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 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…

All Replies

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.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Battery consumption 0.3-0.5 per hour after last recharge. But not exactley!

In detail:
Charge it till 100% before sleep. After 6 hours of sleep battery drops by 10% (1.6% per hour).
Then i went for long run (2.5 hours GPS+GALILEO) after wich battery dropped by 15% (pretty normal).
After that battery consumption dropped at 0.3-0.5% per hour, really don't know why. All settings are the same. I'll definitely monitor it for next couple of recharges.

0 sirgab01 over 6 years ago

Hi all.
Fenix 5 (sapphire), - 11.00 - 53A...
I also have problems with battery drain.
The lowest I get is 1.5%/h (not in activity), sometimes I get : 3-4-5-6%/hour.
I can hardly keep 3-3.5 days with 0.5-1 hour dayly activity mostly with gps (only),
When in no activity: bluettoth on + auto wifi off - HR on - tracking steps/sleep on - move IQ of, stock digit clock widget (no seconds), black light off during day.....
Everything is custom (only battery widget for monitoring).
After soft - hard reset, fully charged for 8 hours for the first + second time..... I am on second round of charging, not better....... same numbers....
For some reason the drain happens when in watch mode I think.

Even with HR - BT off, there is no deference.

I know ForRunner 630 (wich I also have) is completely different watch but it is always on 0.1-0.2-0.3%/h when in watch mode....

0 Nagusia over 6 years ago

I bought a Fenix 5 in early October from Blacks via amazon.co.uk. After a week or two of use I was concerned about the battery life as in watch mode it was still using up about 20% a day. Eventually I contacted Garmin Europe via their chatline and the rep was really helpful and said there might be a problem with the battery and not to worry as it was under guarantee and they would exchange it. However, as I live in Spain they suggested I contact Garmin Iberia to organise the exchange and with them it was quite a different story. They emailed me instructions with different procedures and tests which I dutifully followed and which made no difference at all. Anyway, after a lot of toing and froing (a rep from Garmin Iberia actually put the phone down on me) and the intervention of Garmin Europe again I eventually got an exchange watch (refurbished) which is absolutely fine and the battery life is at least as good as in the specifications, if not better. Conclusion: it's quite possible that if you have problems with battery life when the watch is new, it's due to a defective battery (don't be fobbed off by all this stuff about calibration and so on) and if that's the case the only solution is to get an exchange.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Hi all.
Fenix 5 (sapphire), - 11.00 - 53A...
I also have problems with battery drain.
The lowest I get is 1.5%/h (not in activity), sometimes I get : 3-4-5-6%/hour.
I can hardly keep 3-3.5 days with 0.5-1 hour dayly activity mostly with gps (only),
When in no activity: bluettoth on + auto wifi off - HR on - tracking steps/sleep on - move IQ of, stock digit clock widget (no seconds), black light off during day.....
Everything is custom (only battery widget for monitoring).
After soft - hard reset, fully charged for 8 hours for the first + second time..... I am on second round of charging, not better....... same numbers....
For some reason the drain happens when in watch mode I think.

Even with HR - BT off, there is no deference.

I know ForRunner 630 (wich I also have) is completely different watch but it is always on 0.1-0.2-0.3%/h when in watch mode....

with my Fenix too battery drain happened in watch mode. Try couple of recharges from 100 to 0. My started to work fine after 4th recharge (2 weeks).

0 sirgab01 over 6 years ago

Hi all.
We have to do only one discharge (100%-0%) and after that 3-4 full charges or we have to make 2-3 dishcharges (100%-0%) accompanied with full charges so the watch realizes where the "0%" is?

0 sirgab01 over 6 years ago

Hi all.
We have to make one complete discharge 100%-0% and after that 2-3 charges * 8 hours OR we have to make 2-3 full discharges accompanied with 8 hours charging each of them so the watch realizes where 0% (and/or 100%) is?
Thank you all for the information.

0 AnatoliAngelov over 6 years ago

Hi all.
We have to make one complete discharge 100%-0% and after that 2-3 charges * 8 hours OR we have to make 2-3 full discharges accompanied with 8 hours charging each of them so the watch realizes where 0% (and/or 100%) is?
Thank you all for the information.

Full cycles - discharge and charge.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Hi all.
We have to make one complete discharge 100%-0% and after that 2-3 charges * 8 hours OR we have to make 2-3 full discharges accompanied with 8 hours charging each of them so the watch realizes where 0% (and/or 100%) is?
Thank you all for the information.

Each time discharge it from 100% to 0% then charge it till 100%. It will take some time to do couple of cycles. If the problem persists demand new watch from a dealer.

0 sirgab01 over 6 years ago

Thank you both for the answers and all the community for the help.
Unfortunately I misunderstood and the second charge after soft reset was done, on 20% battery. You think it's better to make another soft reset and start the procedure from the beginning or just make the next 3 cycles full discharge - full charge (8hours charging)?
Thank you in advance.