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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

Top Replies

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…

All Replies

0 BLAU over 6 years ago

Am I the only one with 12.30 version and still no improvement on battery drain, still 1.4%/h

I would say that you are not the only one, more users here got the same problem, update to the 12.30 and the problem with the battery came back, so they downgrade to 12.21 where it seems to been fixed.

I updated the refurbished from 8.0 to 12.21 and the watch drain even less battery, the average per day with 8.0 was 5,2 and with 12.21 is in 4.5, with hr and monitoring, with BT on only calls on smart notifications, 5% brightness and 4 secs ... so I am very happy with the behavior.

The extrange and do not make sense, is that the published a final 12.30 where the problem is not fixed when is fairly clear that was resolved in 12.21

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I would say that you are not the only one, more users here got the same problem, update to the 12.30 and the problem with the battery came back, so they downgrade to 12.21 where it seems to been fixed.

I updated the refurbished from 8.0 to 12.21 and the watch drain even less battery, the average per day with 8.0 was 5,2 and with 12.21 is in 4.5, with hr and monitoring, with BT on only calls on smart notifications, 5% brightness and 4 secs ... so I am very happy with the behavior.

The extrange and do not make sense, is that the published a final 12.30 where the problem is not fixed when is fairly clear that was resolved in 12.21

I tryed roll back on 12.21 and drain is even worse, best option is go on 12.00 there i had 5 days battery life...

0 BLAU over 6 years ago

I tryed roll back on 12.21 and drain is even worse, best option is go on 12.00 there i had 5 days battery life...

is extrange that behaviour, at least after what most people wrote about how the battery drain stoped with 12.21, that at least in your device this does not happen, did you perform a hard reset after donwgrade to 12.21? some people think that report back to high battery drain but after the donwgrade and hard reset it become to a normal usage

0 pistapoci over 6 years ago

This is my latest measurement:
from 100 to 0% in 5 days (+5 nights) with 10h total actovities with gos recording, cellphone always connected, a fair number of notifications, hr always on. I believe this is pretty good, but I don't like the fact that the battery seems to be discharging at 1%/h in the first half and then it goes to 0.3-0.6

0 NotThatImportant over 6 years ago

Received my replacement yesterday from Garmin.. Updated to latest SW version straight away.

and so far so good. A huge improvement...
Now at 0.22 per hour... with compas, hearth rate, activity recording (steps) and connected to mobile...

With the old watch I got 0.8% with everything off.

Finally happy with the watch... still not 100% confident about it till we are a couple of days further, but so far so good.
At this rate, it will last longer then the promised 14 days,.. so I expect it to go down a bit..

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

is extrange that behaviour, at least after what most people wrote about how the battery drain stoped with 12.21, that at least in your device this does not happen, did you perform a hard reset after donwgrade to 12.21? some people think that report back to high battery drain but after the donwgrade and hard reset it become to a normal usage

I tryed many times 12.21 and 12.30 version, after that hard reset, soft, turn on/off, restart...today on 50% after 2h walk with gps he powered off..

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Hi,

I also upgraded to 12.21 and the battery drainig stopped, so in few days later I have upgraded to 12.30 and it's still ok, now I am satisfied with battery life.

Left graph is with version 12.00, and right is with 12.21 and 12.30.ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1450372.jpg

0 Richard-Hagen over 6 years ago

Hi everyone!

What version is your GPS, and is the battery drain fixed?
(the GPS is not always updated even if the rest of the watch is updated for some reason)

I have GPS 2.30, and the battery seems to be fixed! :)

0 BLAU over 6 years ago

The problem of the battery drain it was not related with the GPS, it was with the sensors hub. v6.25 is the version that fixed most people problems.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Still on 12.21 - but strange things are starting to happen.....Charged to 100% on the 31st Jan, dropped by 5% in 5 hours! Ahhhh not again I thought. Did a soft reset, (switched it off and switched it back on again) and charged to 100%. Now the discharge is on average 0.3% and hour, it was 0.2% per hour before the 100% charge. Not gone back up to 12.3 as last time I upgraded to 12.3 the discharge was between 0.6 and 0.8% an hour.

The above is predominately on smart watch mode, not activated the GPS through an activity since I charged to 100%. Whilst the drain is still on the acceptable side and is within spec still flummoxed by the randomness of it all!