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InReach Mini Battery Drain Issues

DaveDillon
over 5 years ago

I've had an InReach Mini since it launched. I've used it a handful of times for tracking activities up to 12 hours. In a couple of weeks I have a 100 Mile race that is going to take me closer to 24 hours and I'd like to carry the InReach. Lately I've noticed that my InReach Mini is low on battery within 10-12 hours of tracking. There's NO chance the battery would last 24 hours.

My current settings are: 10 minute interval transmit, 1 minute interval tracking, bluetooth off

Garmin advertises that with  these settings I should be able to track for 35 hours. Am I missing something here?

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Back light and ANT+ radio come immediately to mind.

    Unless you need it, best thing to do is to disable the back light entirely by setting brightness to Off. If not off, set a short timeout of 1 minute or less.

    If you don't have it paired with a watch, or if you don't need the watch pairing during the race, turn the ANT+ radio off. 

    The longer the interval between sent points and/or logged points, the better the battery life. If you can do with longer than 10 minutes/1 minute, it will help.

    In my experience, the Mini requires the clearest possible sky exposure. Otherwise, it will have problems with Iridium communication - and the frequent retries will suck battery. The best exposure I've found is on a pack strap, high on my shoulder. I have had really poor luck carrying it in a cyclist's fanny pack.

    There are a lot of variables to battery life. Many of them, like temperature, are mostly beyond your control. Best to take the "rated" battery life with a grain of salt. Your on the ground experience is going to be more accurate for your use own cases.