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 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 jaimebarillas over 6 years ago

With about 4 hours of GPS (I didn't see any difference using the different types) per week, watchface with some metrics, alarm, always heart rate monitor, tracking, notifications, all day use, it reaches between 40%-30% left after 6-7 days (I charge it after my long run, that can be Saturday or Sunday). However, charged it to 100%, turned it off, and after 2 days I turned it on to do my first run of the week, and it was 85%, so it is consistent in the discharge, but I thought being turned off won't be the same!...

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

This explains why Garmin does not display % of battery on the Instinct. It is adding too much confusion!

I wonder how many of you who returned your watch actually let it discharge until it turned off? I ask because there is a possibility that the device still does not know where the '0%' point really is, and needs to go through a sort of calibration phase to discover it. LiON batteries do not discharge linearly with voltage vs. state of charge (SOC), but the device seems to only use a rudimentary lookup table between sensed voltage to report remaining capacity. This means that if the table is offset in voltage a bit (error in voltage reading, battery lot differences) vs the original calibration, you will get wonky SOC results. It doesn't mean the devices is not hardware-wise working properly, it means the software is not able to interpret the state of charge of the battery accurately.

I would let it discharge until it turns off next time to get a real idea of battery life, and not rely on the % value to tell you it is empty and see how it reacts.

That doesn't explain the difference in rates of daily tracking vs. activity though. Sounds like the GPS is stuck on in some cases or some other hardware not being shut off as expected.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

This explains why Garmin does not display % of battery on the Instinct. It is adding too much confusion!

I wonder how many of you who returned your watch actually let it discharge until it turned off? I ask because there is a possibility that the device still does not know where the '0%' point really is, and needs to go through a sort of calibration phase to discover it. LiON batteries do not discharge linearly with voltage vs. state of charge (SOC), but the device seems to only use a rudimentary lookup table between sensed voltage to report remaining capacity. This means that if the table is offset in voltage a bit (error in voltage reading, battery lot differences) vs the original calibration, you will get wonky SOC results. It doesn't mean the devices is not hardware-wise working properly, it means the software is not able to interpret the state of charge of the battery accurately.

I would let it discharge until it turns off next time to get a real idea of battery life, and not rely on the % value to tell you it is empty and see how it reacts.

That doesn't explain the difference in rates of daily tracking vs. activity though. Sounds like the GPS is stuck on in some cases or some other hardware not being shut off as expected.

Did that on two different watches. On the second the discharge rate increased to 1.2% per hour after being run down till it closed then charged over night. I wish I had kept the 1st one now that was 'only' .6% per hour.

And to rub salt into the wounds this forum will not let me post!

0 tof-C. over 6 years ago

Hello, I had the same problem of discharge on my fenix 5 bought last week on amazon.de (almost 20% in one day without any GPS activity). I also received it with the 0% battery.
I solved my problem since yesterday by doing like this:
- Factory reset
- Update with beta V11.57
- Restarting the watch
- charging all night
Now she is discharging at less than 5% per day
To see if it continues like this in the next days ...

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Is that not just weird? I wonder if someone with technical skills would have a clue? I have been home now about 12 hours and the watch seems to have stabilised at 1.1% per hour. The worst ever.

I think it does show however the battery appears fine??

Same problem here! Bougt mine 10days ago. 1-1.2%/hour in watch mode. In activity gps+galileo about 6%, which is fair. If garmin doesen't fix this i'll send it back.

EDIT: overnight consumption was 1.6-1.7%(phone was OFF) !

0 Ocean5 over 6 years ago

How do you guys measure this x.x% - is it a widget or something? If so could it be the widget itself that taking up extra battery?

0 BLAU over 6 years ago

The battery widget do not increase the battery drain, just monitorize it. For example some times are .3 others 1.8 ... what at least for me is certain is that with garmin widgets (not from 3rd persons) on 11 the battery runs out in 3 days, updated to 11.57 it got reduced, then I uninstall almost all and last for almos 10 days.

What is not reasonable is to drop from 15 days of battery to 3 ... is unacceptable, and having just garmin stuff.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

How do you guys measure this x.x% - is it a widget or something? If so could it be the widget itself that taking up extra battery?

Installed it because i saw there is something wrong with battery in the first place.

My colleague has bought watch at the same time. After 10 days he still has 25%. His one is not 5Q something.
It seems there is something wrong with 5Q series.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

My problem was solved with the new device. Four days before it arrived. I charged it fully and today (4 days and 3 GPS-hours), it keeps in 58%.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

My experience...

I have had my Fenix 5x for a week now. Using default settings and a new watch face.

I tracked a 20.5 hour walk recently using the default settings for the walk activity. The watch used 157% of battery (I had to charge on route).

Whilst walking the phone was mostly in map view. GPS was on and standard settings, Bluetooth off, and backlight on with an 8 sec timeout and 20% intensity, triggering every time I moved my wrist and ever 1km.

So not overall happy with the battery life, and next time I will set the backlight so does not automatically come on and I won't keep the watch in map mode. Hopefully that will help.