Fenix 5 plus - how long does it last?

Hi,

is battery life still bad on the Fenix 5 plus or has it improved in the last few months?

Is battery life also that bad on the Fenix 5x plus?

  • Any third party CIQ data fields or watchfaces? I ask as I've found battery life pretty much as advertised.For running I have a few fields but for ultra's etc I go to an activity with stock fields only

  • No fancy data fields or watch faces. Just a crappy battery life. Today I had a similar situation. Hiked almost 6 hours - went from 97% to 18%. My Apple Watch did better!  I still have 36%!!  And I was using the GPS on it. 

  • Once again: I am amazed that people compare their battery usage percentages without mentioning which model 5+ they own.

    The 5+, the 5S+ and the 5X+ have very different battery sizes. So if they have identical power usage, their battery usage in percent will be very different.

  • Right.  Sorry.  I do have the smaller Fenix 5s plus.  I realize I can expect less out of that than the other larger watches, but 6-7 hours until full drain?  That's unacceptable for a watch that is marketed to endurance athletes, IMO.  

  • The spec. says "Up to 11 hours".

    "Up to" in any marketing material basically means "less than".

    So I am not really surprised that you got 6-7 hours. That is more or less 2/3 of the "up to" time.

  • My Fenix 5+ is supposed to give me a maximum of 18hrs. of full GPS tracking. Last weekend I did a 12hrs hike and started with ~92% of battery and after I was done I had ~9% left. So I assume I would have been able to get almost to 18hrs. Maybe a little bit less, but I had a course loaded and I did regularly check the map if I'm still on track. So overall happy with the battery runtime. Also, I would assume the 18hrs. are a maximum value, when you don't check your watch often and just record the track.

    In general I'm very happy now with the battery life of the watch (but it's also my second watch. The first one had a fault battery and Garmin replaced it). In "normal" mode I get roughly to the advertised days (~12days). Even though I rarely reach this, because usually I use it for some activity and then of course the battery goes down faster....

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to jest3r

    Yes, I've noticed the same. You were likely using navigation and displaying the map (which results in constant screen redraws) - both of which result in additional power draw.

    It's my understanding that the 18 hour estimate is for GPS logging only (i.e, no map display and no complex, multi metric screens being displayed).