Did they ever fix the battery drain issue?

Does your watch battery also drain even when powered down completely?

Just an update on my case: Garmin only acknowledged my ticket (Ref:23210216K0) yesterday. That’s 4 weeks after logging it. The SLA is supposed to be 24 or 48 hours?

I’ve put off sending my watch in for assessment because then I can’t log my rides and I’m really reliant on that. Guess I’ll have to log manual activities on Strava soon.

What is taking place here, by the very evidence on this thread, is a critical failure by Garmin. This will be be my last Garmin wearable and I will be switching over to Wahoo. 

yup and that's what makes it not usable for me as a fitness tracker - i cant even charge it, power it down until I need to log my activity. it should always sit on the charger for a while before i want to use them, taken that to the mind having a full day-long battery from any apple watch isnt so bad now. im definitely not buying any garmin smartwatch anymore considering all the issues (crashing during the swimming that never got fixed was already a big downer for me) and now this battery stuff just after the warranty ran out.

I'm planning to contact Garmin Australia on Monday because my, less than 2 year old, Instinct Solar is becoming useless a a finess tracker. It  crashes regularly even when battery is around 50%. In the meantime I'm back to my trusty old Forerunner 35 which is almost 5 years old

So yesterday, out of the blue, I decided to charge up my watch to see what it does. I haven’t worn it for weeks, it’s just been laying in my drawer. 

Some time back I made changes to the display and switched out the HR line for a battery history line. After a few hours, my watch was still showing 29d. Right away I knew something was different so checked the software version on my watch and it still showed 18.10 - but a subsystem had surely changed??

Half a day became the whole night to the next morning and still my watch showed 29d - completely full. Something definitely changed! I pressed the settings button to check my HR history and the software has now updated to 18.54 … and just revised down to 28d battery life. 

I’m holding my breath that we are at the end of this nightmare. 

PeterZA said:

So yesterday, out of the blue, I decided to charge up my watch to see what it does. I haven’t worn it for weeks, it’s just been laying in my drawer.

Then the battery was probably completely empty in the meantime ? You should never do that. If it was deeply discharged in the meantime (below 2.5V), it can be irreparably destroyed.

Then that’s on Garmin, not me. It’s completely unreasonable for anyone to charge every few hours - including while you’re sleeping! At some point you give up - which is what I did.

I had every intention of shipping this watch to Garmin SA for assessment, along with a letter of complaint, printed emails showing 1 month of being ignored, as well as print-outs from this very forum. 

It’s a complete fluke that I tried the watch one last time - because there were no further updates on this forum. Even the change notes from 18.51 and 18.54 mention nothing about a battery drain fix.

So as far as I was concerned, my watch was toast. 

PeterZA said:

Then that’s on Garmin, not me.

It depends. If you leave the watch for weeks as described above, then charge it up to 60% and switch it off. In this state, the watch does not consume any power. However, the battery has a small self-discharge over time. Then recharge it about every 2 to 3 months. But make sure that it is never completely empty. If you do, you can report to Garmin that you have treated the battery well.

PeterZA said:

I had every intention of shipping this watch to Garmin SA for assessment, along with a letter of complaint

The battery is not covered by the Garmin warranty. 

„This Limited Warranty does not apply to:“

„(ii) consumable parts, such as batteries, unless product damage has occurred due to a defect in materials or workmanship;“

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/legal/consumer-limited-warranty/ 

hola como estas PeterZA tengo el mismo inconveniente mencionado cada salida en bici duraba unas horas y se apagaba lo reiniciaba y volvia apagarse por completo, pero solamente en modo bici  en modo normal no tengo problemas, tome la decisión de comprar gps cycling computer para seguir pasando a Strava normalmente me preparo para cambiar de batería próximamente     

I bought my first Instinct Solar just over 2 years ago and had exacly the same problem. Garmin exchanged the watch for a new one and it worked well for almost 2 years, with the promised battery life. I think the first one had a faulty battery.

After just under 2 years the 2nd watch started crashing regulary even at high states of charge. I tried various things but it didn't improve so I contated Garmin Australia again and they exchanged it for a another new watch, which has full battery life.