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Expected 6X battery performance for GPS+GLONASS+Heart Rate?

jan.shim
over 5 years ago

I've been using my Fenix 3 HR since 2016 for my training and races. To conserve battery I often race with Heart Rate disabled, watch using GPS+GLONASS in Smart Recording mode (everything else turned off) and I can get 12 hours before Low Battery warning appears, the charging cradle makes it very convenient to attach a small power bank to charge on the go. I race 50K to 100K, time to complete range from 14 hours for 50K with 2700m of elevation to 31 hours for 100K with 5700m of elev.

I'm looking for new watch that has enough juice to last the entire race and while many of my peers have switched to COROS Vertix for their incredible battery life and reportedly highly accurate GPS, I want to stay with Garmin. How many hours can I expect a 6X to last in the same GPS+GLONASS Smart recording mode but with wrist Heart Rate. I don't use music, vibrations, phone notifications and practically these features would be disabled.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    I have 6X Solar. Battery is currently at around 80%, showing 17 days remaining of 21 maximum. I just switched to a walking activity with GPS+GLONASS and wrist HR in the absence of a connected chest strap. Recording is set to 1 second intervals. Phone is connected. Estimated operational time with these parameters is 47 hours. Solar energy, if available, would increase the numbers.

    Manufacturer figures here - www8.garmin.com/.../GUID-694C4E14-D875-479F-AFB1-2A6A582FF506.html

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    I have a 6pro. i have completed and ultratrail in 18h with GPS+Galileo, HR on and recording every 1 sec. after 18h i had 43% remaining. i would definitely say with fenix 6 your worries for battery life are only if you race for 2days or more.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Hmmm i didnt even know that Coros Vertix exists, it looks  interesting watch. I will look into it more detailed.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    I have a 6X and with GPS+GLONASS and a HR chest strap it consumes about 1% /hour in activity mode. Internal OHR switched off, 1s recording.

    I think that the internal OHR consumes more battery than an external HR ANT+ strap. Which is why this is better than the numbers Garmin presents in the link  sent.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    One of the good things about the Fenix 6 series is that it has Power Modes, which allows you to configure the settings exactly how you want, and see what the likely effect is.

    I have the Fenix 6 Pro rather than the 6X, but the standard configuration is 36 hours with GPS+GLONASS. By turning off music and the phone (but still with wrist HR on), I get an estimate of 41 hours with 1 second recording. With HR off and a display timeout, I get 55 hours.

    The 6X has a longer rated battery than the 6 Pro, so you should be able to do your 100K ultra, then turn around and run the course in reverse, and still have battery left at the end with no charging.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    One of the key improvements in the 6X over the 3 is custom power management profiles. I have power profiles for ultra marathon configured that are 70 hours and 89 hours.

    Both of these disable music and radios and pulseox but keeping optical HR and GNSS. The 89 hr is achieved by using GPS-only rather than GPS+GLONAS and enabling the Display Timeout option. 

    These estimates seem reasonable to reality as long as you don’t use GPS TOPO map navigation. The map screen burns the battery at roughly double the usual rate. 

    In practice I dI’d a 14 hr unmarked ultra sky race in Dec with heavy use of Map navigation and a power profile configured that projected 63 hours (ANT+ accessories were enabled). I used the Navigation screen a ton and had 35 hours remaining at the finish.

    I have a friend with a Coros Apex and I get more hours of life — but the Apex is supposed to get less on paper. If I recall, the Vertix claims the same burn time as a 6X on paper. I don’t believe the Vertix is any better than the 6X on power, but is better than the 5X Plus. Coros is quite a bit cheaper. The advantage is extremely excellent battery performance at a better price point with a simpler, legacy-free mobile app interface — but at the expense of advanced features, accessories, ecosystem, and HR accuracy. 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to brian.reiter
    brian.reiter said:
    These estimates seem reasonable to reality as long as you don’t use GPS TOPO map navigation. The map screen burns the battery at roughly double the usual rate. 

    Agree. The constant re-rendering of the map screen as you move is processor (and therefore battery) intensive. So don't have the map as your active screen. By all means have the mapping running in the background - just scroll to the map screen if you need to do a navigation check at a trail junction, etc, then scroll back to a data screen.

    Using the Distance to Next datafield and the heading bug can give confidence that you are on the right track, without having to refer to the map screen.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    There is a good utility that shows on the screen the remaining time for a specific activity, taking into account the actual power consumption: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/84104c99-6ad2-4bcb-8537-8bfb6d141089

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    After first charge my battery shows: 11 days in smartwatch mode (BT +HR on) including 16 hours GPS+glonass+HR+2 ANT bike sensors track mode. The battery shows 13% charge now (remaining 43h based on last 3 days usage)