found that turning the watch 'off' and 'on' seemed to fix it ...after doing that it went back to the 0.35/hr and being able to pick up my heartrate.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    All seems good first 4 days, it was 0.2% per hour, and after that 75% drained in 2h.. For me problem not fixed. Today i charged it full, and after few hours was 3.4%/h...right now its over 6%/h


    I had no luck with my upgrade until I forced a hard reset, and then it was working at the standard tolerances (between 0.3 and 0.5% per hour). I was extremely pleased with the upgrade and was on 5th day of brilliant battery life today. I was on 69% even with 2hours of recorded GPS activities this week.

    And then today, as with joes1p , my battery completely drained itself within an hour. No difference in settings, and no activities or GPS being recorded.

    ???????What gives? Why did the battery go from three quarters full to dead in less than 2 hours? Something weird going on with this.
  • First major problem with 12.21: I flashed it (12.21) after the watch was on 100%, so the first discharge was in 6.4 days, with 2 hours GPS activities, and 4 non GPS activities.
    Not perfect, but better than V12.00.
    After the first charge yesterday night (while on 12.21) and wearing it while I was sleeping, the watch lost 8% through night, during 5 hours.

    I got update to V12.30, lets hope....
  • After > 24H without sport, only smartwatch and Rails watch face, 96% of battery remains. Which means that 4% drain for 24H -> only 0.17%/h
    With GPS on for outdoor sport, it's < 5-6%/h
    Fenix 5 Wifi (2 years old!), FW 12.00
  • After > 24H without sport, only smartwatch and Rails watch face, 96% of battery remains. Which means that 4% drain for 24H -> only 0.17%/h
    With GPS on for outdoor sport, it's < 5-6%/h
    Fenix 5 Wifi (2 years old!), FW 12.00


    collector's item!!!!! ;)

    How do you charge it (pc or walll charger)?
    Have you ever left it discharge completelly - 0%, turn off? (have you "damage" battery at all?)

    Thank you in advance!
  • Never discharged completly, usually i charge it every weeks when <15%, depending of number of outdoor sport during week or if i target i long cycling ride. I'm very surprised by the linearity/accuracy of battery level indicator during discharge, way better than iPhone !
    10H/12H of sport by week.
    I'm using a "smart" wall charger, the same than for iPhones.

  • Hmm, I think maybe BatteryGauge have a problem with the time-taking :O
    For the last 24 hours, it shows 2 workout, even though I workout every day at around 6:30am, so right now it shows usage of about 25.2%, but that includes a total of 3 hours of gps.

    each 1.5hour workout drains about 10% battery (GPS+GLONASS), so that leaves aprox. 5% left for the rest of the 22 hours, so far I'm very happy!

    BUT Garmin wrote that they fixed "reported battery usage", and as someone else write that it suddenly drains really fast after 4 days for the lasy 2/3 of the battery within hours, I'm waiting to see.

    Prediction/Fear
    My guess is that previous versions calculated the range and counted down the based on previous usage, while the "fix", counts down actually usage. BUT that there is a lot of bad batteries in circulation that can't handle the requirements :( (I hope I'm wrong, and I'll post ASAP when I have tested more after a few more days).


    Current status:
    The watch was fully charged Monday at 13:56 CET, and now Wednsday 10:13 CET I have 67% battery left, after 3 hours and 40min split over 3 workouts with GPS.

    My watch uses about 7.5% pr hour with GPS, wich translates to roughly 26.25% used during workouts, which leaves 6,75% left for regular smartwatch usage over 41 hours!

    But there is a lot of inconsistencies with Battery Gauge and the actuall meassurements, but my own notes looks promising :)