InReach SE Battery life when off

I am about to go on a 1month trip to the Himalayas and am concerned about the standby time I am getting on my InReach SE.

I plan to use the InReach only for daily updates and in case of emergency. I was hoping that it would last the month.

I seem to be using 18% battery per week powered off. In 3 weeks sitting on my desk it has gone from 100% to 46%. That is completely off, not just asleep.

I'm not sure if I have a dud battery or if this is normal. The specs on the new Garmin version say 3yrs on standby but I can't find any specs on the current model.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this ?

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

that doesn't sound normal if the unit is powered off.

0 seilogramp over 8 years ago

Agreed. The manual states "Up to 3 yr" when powered off. Meaning of course it could be less. Being a lithium-ion battery, there are some things you can do to prolong battery life over the life of the device, mainly keep it charged up and not letting it fully discharge too often. So I suspect that it could be less than 3 years if your battery has already used up a lot of its charge cycles (typically a 500 charge cycle limit). I am no Delorme expert, but li-ion batteries have this limitation regardless of the device they are powering. If your device is relatively new, then you could possibly have a defective battery.

It would be interesting to see what Garmin support has to say. They will probably want to make sure you know how to fully power off your device. Run thru some diagnostic tests. Confirm date of purchase and appropriate warranty terms if deemed defective.

0 Bob.Shelley over 8 years ago

If can spare the space and weight it would be worth taking along a goal zero solar charger.

0 twolpert over 8 years ago

As SEILOGRAMP points out, you will lose some due to self-discharge. And I believe the unit uses minimal power to keep the clock up to date. That facilitates quicker acquisition if the stored almanac is still valid when you next start the unit. Can't say I've ever checked this, but 18%/week does sound high.

Edited to add: I'm not sure what the 3 years refers to. In particular, does that mean "until dead" or "until you don't have enough power for one last SOS" or what? Still, more than 5 weeks of useful life for sure.

0 GW996 over 8 years ago

Just an update on this ....

I returned the InReachSE and it was replaced under warranty with a new one.

The power consumption of the replacement device is minimal when off so there was definitely a hardware problem with the old one.

For those in Australia, Pivotel is the agent for InReach and provides the Iridium plans. They add an additional "Australia Tax" of about $150 onto the US price, but in this case I would like to acknowledge their speedy resolution to this problem. I had a replacement device in several days, new in the box.