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Garmin Instinct Battery Drain Issue

2271243
over 4 years ago

So I read about this issue on another post on this forum, but thought I would post a new thread on this since the most recent post was 4 months ago.  I purchased the Instinct about 2 months ago and absolutely loved the watch, that is up until about 2 weeks ago.  The watch went from having great battery life, allowing me about around 4 (45-50 minute activities) before it needed a charge to now only lasting about 2 days max if I'm not doing an activity and less if I actually take a run.  I can't really pinpoint what happened.  The watch just all of a sudden started draining the battery very quickly.  I installed a beta of the 6.91 update on Friday and got a little better battery life, but it's still pretty bad.  Before I updated to 6.91 I would go to sleep with almost a full charge and wake up to the watch having only 3 bars left and that was with doing nothing while I slept.  

I really didn't see an answer from Garmin on what all of a sudden happened to make the watch behave this way.  I've already been in contact with a tech at Garmin and I'll get this watch returned for another, but it would be helpful to know what actually happened that caused this fantastic battery life to disappear.  

Here is everything that I've done so far with the watch to try and troubleshoot.

Did a complete reset of the device.

Did a soft reset with Garmin and deleted all activities from the watch.  

Checked settings on the watch to make sure that GPS was not causing a drain on the battery.  

Cleaned the connectors what the watch charges with a wipe to remove any sweat buildup.  

Upgraded from version 6.60 to beta 6.91 software (this helped a bit, but still no where near the battery life that I had previously).

I'm charging the watch now and will see about turning off the heart rate monitor tonight to see if that causes any change.  

Anyone have any other advice on this?  I like to troubleshoot things myself.  Not sure if there is anything else that I could try before returning the watch to Garmin.  This watch was purchased new at Best Buy about 2 months ago.  

Thanks,

Greg

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    i have the exact same issues as you.  battery life was awesome, then out of nowhere, barely lasts 24 hours (regardless of activity).  

    will garmin exchange the watch if there appears to be a defect?  its super frustrating.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to 7184942

    Did you already try powercycling it?

    7184942 said:
    will garmin exchange the watch if there appears to be a defect?

    Would be better to ask Garmin directly. Or the dealer, where you bought it

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to 7184942

    Garmin replaced my unit and I've had no further issues.  I love this watch.  I'm not sure what happened to the other one though as I bought it new from Best Buy and it just started losing battery one day.  It is super frustrating, but Garmin was pretty easy with me on getting it replaced.  I just went through their live chat and they were able to get a new unit sent to me.  Good luck!

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Same problem and  also vibration., i contact garmin 1 week ago no answer maybe because am from arabe County so they dont care, they have hardware problem on all garmin instinct in the market and they replace all smartwatch except me.  They can easy call the dealer in lebanon Beirut and ask for replacement.  

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Same problem and  also vibration., i contact garmin 1 week ago no answer maybe because am from arabe County so they dont care, they have hardware problem on all garmin instinct in the market and they replace all smartwatch except me.  They can easy call the dealer in lebanon Beirut and ask for replacement.  

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    My instinct also got a very short battery life after ~2 months of happy usage.

    I don't do allot of gps or activity stuff that drains the battery. I'm just really happy with the normal 24days life.

    In my case I could fix the problem by letting the device fully run the battery down. Then when it shut down because of the empty batt charge it again. If the charging completes to quickly ( <1 hour) the battery is not fully charged although the device may say so. Then repeat the deliberate running down of the battery (put on flashlight or other). Keep doing this until you get a solid charging time.

    Note you can put the device in "test mode" (Check other websites) you can see the battery voltage there. A fully charged lipo should be at 4.2 volts. It its not the charging is not successful.

    This has worked for me but it could possible be due to design or hardware issue so don't hesitate  to send to back for repair if it persists. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 6675116

    Send it to garmin they will replace it 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Samer ghabra

    If it misbehavious even ones in the coming time i will for sure :-). I still have almost 2 years of warrenty left ;-). THanks ! cheers

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 6675116

    I tried this with my watch before returning it because i noticed the same thing as you ,it would go from 45% to 70% during charging , it wasn't charging properly. 

    it was also depleting after an hour, i always thought it charged too fast from the time i started using it.

    I will persist with what you have done here , if i ever have the problem again.

    Garmin support have been excellent at helping with the issue .