Garmin Fenix 5 Plus battery drain in smartwatch mode

Hello

I've bought a Fenix 5 Plus second hand (no warranty) and I 'd like to share some thoughts about battery life. Important to note that the previous owner told me that even when new "he needed to charge the watch every 3 days".

My tests: Battery drain in Activity mode (GPS+OHR+BT) is approx 7-8%  per hour => ~14 hours endurance, OK for an older watch as it has 19h endurance when new

Battery drain during the smartwatch mode  / Stanby OHR+BT is approx 1.2 % /h => overall needs to be charged every 2-3 days...   Stamina seemed kind of low  so I have tried the following things

        - soft resets - no change

       - avoid installing 3rd party watch faces / widgets - no big change

       - multiple hard reset - no change

       - master reset - no change

       - upgrade / downgrade firmware - no change

       - installed current firmware (15.4) and reinstalled with Webupdater - no change

       - run the watch with OHR disabled, BT disabled,etc - no significant change

       - disabled Wifi auto update (when enabled battery drain is ~2% / h)

       - cleaned connector - no change

       - deleted all folders from Garmin folder to avoid corruption issues - no change

       - exchanged the battery with a new 3rd party battery (230 mh) - kind of an extreme measure but I admit I like tinkering with this watch. 

End result: same lifetime unchanged  : ~14 hours activity GPS+OHR (OK), max 3 days "Smartwatch" mode (OKish). 

Overall it seems that my watch is one of those batches of watches which had a reduced endurance from the start.  However if anybody has any other ideeas on things to try in order to improve endurance please let me know and I will give it a go. 

Thanks

  • Try a master reset but the original battery life the prior owner advised you about does not make sense. The watch should have been returned by the first owner while still in warranty.

    - Factory Master Reset:   How to Reset My Garmin Outdoor Watch

  • Thank you for the answer Chris. I've already tried that, no change.  No stress though as I am quite happy with the watch as it is. In the meantime I've bought also an Fenix 6 Pro but still this 5 Plus is the favorite... most likely I am now "emotionally invested" as I kept tinkering  with it:  ordering and replacing battery, band , glass protector etc. And who knows... maybe I will also find a solution on the standby drain 

  • I do now have an explanation but since 10 days the battery drain went away and the watch lasts almost a week in smartwatch mode. Problem is I did not do anything special like factory reset or software upgrade. Around that time I installed a barcode widget but I doubt that has anything to do with this topic. I also did not see any automatic update in sensors firmware (watch is still at 15.40). 

    I will test also some GPS activities to see how it handles. For now all I can say is that I am happy that the issue somewhat solved itself and very confused on how it solved itself. Slight smile