Outdoor Recreation Archive

fēnix 5 Series Surprisingly bad battery life on two new Fenix 5 watches

Surprisingly bad battery life on two new Fenix 5 watches

Former Member over 6 years ago

Hey hey,

Bought a new Fenix 5 from Amazon. Was really excited, completely blows Samsung Gear S3 out of the water.

Sadly the battery went 100% to 0% in 3.5 days. Used electronic watchface without seconds, all default settings, HR 24/7 etc. GPS activity 3 hours. Battery depleted approx. 1% per hour in regular use and 2% in 30 minutes in GPS mode. Charged it again, did a factory reset, turned bluetooth off, but still the same performance. RMA'd a new watch as it obviously seemed it performed too bad compared to what has been reported for other users here in the forums.

With the new watch, installed battery widget, turned HR and bluetooth off and now I was getting 0.7% per hour. Turning the HR and bluetooth on again and I am getting 0.9% - 1.0% again.

Am I wrong to think that this is not the performance I should be getting? Should I do multiple charge cycles to make a conclusion? Is the OS 10.00 culprit?

Thanks for the help! :)

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Same problem here. It's also my second one

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Also, battery will drain faster when it is turned off... ~1% per hour.

Looking at the debug log file there is one error message: Sensor hub AFE HW ID check failed. Log file was written in 2018-07-18.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Did you RMA back to the same seller? I would suspect a bad lot of devices or they are refurbished returns. Pretty unlikely that 2 in a row were bad otherwise. I am on day 7 with 41% left, and couldn't be happier. Running 10.53 with notifications all off, backlight at 40%. I have recorded most days a 1 hour + GPS activity, and HR on all the time.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Yep, RMA'd back to Amazon UK. They are sold by Amazon UK. Guess they sent me a device from the same batch.

I'll let the battery drain completely and try one more cycle. If nothing happens should just get my money back and look into buying it from somewhere else.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

So i think my problem is away. My Fenix runs fast to 46 % and than normaly. So i was loading my device from 46 % to 100 % completly over night and a few hours more. I think 12 hours. My Fenix 5 is now running since 3 hours and shows me 100 %

0 Bandit over 6 years ago

i have the feeling that you are a little to quick with RMA the fenix, because of the described reason. if the watch is new you should give the battery some cycles time to work properly. use the fenix till the battery is down to 10% - 20% and charge it over night. then go on doing the same again and again. after some cycles the battery will last waaayyyy longer.

and i would also take into account, that if the watch is new, you "play" quite a lot with it and you are trying different settings and so on. this uses a lot of power as well.

and by the way: 2% battery consumption in 30 minutes during an activity with gps activated isn't bad at all.

i would suggest that you keep the fenix and give it some time. after a short while you will be happy (at least with the battery consumption :-)

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I'll use your advice and not make quick assumptions.

Recharged the battery overnight. Usage so far has been dismissing 4 notification and 30 minutes of GPS use only. Battery widget shows 1.1% per hour and in 11 hours it is at 89% already.

Still. Not convinced at all.