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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…

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0 RMSousa over 6 years ago

Pretty much equals my experience. Upgraded last night. In 16 hours, settings the same as above, drained 3-4%.
Fingers crossed that the issue is resolved.

Same here on my fenix 5 S/N 53. Updated yesterday (16 hours ago) and I still have 96% left with an 1.45h run this morning (GPS On). Activity Tracker, HRM and BT on. Notifications + backlight at 30% on alerts. So far so good.

My watch was on 12.51 BETA. I had to downgrade it to 12.00 then update it to 12.21 BETA. Hard reseted the device and reconfigured it next. Has been great so far so let´s keep our fingers crossed.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Hello. What software version have the watches installed ?

Hi it was Version 12, I have now upgraded to version 12.21

0 cnorm over 6 years ago

I got my Fenix 5 (sapphire) S/N 53* at the end of December from Amazon. It arrived with the battery completely dead. I've seen pretty high battery drain > 1%/hour in watch + notifications (calendar and messages, 10-15 per day average) + heart rate. Battery use during GPS mode has seemed consistent with spec. I've tried all the recommendations here, with no noticeable change. I have a little over a week before the possibility exchange is up with Amazon, so it's good seeing the beta version 12.21 may resolve the issue. I've installed it tonight and will see if it helps.

Which battery app are people using to measure use?

0 Willie over 6 years ago

Finally ... looks like 12.21 fixed the issue. Mine dropped 8% in about 17 hours, average of 0.338 per hour. Holding thumbs!

0 markfberry over 6 years ago

I'm actually surprised myself. Have had my watch since last june...the best i could get since then was 0.4/hour and that was back in July and rarely got to that...and since then got steadily worse....when I got to version 12 it was over 1%/hr. Was charging it every second day....almost as bad as a fitbit.
After updating yesterday to 12.21 beta I got down to 0.2...and now averaging about 0.35. I'll take that. :).

0 AnatoliAngelov over 6 years ago

It looks for now that 12.21 firmware is really working:
Fully charged yesterday. And now after 21.5 hours I am on 94.5%.
5.5% for 21.5 hours = 0.25% per hour average.

I will continue to monitor the battery drain, but this looks promising.

0 Calusa over 6 years ago

I really hope 12.21 works. Installed it last night. 20 hours later still at 93.8% with .311 per hour. Bluetooth turned off, no phone sync, and no gps activities. So far so good. Before I was getting 1-2% per hour drain and only made it 3 days on a charge.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I really hope 12.21 works. Installed it last night. 20 hours later still at 93.8% with .311 per hour. Bluetooth turned off, no phone sync, and no gps activities. So far so good. Before I was getting 1-2% per hour drain and only made it 3 days on a charge.

Pretty good, but mine runs at 0.2% per hour under the same conditions. So perhaps a way still to go with the software?

0 cnorm over 6 years ago

The 12.21 beta has definitely worked for my watch. It’s been a little over three days and it’s dropped from 89% to 63%, with roughly 40 minutes of GPS use each of the days.

0 sirgab01 over 6 years ago

Also 12.21 seems to work. I am on the 4th day + 16h and I am on 54.43% left. I have done 3 activities totaly 2 hours GPS, many notifications, BT on, many syncs, HR on..... Lets hope it is fixed. Battery consupion is 0.2 - 0.6 per hour (on activities about 4-5% per hour). I am abit optimistic that after 2-3 charges maybe we get even more battery. Finger crossed.

Only yestrday for about 4-5 hours was on 0.7-0.9% per hour without obvious reason.