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Realistic battery life, fenix 5?

Former Member over 7 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 5 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 nyqand over 7 years ago

The battery consumption is not linear. Yesterday I did two back-to-back sessions on bike, going almost identical distances and routes. First from north to south, and then south to north. The first session lasted 2:39, and battery went from 51% to 42%. Second session lasted 2:33, and battery went from 41% to 22%. I use GPS only, smart recording, and a HR band. BT is on.

0 chunkywizard over 7 years ago

That's correct. Any comparisons should be with the watch 100% charged at the start of each test.

0 mcalista over 7 years ago

Given how poorly the Garmin Connect mobile app works when you don't have a data connection, I doubt i'll be trying to sync anything until I get back into cell service range so from that perspective it won't matter much as by the time it does I'll be back to a power outlet. I am concerned with how long of a track can stay on the watch before it needs to be synced to connect. Does anyone know the specification for how long we can record internally in 1 second mode before we need to worry about internal storage?

AFAIK, the memory will handle well over 100 of hours of data. Just checked my F5 - an 8 hour bike ride (9 hrs elapsed time) uses about 1.1 MB of data with 1s recording, with close to 50MB of available memory, which would suggest more than 300 hours of activity time can be logged So unless you are going on a month-long backcountry expedition, 1s recording is fine. Of course, if you were going on a week-long expedition, but also navigate with courses derived from old activities that you don't want to overwrite at any stage in the future, 10s will reduce memory impact.

0 nmyeti over 7 years ago

Mcalista, Thank you

0 m.fisac over 7 years ago

Hi all,

This was my experience yesterday:

2.5h cycling workout
GPS on, no GLONASS
Standard tracking points
HR on
Practically I didn't touch the fenix 5 buttons

My fenix 5 went down from 100% to 91%. Even though nyqand said the the battery consumption is not linear, with these data we can estimate up to 24h of battery life.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

My fenix 5 has impressive battery life, i charged it on 23th of august and still running with 13% battery. I didn't do any activity, just paired to my smartwatch all day.

0 BriceSousLeTabor over 7 years ago

Hi, my experience is mixed with battery life during an activity.

Due to a previous bad experiment (watch powered off after 17hours of trail running), I did a factory reset, this time. The watch was 99% at the beginning (because there was a 2 hour to get to the start of the race). After 18h40 of running, the watch showed 13% remaining. Which is not bad compared to my previous fenix3. But far far away from the 24h that Garmin boasts...

0 mcalista over 7 years ago

Hi, my experience is mixed with battery life during an activity.

Due to a previous bad experiment (watch powered off after 17hours of trail running), I did a factory reset, this time. The watch was 99% at the beginning (because there was a 2 hour to get to the start of the race). After 18h40 of running, the watch showed 13% remaining. Which is not bad compared to my previous fenix3. But far far away from the 24h that Garmin boasts...

18hr 40 / .86 = 21hr 41 which is not that far off Garmin's specs. Backlight use may well account for the rest. CIQ data fields may also play a part (not all app developers are as protective of battery life as the Garmin native ones)

But it seems that the reset has improved power usage..

0 BriceSousLeTabor over 7 years ago

18hr 40 / .86 = 21hr 41 which is not that far off Garmin's specs. Backlight use may well account for the rest. CIQ data fields may also play a part (not all app developers are as protective of battery life as the Garmin native ones)

But it seems that the reset has improved power usage..

Yes, the reset did improve the power usage by a lot ! There was no other app/watchface anything on the watch, no backlight, no bluetooth... Autolap was set to 5km. There was HR on though. I would have had expected that with a watch almost exactly at factory state, I'd get close to 24hours. Over 21 hours is not bad but it's a bit disappointing ... :-)

0 ChevronLugs over 7 years ago

That's correct. Any comparisons should be with the watch 100% charged at the start of each test.

Additionally, when the watch first indicates 100% charge, it's not really 100%. Out of curiosity, I used one of the USB power meter things on my 5X while charging. When the watch hits 100%, the amperage going in starts to decrease, IIRC, from 0.09A or so, down to ~0.03 - 0.04A after 30-40 min. While this may not translate to lots of additional GPS on time, it sure makes a difference for the daily tracker side.