I came here from a google search. I've now gone through 2 Garmins in 4.5 years so I'm nowhere near reaching 7 years of battery life.
I'm about to head over to dcrainmaker to look for other options.
My current watch is a forerunner 235 that I have just over 600 hours of running time in 2 years and it now won't let me go more than 2 days without needing a charge. I never turn on bluetooth so most of the day my watch is in a very low power usage mode.
The forerunner 220 that I had before that lasted slightly over 600 running hours and about 2.5 years before it became unusable (unable to hold a charge for more than a day).
I'm disappointed that the service fee is so high to replace a battery. Half the cost of a new unit.
I’m the same. I’ve purchased 2 Garmin watches over the past 5 years. My second watch has lasted 18 months. I’m getting a replacement watch as it’s under warranty, but I know that is going to be an old serviced watch. I’d have expected the lifespan of a Garmin to be longer than this and realistically for a watch which is only 18months old I would expect a new replacement.
I have had my Fenix 5 Plus for 2.5 years. As far as I can tell, it is as peppy today as it was the day I got it. I let the battery drop to about 20-30% before I recharge. I wear it 24/7. Record anywhere from 4 to 10 workout/events per week. Use 4 alarms every day. I’m hoping I’ll get 4 years out of it. As these thing go, it will work until it doesn’t. I doubt ill get any advance warning.
My forerunner 935 is almost 4 years old.
Battery with gps usage used to be 20+ hours. Now it’s only 10-12 hours. This is the biggest problem with my watch. No, I don’t do ultra’s, but If I wake up on a Saturday and want to go out for a 2 hour run or a 4 hour cycling and there is only 20% battery left I use to have no problem, now I have to charge first. I used to charge once a week, but only 200 charge cycles should not cause so much battery degeneration. Either garmin messed up the firmware or uses very bad batteries.
I do notice gps fix is a bit slow lately, but further from that, it’s fine (yesterday was a mess, but almost all brands have gps problems last couple of days)
firmware is fine. Yes, there are a lot of bugs and sometimes it’s unexplanable slow, but most of the time it’s fine.
barometer gives unbelievable output, but I can’t be bothered. Same for temperature, which is just plain stupid.
optical heartrate is okish for resting hearrate, although there are cracks in the sensor. Mostly I use a cheststrap.
replaced the band, but that’s also for looks.
My forerunner 935 is not as rugged as e fenix 5, but the case is still solid. I do use a screenprotector, but that’s also because it looks slightly better.
I expect my watch to last for a couple of years more, before I move to an other brand (so far, couple of suuntos, 1 tomtom and 1 garmin. Next is probable Coros. Or Polar if they properly implement navigation features)