Hello everyone,
I'm going to race a 24 hours event in a few months and I've been testing various power mode settings to find a good compromise between data saving, feature & battery life.
I'm using a stryd pod for pace & distance but i like to keep a GPS track anyway, even if not spot on.
So I'm using the following setup : standard GPS mode, phone off, music off, maps off, OHR off, permanent display, and sensors on.
I installed a simple battery monitoring data field (battery up/down by CloggyAbroad) to measure the battery discharge rate.
During mosts of the running activities with my HRM-run strap, the drain was always between 3.5 and 4% per hour which seems OK, but still higher than advertised by Garmin.
I switched to a simple HRM-dual strap, connected via ANT+, and the power usage during my run this morning dropped to 2.4 / 2.8% per hour. I assume because of the HRM-run "extra" features like running dynamics data.
I do not care much about running dynamics, so I'm definitely going to stick with the HRM-dual and see if this is reproducible.
Just thought I'd let everyone know that running dynamics transmission via ANT+ (which if I remember correctly, also requires the watch to transmit pace data to the strap accelerometer for vertical ratio) seems to be pumping from the battery quite much. If keeping battery life under control is important for you, at least more than running dynamics data, you might want to check it on your side :)
