fenix 6x fw12.20 battery drain fixed

Former Member over 4 years ago

Well, sort of. Apologies for the click-bait-y title, but my issue indeed appears to have been fixed.

My 6x was purchased a little over a year ago. It worked great with my routine until 11.10 when battery drain made it nearly unusable. Before 11.10, with 50% brightness, no pulseOX, all-day HR, 1hr cardio/day (no music), all-day phone connected with a lot of notifications, custom face (SC8) I was getting ~10% usage/day. With 11.10, My phone lost ~45-50% per day.

Anyway the fix was..... getting in touch with Garmin support. Yes, they gave me a list of things to do (wipe watch, full reset, remove xml file, etc), but after ~10 days having done all of the above with no change, they sent me a replacement. I think something which was telling was that the watch would get kinda warm during charging and CS said it should not get warm at all.

The replacement watch is slightly different from my old one, in a good way:

- the vibration motor is tighter, with tactile (more taptic-like feel)

- The display has a bit more contrast. dark areas do not light up as much as light areas when the backlight is applied.

The watch is just now past 5 full days of normal use (by my routine) and is at 57%, so projected battery usage is slightly better than my old watch ever was.

I wish CS didn't have to run me through the boilerplate though as this seems to be a widespread issue, but long story short, if you're experiencing bad battery drain, do reach out to garmin support - it worked for me and i think it's worth a try.

0 imcluelesstoday over 4 years ago

Interesting. I've had mine since Aug and I experience about 15% / day loss. Setting.are similar to yours. No PulseOX, i do measure manually maybe 4-5 times throughout the day. 2 runs a week, about an hour long with music but I do charge it between runs. But regular wear, it loses about 15% battery daily. Only activity is a 30 minute walk at work. I think it should last longer but I don't have baseline since it's been like this since I got it.

0 PaulDN81 over 4 years ago

Since you bought it a little more than a year ago does that mean they replaced it outside of warranty?

I bought my 6X when they launched in August 2019 and it's been having battery drain lately. With no activities recorded, pulse ox off, phone connected, no Connect IQ apps or widgets, and one of the default watch faces I lost almost 50% in 4 days when the watch itself says the battery should be good for 21 days in that configuration. Activities cause it to drain even faster, even activities with no GPS or music usage, like swimming or riding on my indoor trainer, use up over 10% per hour which is way more than it used to.

I've tried all the things you mentioned that support asked you to do and it's had no effect but I've been putting off contacting support since it's outside warranty. So if they replaced your outside of warranty I'll give it a try as well.

0 Eric K. over 4 years ago in reply to imcluelesstoday

It depends a lot on your watch face choice, as well as which model you have. I have the 6x Sapphire and only lose around 4%-5% per day, but that's partially because the watch has a larger battery. I run three times a week for about an hour each run.

The 6 and 6s will likely have a higher percentage of battery drain with exactly the same setup since their batteries are smaller.

It's important to realize too that many third party watch faces have very high battery drain. You might want to try using one of the stock Garmin watch faces and seeing if things improve. If so, then you've found your culprit.

0 imcluelesstoday over 4 years ago in reply to Eric K.

Yeah, i use the stock watch faces only. I'll keep an eye on it. If it gets worse, i'll see about returning to Garmin. Plus, mine doesn't have the deep black colors as some others. Not that it's that big of a deal but if battery drain gets worse, more motivation to exchange. Thanks much.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to PaulDN81

Indeed, I purchased mine on Aug 30, 2019. The replacement order was placed on Nov 1, 2020. I never brought up warranty in my conversation with garmin but YMMV