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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 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 Fenix3Hopeful over 6 years ago

I started working out last weekend after 5 months no exercise since recovering from slipped disk relapse last Oct 2018. Before last weekend, my Fenix 5 battery could last about 17-18 days if I didn't use GPS or performed any activities.

But when I started my workout 7 days ago doing a few km walk with GPS on plus 2 treadmills (45 min & 60 min) with ANT+ link to HRM-Tri chest strap, I noticed my battery had been draining quite heavily these last few days even after my workouts had finished.

For example, right now after I fully recharged the battery to 100% full earlier today, battery usage is around 0.8% per hour. That's quite abnormal & heavy for me since I had experienced 17 days battery life before i.e. around 0.2-0.3% per hour consumption.

Is this phenomenon common for firmware version 12.40? Appreciate if anybody with similar experience share his/her views on this. Or don't mind sharing your solution if your problem is already settled...

Thank you very much.

0 Cane over 6 years ago

Hello everybody, first message here.

I got my F5 about 6 months ago, and when I was looking for some info in the forum about accuracy, battery life, etc, I noticed an important information was always missing: nobody mention the revision of the watch. Software can act different between the same model with different revisions, some small difference in components or production improvements are more than common.

Mine is Rev.D and it was draining battery like crazy with fw 12.00, like 12% a day with no activity and in 1 week it was empty. I was pretty sure it was the firmware because I never had a similar problem before. Now, with fw 12.50 is better than ever, and it last a full 15 days with BT, HRM, and notifications enabled. Before fw 12.00 it was always about 2 weeks battery life, but I have the feeling it's just a little better now, even though I do not have any precise data to compare.

I also find the altimeter very steady, in difference of what I read in other threads. I don't know how precise, but for sure it's steady. I live at 6th floor, and it always shows the same altitude with some marginal error. It's not like one day it shows 150mt and the other 200mt.

In the end, I think that pointing at the firmware as only culprit is very misleading. It's possible that some revisions works differently with the same firmware, so we are missing a very important piece of information here.