I honestly have no luck or I am just cursed

If you expect battery wonders from MARQ family you will be disappointed. I have an Expedition and using the same widget I can see that consumption varies between days between 0.3 (though not so often) to 1.0, but on average 0.6-0.7. I started to ignore this matter and simply hope Garmin will one day come up with a FW that will hold true to its mouth. Until that day, happy using the watch!

Hi,

my concern is that it was fine till i did that update,  so either the maps or the 3.50 caused this issue.  

I did not had this issue on my expedition, with the expedition I was averaging 0.150~0.350.

hopefully once the battery reach 0 the new re charge and hard reset fix it :) 

The hard reset did solve the battery issue for me (I had the same issue with the previous software update). Apart from that I am VERY happy with the watch (Athlete). It looks great, functionality is nearly perfect and it's rare :-) 

Well, I can say the same thing is happening to me battery last 2 days, 3 days if i'm lucky.  Even my Fenix 5X and Fenix 3HR were much better.  I don't know when Garmin is going to fix this but I was about to post when I read this post.  It was fine before 3.40 update, mine usually stays at 1.4% per hour without any sensors and default watch face.

I wonder if maybe there is a way to downgrade FW? If that fix the issue I am happy to do so. 

Hi Emilio,

I feel for you. Currently, I have my second MARQ Expedition, the first one had lots of connection and battery issues which weren't solved by either hard resets (I tried all 3 methods) or the update to the latest version. I had trainings after when I spent 1-2 hours(!) until I managed to sync the workout to Garmin Connect.

The second one still has *some* connection issues but it's way better than the previous one. I would say, I can live with it. Arrived with the same firmware version that I had updated the first one (3.4), the battery problems went away, at least I was way more happy with the 0.6-0.7%/hour with using it as a smartwatch despite the fact there is much more promised by the specifications.

However, this one has other problems, OHR and Pulse OX are out of range and for some reason it doesn't download the HRM-Tri stored HR data after the training session finished. I managed to sync it manually, but I think that's not an expected behavior. Compared to other HR monitors which provided approximately the same 60-65bpm HR results when I was just sitting in my chair, this watch sometimes displays 45-49bpm at the same time. Believe me, I am not that trained. The previous one didn't have this problem, it was pretty much par with the other monitors. The wrist band wasn't loose at all.

Even though the auto wifi upload was enabled on both watches it never worked for me, I had to start the sync manually. There is also a bug introduced in the latest Android Garmin Connect which prevents you to add payment cards to the wallet so when I received the replacement watch I could not set it up either.

I have spent the last 3 weeks to test these two watches and now I am really disappointed. I am going to send the second one back tomorrow and honestly, I do not know if I want to try another one. I would not expect these issues from a mid-price sport watch either not to mention from a premium targeted product. I am on the stage when thinking of going back to my old Suunto Ambit3 which is not that stylish, doesn't have the fraction of the functionalities but it just works.

The top of the iceberg, when I wanted to use the support live chat to ask Garmin about the issues I have, it did not work. I tried it with four different browser, for hours in the afternoon, no luck.

Hi, 

Oh WOW! Those are a lot of issues and I do agree such expensive device should not be like that. 

I originally had a Forerunner 245 and it worked PERFECT! but I was not happy with the feeling of the buttons so I upgraded to 945, the 945 had battery issues ( same as my athlete now ) but nothing seemed to fix it and also it had the same issue with the buttons. 

I then purchased an expedition, all perfect except the screen was turning off by itself, I made a big deal about it here in the forums and after some consideration I decided to exchange it for the Athlete. The watch is lovely, I love the design and how it works but now the battery is dying really quick. 

Right now I have the watch with an activity running and brightness set at 100% so that I can lower the battery to 1% and try what Garmin recommends. Which is, hard reset, charge to 100% and now it should be fixed. 

Lets hope it works because I really do not want to return this watch

EmilioASM said:

with the exemption of Battery Meter

Maybe that's it? I have nothing extra on my Athlete. I've not had it on a charger since Friday last week. Since then I've done nearly 5 hours of GPS activity (with HR strap), an hour of non-GPS activity (with HR strap), travelled from Aus to NZ, and worn the watch 24/7 since connected to iPhone X. I have 54% battery left and not even sure I was on 100% when it last came off the charger.

Maybe you, and others, need to focus more on using the watch than checking each and every little bit of battery consumption with a 3rd party add-on that might actually be causing more of a problem than solving anything. After all, that add-on must be using battery consumption to work!

Hi, 

I already removed the widget as a test and the battery keep draining extremely fast. I removed the widget and used the watch for a full day and battery still drained :(. 

Once I finish charging the watch now I will remove the widget and use it without it just to see what happens. 

Just out of curiosity, did you reboot the watch after applying the update? I know the watch restarts but I've always rebooted just to make sure - I treat it like I would a Windows computer rebooting after every update - press and hold top left until it powers off (hold through the assistance screen). Then restart.

Just to add, I've never focussed on the battery life with any of the watches I've had. I get as much use out of them as I need and still usually have sufficient battery left.

Activity example 1

Activity example 2 (History :-)

And a Marq Athlete

This last one was 3 days in the hills without access to any charger so recorded the 3 days separately and stuck them together. It comes to a total of 26h of GPS tracking and it was on a 935 too - https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/495838131

I average around 10h of GPS activity each week and wearing the watch 24/7 (except when I remove it to clean underneath to stop rashes developing) I usually only put it on charge once a week. I use it. It works.