This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

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
  • I received my F5 on Friday and I'm seeing the same issues.

    It would be nice to see a Garmin representative at least write a comment on here to acknowledge that there is either batch issues with the device or a drain occurring in the software somewhere. Even if they don't know what it is but are working to fix the issue would be nice to know. I'm not very impressed considering this is my 2nd Garmin device in one week that has battery issues.

    Maybe a public comment on Twitter to Garmin might yield some results?


    I agree 100% with you. I have already send mail to garmin and posted something similar to the thread of beta version, but no answer yet.
  • So S/N 5Q and 53 seems to be affected with the problem, so what are the S/N of the refurbished watches received that seems fo fix the battery drain?
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    Hi all - my 2p worth!
    Got my F5 for Christmas - quickly noticed it was discharging quickly when in Smart Watch Mode at around 1% an hour not HP. Applied all the standard suggestions to extend life with little difference, eventually performed a factory reset and did not pair to a phone. I had two days of 0.2% per hour then on the third it reverted to just under 1% an hour. So time to contact Garmin Support which I did via chat.

    They wanted me to fully charge it and then go out with GPS on to see how it lasts on GPS - ok my issues is with Smart Watch Mode and not GPS but happy to work with them. Did as I was told, did an hour on GPS 4% drop, as per spec, back on Smart Watch Mode it carried on at around 1% per hour.

    Second chat session with Garmin support and as the GPS function was as spec, they didn't understand why the battery life was poor on Smart Watch Mode and therefore asked me to run a test to charge it to 100% and let it drain dry as they called it in Smart Watch Mode to see how long it lasts. They also confirmed that this is not a known issue with the watch, I have this in writing as a transcript of the chat has been emailed to me......

    Now here is where things get strange.....
    Day 1 went from 100% to 83%
    Day 2 went from 83% to 66%
    Day 3 went from 66% to 53% (I switched off bluetooth except for when I synced twice for this 24hour period)
    Day 4 went from 53% to 36%
    Day 5 went from 36% to 20%
    Day 6 went from 20% to 16%
    Day 7 went from 16% to 14%

    I am still running this test but you can see that from 20% the discharge has slowed down and returned what we expect for the watch, if it continues like this I might actually get close to the watch specs.......

    I will keep you posted when I get to the end of my test.

    5Q SN bought through Amazon and arrived with 0% battery
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    It lasted 8.5 days in the end, much less than the spec of 14 days, connected to phone but no phone notifications switched on. Reported back to Garmin and they have asked me to upgrade the phone to 12.21 Beta SW as it has a fix. I have just done this, so let's see what happens.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    It lasted 8.5 days in the end, much less than the spec of 14 days, connected to phone but no phone notifications switched on. Reported back to Garmin and they have asked me to upgrade the phone to 12.21 Beta SW as it has a fix. I have just done this, so let's see what happens.


    Beat me to it! I was just checking the update pages (both normal and beta updates) and noticed the 12.21 beta states that it fixes excessive drain on the battery that users have reported.

    I'm currently at 13% battery life remaining from a full charge on Saturday morning (off charge at 9am) and around 2 hours of GPS activities. So that's a minimum of 4 days with 13% left.

    I'll be waiting until it depletes and then fully updating to the beta and fully charging to see if there's any benefits. At least we have some light at the end of the tunnel on this.

    Other than battery issues, I'm really enjoying my Fenix 5.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    Oh, and the link to those for the beta software release...

    https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=11663
  • Oh, and the link to those for the beta software release...

    https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=11663


    Is funny how now from the "Change History", from 11.58 jump to 12.00 to 12.21, and they forget 11.58 to 12.00 and 12.00 to 12.51, and the assume the problem with the battery drain, that if it is fixed with this update may is related to software problems.

    So if anyone can check if the update to this beta fix anything and report the result could be nice.
  • Has anyone who received a replacement unit from Garmin had better luck? I'm on my 3rd fenix 5, but I've returned mine to REI where I bought it.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    I ended up speaking with Garmin, they suggested a hard reset, if that didn't work to send it back to Amazon("it'll be quicker than return to us") so I ended up doing exactly that after a reset didn't work. So yesterday I received the new watch(same 53 starting serial number). Battery was completely dead on receiving it so I charged to 100%, updated to v12, but one thing I didn't do that I did with the previous watch was enable anything which might trigger GPS to be active, specifically *not* syncing the time via GPS and *not* touching any activity which may use GPS. The results so far as very promising. After the first days use ~0.5% per hour vs ~1.6% per hour on the previous watch. Only question is whether this is because of 1. a new watch with better battery performance? or 2. not enabling any form of GPS which others have mentioned in previous posts may have something to do with the problem, in other words once GPS is enabled it continues to be active in the background regardless of the activity settings etc? I'll update if the battery performance changes from what I'm seeing now.ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1445209.jpg
  • Just flashed beta v12.21 (the link of 12.51 gives 12.21?)
    I will give feed back.


    Q: Now that I have beta version, in case there is a roll out of stable version, I will get or I have to flash it manually?